PSY is releasing his 9th full album, marking his first comeback after 5 years.
On April 14th, through his official SNS, PSY officially announced that his 9th full album ‘PSY 9th Ssada 9‘ would be released at 6 pm KST on April 29th. This is PSY’s first new album in 5 years since his 8th full album ‘PSY 8th 4X2=8‘ that came out in May 2017.
PSY once again used a unique numerical word play for the title of the upcoming 9th album, following his 2nd album ‘Ssa2‘, 3rd album ‘3 Mai‘, 4th album ‘Ssajib‘, 5th album ‘PsyFive‘, 6th album ‘Psy 6 (Six Rules)‘, 7th album ‘Chiljip Psy-da‘, 8th album ‘4X2=8‘. ‘Ssada 9′ means ‘PSY’s colorful 9th album‘.
Along with his comeback announcement, PSY posted a video of his concert held on December 24, 2013. In the video, PSY said in front of the audience, “I know a lot of you have high expectations for my next hit song. To be honest, I produced ‘Champion’ in 2002 and it took me exactly 10 years to produce a song that is more sensational than ‘Champion’ with the release of ‘Gangnam Style’ in 2012.”
He added, “I guess what I’m trying to say is, perhaps the next time I show you a song like ‘Gangnam Style’ will be in 2022.”
In 2012, PSY became the first K-pop artist to reach 2nd place on Billboard Hot 100 with the iconic hit ‘Gangnam Style’. Back then, ‘Gangnam Style’ created a worldwide syndrome. The MV for ‘Gangnam Style’ surpassed 1 billion and 2 billion views for the first time on YouTube. It also became the first video that exceeded the limit of the number of views that YouTube could display at the time, marking the change of the aggregation method on the world’s largest video sharing platform. To this day, it still has an overwhelming number of views (4.38 billion), proving its popularity.
However, after ‘Gangnam Style’, PSY slowed down somewhat. ‘Gentleman’ (2013), ‘Napal Baji’, ‘Daddy’ (2015), ‘I Luv It’, and ‘New Face’ (2017) all achieved success but still failed to surpass the massive impact of ‘Gangnam Style’, and PSY had to constantly challenge himself.
After a long hiatus, PSY will return with an album that is expected to reflect his hard work and preparation during the past 5 years. Expectations are high as to whether there will be another sensation following the 20-year-old ‘Champion’ and ‘Gangnam Style’, which has been captivating the world for a decade.
In particular, in an era where K-pop artists, most notably BTS, have been showing their global popularity by charting on Billboard, attention is now focused on whether PSY will be able to conquer Billboard beyond Korea once again after 10 years.
‘PSY 9th Ssada 9’ contains a total of 12 tracks. Featured artists such as singer and rapper Crush participated in 6 of the 12 songs.
