Blackpink’s Jennie Signs Solo Deal With Columbia Records

Singer, actor and Blackpink member Jennie Kim has signed as a solo artist with Columbia Records in partnership with her record label and entertainment company Oddatalier and will release her new solo single in October, the company announced on Sunday.

Jennie first emerged in 2016 as a member of Blackpink, the highest-charing female Korean act on the Billboard charts and the only artist from the country to headline Coachella. On her own, last year she teamed up with the Weeknd and Lily-Rose Depp on the song “One of the Girls,” and appeared with the two in the controversial HBO series “The Idol.”

Kim was born in Korea, but moved to and studied in Auckland, New Zealand when she was 10, for five years before returning to Korea and joining the entertainment powerhouse YG’s talent academy. Blackpink formed in 2016 and has gone on to become the first music group and Korean female act to have five music videos accumulate one billion views each on YouTube and are the most-followed girl group on Spotify.

in “The Idol,” created by Sam Levinson, Kim acts under the stage name Jennie Ruby Jane and plays a backup singer and dancer to Lily-Rose Depp’s pop star who gets the opportunity to break out on her own.

She spoke with Dua Lipa about the experience on the BBC Sounds “Dua Lipa: At Your Service” podcast last year. “Acting was definitely one of the things that I’ve wanted to explore, but when I do something, when I decide to really go for it, I know I need to do it right,” Kim said. “And first of all, I wanted the new acting part of my life to be authentic, rather than just me trying to grab any opportunities that came to me – I really was being patient with with my first ever acting job. Which means when I was spending some time in LA last year, I actually got to meet Sam in person and I got to talk to him. And he talked me through the role that he wanted envisioned for me and everything – it really moved my heart.”