RAERAE REACTS · BABYMONSTER · OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO
Really Like You: BABYMONSTER Found the Dangerous Gap Between Like and Love
A 90s hip-hop/R&B crush song, a school hallway, seven girls with terrible poker faces, and a hook that waited a year to start climbing again. “Really Like You” is BABYMONSTER being sweet without becoming weightless.
Overall vibe
Warm cassette nostalgia without coating the frame in fake dust. The beat nods to 90s hip-hop R&B, the vocals stay light on their feet, and the members perform the awkward confidence of liking somebody before the evidence says it is safe.
The hook vibe
The title phrase circles because a crush circles. “Really” keeps trying to upgrade “like” without crossing into the terrifying legal territory of love. The O-shaped hand gesture and little heart-arrow motions make the chorus easy to remember with your body.
What I love
- The mid-tempo groove: BABYMONSTER can breathe, phrase and flirt instead of fighting a drop.
- The group chemistry: the girls behave like friends weaponizing information about somebody’s crush.
- The school story: it gives the song a location and a reason for every glance.
- The rap-to-vocal handoff: heavier verses keep the sweetness from floating away.
- The replay value: expressions and background reactions reward watching somebody other than the center.
What I do not love
K-pop school concepts arrive in bulk, so lockers and uniforms are not a personality by themselves. The video occasionally leans on “look, they are adorable” when it could push the actual crush mystery further. I wanted one more plot turn: a wrong note, a discovered doodle, somebody realizing the crush is looking back.
The transitions in the song can also feel slightly stitched. Rap weight, soft vocals and a very round pop hook occupy related rooms, but not every doorway is elegant. The charm carries it.
Lyrics: confession held at the edge of the mouth
The writing is about the moment before certainty. The narrator wants to reveal affection but still needs plausible deniability. That is why the title stops at “really like.” Love would demand consequences; like can still be laughed off if the hallway turns hostile.
Ryan Bickley, Jonny Hockings, YG, WINNER’s Mino and Bigtone share lyric credits, while AiRPLAY, Bickley, Hockings, Freedo and Ends appear in the composition file. That many writers could have made the crush feel generic. Mino’s history with conversational hip-hop helps explain why the verses feel more spoken and lived-in than a standard bubblegum confession.
Video story and presentation
The school setting turns the group into a small information network. Notes, glances, friend interference and collective overreaction matter more than a literal love interest. The crush is almost an excuse to watch seven personalities process the same secret differently.
Color grading stays bright without bleaching everybody into a commercial. Graphic effects and playful editing act like doodles in the margins. The best shots are not the biggest ones; they are the moments when a member in the background knows too much.
The delayed hit nobody scheduled
The music video passed 100 million YouTube views in November 2025, roughly ten months after release. Then a fan-concert performance and point-choreography challenge pushed the song into a new viral run in early 2026. YG reported more than 100,000 TikTok posts using it and a five-day run atop TikTok Korea’s Music Viral 50.
That backstory matters because it proves the song was not only carried by launch-week fandom labor. People rediscovered a B-side, found a gesture they wanted to copy, and dragged it back into music shows. The audience performed its own comeback schedule.
Member moments
| Lane | What lands |
|---|---|
| Rap line | Ruka and Asa give the crush enough swagger to leave the diary. |
| Vocal color | Rami and Rora add warmth that makes the affection sound sincere rather than decorative. |
| Bright edge | Pharita and Chiquita keep the chorus buoyant. |
| Center pressure | Ahyeon can oversell a moment, but here that intensity becomes somebody failing to act normal around a crush. |
RaeRae take
This is the BABYMONSTER lane I keep asking YG not to abandon. The group still has rhythm, rap and performance bite, but nobody has to shout that they are legendary every twelve seconds. Personality becomes the flex.
The reverse run is also delicious. A song about being too nervous to confess quietly waited in the catalog, then hundreds of thousands of people volunteered to perform the confession for it. That is better storytelling than a marketing deck could invent.