SUGAR HONEY ICE TEA

What the song actually means

Start with the title because the title is doing almost all of the work. “Sugar honey ice tea” spells S-H-I-T. When the members say they are the sugar honey ice tea, they are not calling themselves a refreshing beverage. They are saying, in the cleanest possible packaging, that they are the shit: the standard, the event, the girls everybody else has to discuss after they leave the room.

The sweetness is camouflage. Sugar and honey sound cute, safe and girlish. Ice tea sounds summery. Put the initials together and the phrase turns cocky. That flip fits BABYMONSTER better than a basic warm-weather song would. Their whole brand is built on the collision between “baby” and “monster,” polished young faces and oversized performance energy. This time the collision is inside the title.

The lyrics do not tell a complicated story. They circle confidence, attention and the belief that nobody else tastes quite like them. That simplicity is both the point and the limitation. The hook behaves like a slogan. If it lands, you feel clever every time you hear the hidden swear. If it does not, the song can feel like three minutes of people explaining the same pun.

The song: sweet wrapper, heavy center

The production does not sound sweet. A thick bass line carries most of the weight, while the synths stay cool and glossy around it. The verses use talk-singing and rap-shaped delivery more than full melody, which lets the members throw attitude into short phrases. RUKA and ASA understand this kind of pocket immediately. They do not need a long verse to make the rhythm feel intentional.

PHARITA and RORA give the track its cleaner melodic air. AHYEON provides the extra voltage, while CHIQUITA sells the hook with the kind of fearless expression that makes a silly phrase look like a personal threat. This is a six-member recording during RAMI’s health hiatus, and that matters. RAMI’s smoky vocal color would have changed the middle of the song. The remaining members compensate with brightness and attack, but the blend is different.

My biggest complaint is the same one I keep having with BABYMONSTER: why hire this many singers if the title track is going to ration melody? The group can carry live vocal drama that many peers cannot. SUGAR HONEY ICE TEA chooses immediacy instead. It wants the first ten seconds of a short-form clip, the chant at a concert, and the phrase people type in all caps. It succeeds at that job. I am just greedy enough to want the job to be bigger.

The music video: everybody is watching

The video turns the members into products, celebrities and walking news items at the same time. Desserts, bright color blocks and fizzy drinks literalize the title. The sweetness looks expensive rather than innocent. Even when the palette goes pink or lime, the styling refuses to become childish.

Then the news-interview setup changes the meaning. BABYMONSTER is not only declaring confidence to an empty room. They are doing it under observation. Cameras point at them. Questions frame them. A public story is being manufactured around whatever they say and wear. Instead of shrinking under that gaze, the members treat the set like another stage.

That makes the hook a response to scrutiny. Call us whatever you want; we already chose the headline. The visual joke is that the polite phrase can pass through a broadcast while everybody understands the rude meaning underneath. It is confidence with plausible deniability.

Easter eggs and surprises

• The acronym is the main key: SUGAR HONEY ICE TEA becomes S.H.I.T. The refrain repeatedly asks viewers to hear the clean phrase and think the uncensored one.
• Sweet food is not decoration: The desserts and drinks keep the literal title visible while the members perform the figurative meaning.
• The interview room changes the power dynamic: News media normally gets to explain the celebrity. Here, the members feed the cameras the exact story they want repeated.
• Six chairs in a seven-member history: RAMI is on health hiatus, not gone. The six-member frame belongs to this era, and future fans will need that context when comparing videos.
• From CHOOM to S.H.I.T.: The single arrived only a month after the CHOOM mini album. The quick turnaround makes it feel like an extra exclamation point rather than a complete reinvention.
• The color coding sells contradiction: Lime, pink and blue keep the screen fresh and summery while the bass and expressions stay heavier and more confrontational.

Credits I actually wanted to know

The performance video: the joke gets a body

The June 10 performance video is not a spare clip that belongs on a separate page. It is the second half of the same idea. The music video sells the slogan through sets, costumes and cameras. The performance version has to prove the song still has a personality after all of that is stripped away.

It does. Black and acid-lime styling keeps the sweet-versus-rude contrast, but the real argument is in the choreography. The chorus uses light steps, car-ride hand motions and broad extensions that make the acronym feel bigger than the words. The members keep their upper bodies loose while the lower-body work lands heavier than the song first suggests. That weight is important. Without it, the hook could float away like a cute TikTok gesture.

The camera moves, but it does not rescue the choreography. You can still read the formations. Six members open in balanced pairs, then break symmetry as the center changes. The transitions are clean enough that the missing seventh position never looks like a hole. That is professional rebuilding, not proof that BABYMONSTER has quietly become a six-member group. RAMI remains part of the group while on health hiatus.

What the performance version adds

The official MV makes confidence look expensive. The performance video makes it look practiced. RUKA and ASA bite into the smaller rhythmic details. AHYEON attacks the big accents as if the beat owes her money. PHARITA and RORA keep the lines from becoming blunt, and CHIQUITA performs the central joke with terrifying ease. Nobody looks embarrassed by the title, which is exactly why it works.

The most useful choice is the center rotation. This is not six people waiting behind one star. Each member gets a turn to change the temperature of the hook. The mirrored formations give the eye something stable, and then the broken symmetry keeps the routine from feeling like a drill. Confetti at the end pushes the whole thing into victory-lap territory: they said the rude thing politely, got away with it, and threw themselves a party.

Member-by-member: who sells what

• RUKA gives the track its grounded swagger. Watch the tiny pauses before her accents; she lets the beat arrive instead of chasing it.
• PHARITA brings the cleanest line and the coolest facial control. She makes the sweeter side of the title look expensive.
• ASA understands the joke at a rhythmic level. Her delivery turns short phrases into punctuation.
• AHYEON is the voltage spike. Even when the part is simple, she makes it feel like something just happened.
• RORA supplies needed vocal color and poise. The song would be flatter without her calmer center of gravity.
• CHIQUITA sells the hook with fearless comic confidence. She looks like she knew the acronym would start arguments and arrived early to watch.

The part fandom is arguing about

There are two separate conversations, and pretending they are the same would be lazy. One is about the song’s coded swear, which is cheeky but hardly new. The other is about styling young performers inside adult, cabaret-coded imagery. RORA and CHIQUITA are still minors in this era. Viewers who felt uncomfortable were not inventing a problem for sport. A glossy concept can be visually clever and still deserve questions about who is being asked to sell it.

My take: the members perform the concept extremely well. That does not cancel the responsibility of the adults who chose it. Praise the performance without acting as if every creative decision becomes harmless because the camera work is beautiful.

Credits: the people behind the sugar

The tea: 100 million views and the ad question

The MV passed 100 million views in roughly seventeen and a half days. That is a real milestone and a ridiculous pace. It also restarted the same argument that follows many major-label YouTube campaigns: how much of the number came from fans choosing the video, and how much came from paid promotion serving it as an ad?

Fans reported receiving the video as a YouTube ad and pointed to YG campaigns in Google’s Ads Transparency Center. That does not mean the views are fake. An ad view is still counted under YouTube’s rules when the viewer watches long enough or engages. It does mean the headline number cannot tell us, by itself, how many people actively searched for the song. The honest answer is less dramatic than either stan camp wants: BABYMONSTER has a huge, active audience, and YG also markets that audience aggressively. Both things can be true.

Final take