#atzlyrics

Okay, so, the lyrics in question that stuck to me are ‘We could make money, dancing with somebody’ and ‘I said “No,” it said “Dinero”’.

To me the core of the song’s meaning is, at least in a way, about how under all the glitter of the kpop freaky friday party there’s more and that the more is the tiredness coming from the grind and the hustle, to the point that stopping or resting doesn’t even feel like an option anymore (‘Turn down for what. The time is now.’ and ‘Sin descanso’ which translates to ‘without rest’ and ‘쉬는 법 잊어버렸지’ which translates to something like ‘I forgot how to rest’).

Mulling over the lyrics I realised that Mingi isn’t really rapping about wanting dinero (so money, fame and so on), but about how, in a way, he’s being owned by it, by the machine he’s part of, to the point that it’s like the system has its own personality, its own volitions and its own voice (the ‘I said “No,” it said “Dinero”’ in question). Inside this metaphor, then, the dance floor at the start of YOUHA’s lyrics isn’t fun escapism anymore, it becomes one of the many other stages where the grind and the cycle continue (and this brings us to the ‘We could make money, dancing with somebody’ as in 'gotta work' and of course it's a work made also of networking).

The whole song, then, feels a lot more like a really personal confession than like a boasting celebration of what fame and wealth one has reached and that’s why the other layer of meaning I was talking about suddenly popped up in my brain.

Now, in her video Jang Hyogyeong says stuff like ‘Are K-pop sugar daddies actually real? Honestly, yeah.’ and ‘I think this kind of stuff easily comes to non-famous idols or trainees because they know that we aren't making any money. They all know.’.

So what if there’s also another meaning to those two lines? We all know how often dancing with somebody on the dancefloor of a club can imply something else (sex), sometimes to the point of mimicking it, so stating ‘We could make money, dancing with somebody’ in my speculation could also translate to ‘we could make money having sex with somebody’ and that’s why it had me recall the video I was talking about.

Have Mingi and/or YOUHA experienced something like that? Has someone proposed that kind of exchange to them or to someone they know? Of course we will never know, as I said in the disclaimer this is pure speculation, but it really fits within the themes of the song and the exchange ‘I said “No,” it said “Dinero”’, if you’re going to change the it with a he/she/they, I’m pretty sure it’s something a lot of us experienced more or less directly in our lives in front of unwanted sexual advances. You don’t have to take the ‘dinero’ literally for it to work, sure you can and it could be, but it could also be a metaphor for a lot more kinds of propositions.

And, on a side note, I love how the last bar in his rap leaves us with an open question, because sure, he built his paradise inside the machine, he did it by himself, with his sweat and his constant grind and networking, but is he actually living in it or is he too busy hustling for that? It’s a really bittersweet end if you ask me and it makes Dinero so damn interesting.