After years of ready since their stint on 2021’s competitors present LOUD, KickFlip unveiled their frustratingly repetitive pre-release Umm Nice earlier this month. And with the discharge of their mini album immediately, they turn out to be 2025’s first main debut act. As I acknowledged again in Umm Nice‘s evaluate, I had hoped this group would balk present JYP Leisure traits and ship a extra idiosyncratic sound pushed by their youthful attraction.

Mama Mentioned will get us nearer to this purpose than Umm Nice, but additionally takes two steps again. It nonetheless feels just like the company is giving all its boy bands the identical materials. For the lifetime of me, I can’t distinguish what makes a KickFlip completely different than a NEXZ. Their sound is heavy on sing speak, choosing melodies that really feel extra like taunts than fully-developed, interconnected components of a narrative. This fragmented method — continuously pinballing between singing, chanting and rapping — has been completed to dying and leads to music that feels extra like branding. I typically really feel like I’m listening to a business for JYP’s subsequent boy band fairly than their precise track.

Trying again via the company’s lineage, Mama Mentioned‘s sing-song refrain appears to be reduce from related material as 2015’s wonderful GOT7 single Simply Proper. Nonetheless, this hand-me-down comes together with loads of new-gen tropes, together with grating percussion and an absence of melodic creativeness. On the plus aspect, different components of the monitor supply peeks at extra partaking selections. I really like the guitar that sprouts up through the pre-chorus and the finale gives some fascinating vocal interaction that ought to have been highlighted all through the track. Sadly, Mama Mentioned‘s bratty power overshadows all of this and simply doesn’t work for me.

Grade: C