Rapunzel: LISA Built Kiki a Tower Out of Money

Reviewed: LISA, “Rapunzel (Kiki Solo Version)” live performance video, plus the album recording featuring Megan Thee Stallion
Song released: February 28, 2025
Performance video released: April 22, 2025
Album: Alter Ego

The verdict

LISA looked at Rapunzel’s tower, replaced the bricks with cash and decided the prince could wait downstairs. “Rapunzel” is a low-slung brag record with a hook that sounds expensive, bored and fully aware of the camera. The Kiki performance video gives the song the visual it was begging for: one woman, one absurd blonde mane and enough loose currency to make the cleaning crew file a complaint.

The track is not trying to tell a fairy tale. Rapunzel is shorthand for impossible hair and being watched from below. LISA uses both, then strips away the rescue plot. Nobody saves her. She owns the tower.

The lyrics ride a beat designed to walk slowly

Ryan Tedder and Sam Homaee produced “Rapunzel,” and the smartest thing they do is leave the beat uncluttered. A thick bass line, dry percussion and small melodic accents give LISA space to place each boast. The tempo sits around 100 BPM, but the record feels slower because the vocal cadence leans back.

This is not one of LISA’s precision-attack songs. “Rockstar” hits like a slogan through a stadium speaker. “Rapunzel” smirks. Her lines arrive with a lazy curl at the end, and the hook repeats its money fixation until it becomes part chant, part eye roll.

The production suits her English delivery. She can clip consonants hard when the rhythm needs a little bite, then stretch the final word across the pocket. Carly Gibert’s background vocals help thicken the transitions without making the track feel crowded.

The downside is thematic repetition. Money, beauty, status, access: Alter Ego visits this neighborhood often. “Rapunzel” survives because the central image is clean and the groove is better than the concept is deep. If you enter hoping LISA’s five-character album mythology will reveal a hidden emotional diary, Kiki is going to throw another stack of bills at you and keep moving.

Megan or Kiki?

The standard digital album version features Megan Thee Stallion. The Kiki solo version removes Megan and gives the second section back to LISA. They belong on one review page because they are two official arrangements of the same song, not separate releases that need duplicate articles.

Megan wins the album version’s contrast battle. Her voice is warmer and heavier, and her verse arrives with the relaxed authority of somebody who has made luxury rap a native language. She does not disrupt the song’s mood. She settles deeper into it. LISA’s cooler tone sets the room; Megan walks in and raises the temperature.

The solo version makes a different case. Kiki is one of the five personas used for the Alter Ego campaign, and the performance video needs LISA to hold the frame alone. Her additional section keeps the character intact and makes the clip feel like a complete solo showcase rather than a feature with a missing guest.

My playlist choice depends on the job. For headphones, I want Megan. For watching LISA turn three minutes of controlled posing into an event, Kiki takes it.

Hair down, money everywhere

The official live performance video is built around one extremely legible idea. LISA wears a floor-length blonde wig and performs among towers, steps and drifts of money. The fairy-tale reference is visible from the first frame. No lore explainer is required.

Calling it “live” describes the presentation, not a stripped rehearsal-room arrangement. This is a polished performance film. The vocal sits cleanly in the mix, the lighting is planned down to the last gleam, and the camera knows every mark. That does not make the performance less useful. It lets us watch how LISA works when choreography is reduced and attitude has to carry the full runtime.

She uses small movements well. A turn of the head sends the blonde hair across the frame. A change in posture punctuates a bar. Her eye contact does the work that a crowded dance break usually handles. LISA has spent enough years on giant stages to understand that stillness can read as power when the camera is close.

The money set is hilariously literal, but subtlety would be dishonest here. The chorus announces wealth with all the delicacy of a receipt printer. Building the room out of cash lets the visual own the joke instead of pretending the song contains hidden medieval symbolism.

What saves the concept from looking like a generic rap-video rental is the hair. The wig changes her silhouette, trails over the set and creates movement whenever she shifts. Rapunzel becomes styling, prop and choreography at once.

The video arrived just after LISA’s 2025 Coachella appearances, but “Rapunzel” was not part of those sets. Releasing this separate performance gave an album cut its own stage and kept Kiki distinct from the other alter egos. Billboard Philippines reported the release as a post-Coachella showcase and highlighted the long blonde wig, cash-covered set and solo arrangement.

The receipts

“Rapunzel” was released February 28, 2025 on LISA’s first full-length solo album, Alter Ego, through LLOUD Co. and RCA Records. The featured version credits LISA, Megan Thee Stallion, Ryan Tedder, Carly Gibert, Sam Homaee and Gregory “Aldae” Hein as writers. Tedder and Homaee produced the track. Kuk Harrell handled vocal production, Manny Marroquin mixed it and Randy Merrill mastered it.

The Kiki solo version uses the same core writers and production without Megan’s feature. LLOUD’s official label-delivered audio lists LISA, Gibert, Tedder, Homaee and Hein on the solo recording. The official performance video was released April 22, 2025.

Watch LISA’s official “Rapunzel (Kiki Solo Version)” live performance videoDaily+3.7KTotal views8.3M. The complete featured-version credits are also available through Apple Music, while LLOUD’s official solo audioDaily+3.2KTotal views2.4M documents the Kiki-version credits.

Final score

Song with Megan: 8.4/10
Kiki performance: 8.8/10
Hair: 14 floors and still climbing

“Rapunzel” is luxury nonsense executed with discipline. Megan gives the record its best contrast. LISA gives the solo performance its reason to exist. Nobody escapes the tower because nobody wants to leave.

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Bottom line

Rapunzel turns Kiki’s money-and-freedom fantasy into a tower LISA built herself. The performance works when the fairy-tale reference becomes a question about agency; it weakens when wealth is expected to answer every emotional detail.

What changed every time I replayed it

Replay one follows LISA’s rhythmic attack against the spacious beat. Replay two watches how the live-performance camera uses height and enclosure. Replay three compares the Kiki solo file with the Megan Thee Stallion version: the guest adds another relationship to power, while the solo cut makes the character architecture easier to inspect.

One song, two official forms

The exact solo and collaboration files belong in one canonical React. They share the recording’s core argument and provide complementary evidence. Creating a separate card for each would force readers to reconstruct a comparison the deeper post can make directly.

The larger meaning: Kiki needs more than a costume

The alter ego registers because LISA changes attack, gaze and relationship to luxury. Musical distinction is less complete. A character should alter how a song makes decisions, not only which styling appears in the first frame. The performance supplies specificity the writing only sometimes matches.

The counterargument

Money as liberation is familiar pop shorthand, and fairy-tale imagery can make material freedom look politically complete. The song is better when timing reveals play rather than doctrine. Kiki is a character testing abundance, not an economic program.

What I would change

Use the final section to expose one cost of the tower. Even fantasy gains shape from a boundary, and LISA is interesting enough to let confidence discover consequence without collapsing.

Canonical profiles

LISA · BLACKPINK

Receipts

Kiki solo performanceDaily+3.7KTotal views8.3M · Official collaboration versionDaily+3.2KTotal views2.4M