Jay Park & Ugly Duck Claims There "Ain’t No Party Like an AOMG Party"

Jay Park and Ugly Duck returned earlier last week with a new single “Ain’t No Party Like an AOMG Party” or in Korean, “우리가 빠지면 Party가 아니지,” one of the tracks off their new EP Scene Stealers. Their last official release together was “몸매(Mommae)” which means ‘body’ in English, from Jay Park’s studio album ₩orld ₩ide. The English song title is actually a little different from the Korean song title. Literally, the song title means, ‘Without us, it ain’t a party’ or ‘It ain’t a party, if we [AOMG] ain’t there.’

The song starts out with a slow and seemingly gentle rhythmic piano-like beat in the beginning, but then becomes hardcore with its heavy bass and percussion sounds. Surprisingly, this song actually reminds you of “Mommae,” even though the producers are different. “Mommae” was produced by famous producer, also part of the AOMG label, Gray. On the other hand, this song is produced by Prima Vista, Yultron, and Cha Cha Malone (another producer from AOMG). Moreover, Jay Park references “Mommae” by singing the same lines:

‘They ain’t f**kin’ with us, no, they ain’t f**kin’ with us.’

Showing creativity, he’s able to fit lyrics from one of his previous songs into his new single, and still make it sound fresh. However, despite the many similarities between the new song and Jay Park’s “Mommae” released earlier last year, can be listened to without getting bored. And for this song, it was only released last week, and we’re slowly starting to feel ambivalent about it. “Mommae” has a stronger and more addictive hook while the hook in this song is just this line “It ain’t a party if we aren’t there” (in Korean) repeated over and over.

In the song, Jay mentions his connection from Seattle to Seoul, highlighting his Korean-American heritage, which he does in many of his songs, for example – “All I Want to Do,” “On It,” and even has a song called “Seattle 2 Soul.” He also cleverly in the lyrics gives a shout out to the producers Prima Vista, Yultron, Cha Cha Malone. For Ugly Duck’s part, rap is suited well with the song and he makes many references. One of them is ‘Law of the Jungle’ which is a reference to a South Korean variety show as well as referring to the animal-like and crazy party that goes down with Jay Park and AOMG.

Visually, this music video is explosive – there is a strong contrast between the different sets. For example, there is fire and cards that are burning in one set, there are dark tunnels and flashlights in another, there is a club-like hazy purple smog set, and a circus tent background as well. This music video was skilfully produced by Tiger Cave, as the constant shifting between sets match with the upbeat and the krump-like instrumental. My favorite set would the dark background, with flashing lights because there, Ugly Duck and Jay Park are wearing elaborate body and face paint. It reminds me of Halloween but with swag. Also, even though Jay Park has a skull painted on one-half of his face, instead of being frightening, he looks charismatic and intimidating.

In the music video, the snippets of choreography danced by Jay Park, and the choreography by the female dance crew, Purplow are impressive. Jay Park is a multi-talented man – he is good at singing, rapping and dancing as well. I wish there was a choreography version of the song, because I would love to see the whole dance that Jay Park and the crew, Prepix performs. But from the short and intermittent snippets seen, the dance moves are powerful and on-point. Purplow’s dance is sexy and matches the song well. There are also other various dancing crews, a b-boy group, krumping crew, and contortionist group.

Unfortunately, I think I like the music video more than I liked the song. In essence, this song is about Jay Park and Ugly Duck bragging about the importance of their presence or the presence of their crew and label AOMG at any party. It’s a straightforward song that doesn’t really have a profound meaning. That’s probably why it’s a good song to just jam to. Other things I appreciated about the visuals was the life-size metallic playing cards with their names that were burning in the background of one set. One of the coolest parts was when one of the dancers was doing tricks with burning poles and then tumbling in the air with them. I had to repeat that part a few times – it looked amazing. The visuals are just top-notch and creative, producing a cinematic quality to the music video. The video’s theme seems to combine a wild [human] circus and a crazy party at a club. Basically, the whole music video emphasizes that an AOMG party is where you want to be at – because there are pretty girls dancing sexily, live entertainment, tricks, dance competitions, body paint, fire, and flashing lights, etc.

Overall, the song lyrics are nothing complex – the whole meaning of the song is captured in the title. However, the hardcore instrumental and well-designed aesthetics of this music video make it a perfect song to enjoy visually as well as turn up to for the summer.

The music video currently has over 800,000 views. It is also available for download worldwide on iTunes.