Episode 64: GAP (Ninety One Album Review) feat. Jessica

In this blockbuster album review episode, I welcome back Jessica, my guest from episode 53. You can read her epic Theory of Ninety One over here and you can read my write up of the excellent documentary on Ninety One (available for free with English subtitles on YouTube) over here.

Between when we recorded that episode back in January and now, I began work on a draft of the History of Q-pop which hopefully I will eventually finish at some point. We give a TL;DR in the episode but a little additional context that I cut for time is that Ninety One were the creation of Yerbolat Bedelkhan, the man behind Juz Entertainment and father of “Q-Pop.” He’s a very interesting guy and is part of the population of Mongolian Kazakhs who emigrated to Kazakhstan in the wake of independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. One of the anecdotes that I came across researching Q-Pop is that his group Orda had gone to Moscow back in the late 2000s to try and break into the pop scene there but had been explicitly told by a producer that they needed “slavic faces” to sell in the Russian language pop market. I strongly suspect that even if this story is apocryphal, the sentiment is true and one of the reasons he ended up turning towards the Asian market. And Ninety One, even as they split with Juz Entertainment, have maintained that antipathy towards the (large) Russian language market.

Some further reading on Kazakhstan—the effort to change the alphabet from Cyrllic to roman letters, Joanna Lillis is a good source for news from Kazakhstan and Central Asia, a look back at “Bloody January,” and the TikTok SONGS OF THE SUMMER for Kazakhstan.

GET YOUR TICKETS FOR KALIFARNIYA—New York, Chicago, and Miami (I said Los Angeles in the episode but it’s Miami!)

GET YOUR TICKETS FOR IRINA KAIRATOVNA—Germany, France, Israel, Poland, and more!

I am obsessed with Kalifarniya’s newest single, “Oi Barekeldi.” He’s an ex-member of Q-Pop group Divine.

Possible clues to an artistic direction for a more “grown-up” Ninety One…

LIKE AND SUBSCRIBE! Let’s get Ninety One to one million subscribers!

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The songs played are:

1. “All I Need” by Ninety One (Official MV)

2. “eMoji” by Ninety One (Official MV)

3. “Symbaim” by Ninety One (Official MV; Making of)

4. “Желсіз түнде жарық ай” by Ninety One

5. “Puerto-Rico” by Kalifarniya (Official MV)

6. “Oinamaqo” by Ninety One (OYU LIVE; Official MV)

7. “ЧИНА” by Irina Kairatovna (Official MV, the “Old Spice” commercial)

8. “SEÑORITA” by Ninety One (Official MV)

9. “Juice” by SHINee (Performance video)

10. “Dunie” by Ninety One (Fan cam: Gap Tour 2023 Astana August 25, 2023)

11. “ÓRIK” by Ninety One (Official MV)

12. “Bópe” by Ninety One (Lyric Video)

13. “BIZ” by Ninety One (Official MV)

14. “JUR MAPELEP” by Ninety One (Lyric Video; the Stromae pastiche song)

15. “ÁPEREM AI” by Ninety One (Lyric Video)

16. “TARTTY” by Ninety One (Lyric Video)

17. “BLUE” by Ninety One (Lyric Video; the “Midnight Sky” pastiche song; check out what Sexy Zone is doing!)

18. “Suraqtar” by Ninety One (Official MV)

19. “Qooma” by Ninety One (Lyric Video)

20. “Jurek” by Ninety One (Mood Video)

21. “Abuse” by Ninety One (Official MV)

22. “1DEI” by Ninety One (Lyric Video)

23. “DARN” by Ninety One (Official MV)

24. “OTTEGI” by Ninety One (Lyric Video)

25. “Koilek” by Ninety One (Lyric Video)

26. “DUNIE” by Ninety One (Lyric Video)

27. “Su Asty” by Ninety One (Official MV)

28. “EGO” by Ninety One (Lyric Video)

29. “ZULYM” by Ninety One (Lyric Video)

30. “Эта девочка” by Galymzhan & Adil (Official MV)

31. “SEÑORITA” by Ninety One (Official MV)