HIP

"Hip" (stylized in all caps) is a song by South Korean girl group Mamamoo. It was released on November 14, 2019, as the lead single from the group's third studio album, Reality in Black. A dance-pop song with a retro feel, "Hip" was written and produced by Kim Do-hoon, Park Woo-sang, and Hwasa. The single was met with positive reception upon release and became a commercial success, peaking within the top ten in South Korea and becoming the group's first number-one hit on the Billboard World Digital Song Sales chart. In November 2020, the song was certified platinum by the Korea Music & Content Association (KMCA) for surpassing 100 million streams, making it their second song to achieve the feat. Background and release Beginning in August 2019, Mamamoo participated in the reality-competition show Queendom, in which six trending female K-pop acts competed for their own comeback showcase to air on South Korean pay TV channel Mnet. Throughout the course of the program, Mamamoo released a cover of AOA's 2016 single "Good Luck," a rerecording of their own 2016 single "I Miss You," and the original song "Destiny." "Destiny" was later included on their second studio album Reality in Black. In the finale episode of Queendom, Mamamoo were declared the winners of the competition. The group then announced the release of their second full studio album through their Twitter account on November 1. "Hip" was announced as the album's lead single on November 8, and it was released alongside the album on November 14. The single was noted as contrasting the group's past self-choreographed performances. Contrary to previous promotional cycles, the group explicitly focused on choreography, exchanging their trademark handheld microphones for headsets. Group leader Solar remarked during an album showcase event that the choreography for "Hip" had been their most complex and hardest to learn so far. While appearing on the KBS talk show Happy Together, she elaborated that this change was inspired by previous criticism over the group not having intricate, demanding dance routines and being self-choreographed.