Whether they do it on purpose or due to poor business tactics, here's how YG is to blame for the downfall of every girl group that has ever debuted under the agency.

One would argue that YG started to mismanage girl groups from when 2NE1 or Blackpink debuted, since their mistreatment is pretty documented and spoken about.

However, the truth is that the company's pattern of treating their female artists horribly starts with YG's first girl group.

Sweetie, known as the first girl group under the company, made their debut 2002 after preparing and training for four years.

The group had three members, Ahn Nayoung, Lee Eunju, and Song Mihyun.

They released their first and last album, Sweetie, in April of 2002 with the song I'll Be There serving as the title track.

In normal circumstances, Sweetie could have survived for a few more years had the company played its cards right.

But around two years after they started, Young Hyunsuk himself posted a message on the company website announcing that Sweetie's second album had been cancelled and that the group had disbanded.

As for the reason for the sudden end of the group, Young Hyunsuk explained that Nayoung had moved to the US and that Mihyun was having troubles with her own family.

Sounds like normal circumstances that would lead to the group to its end, but as it always happens with YG groups, there's more to the story than meets the eye.

Eunju, one of the members, was known to the public before she became a member of Sweetie as she was the younger sister of Sechs Kies' Lee Jaejin.

When Jaejin was giving a tour of his house for a variety show, Eunju was briefly caught by the camera as she was washing the dishes.

Even though Eunju was only on camera for a few moments, she still managed to catch Young Hyunsuk's attention.

Then, in 1997, Eunju joined YG Entertainment as a trainee, which only made Young Hyunsuk's feelings towards her grow.

After three years of having a crush on her, he confessed his feelings to her.

The two didn't start dating until after Sweetie disbanded in 2004, which is one of the reasons the group stopped promoting in the first place.

Young Hyunsuk himself admitted that Sweetie's lack of promotions wasn't because he was thinking about the situation in a business sense.

In fact, a cast member suggested that he ignored the group on purpose because he didn't want the girl he was interested in to be too successful and popular, and Young Hyunsuk agreed.

The two have been married for nearly 15 years and have two children together.

However, Sweetie's disbandment showed that YG really didn't care about the business side of things as long as it served his personal interests.

After Sweetie, YG Entertainment debuted Big Mama, whose entire concept was that they were vocal powerhouses despite not being conventionally attractive.

While it's not known why the group disbanded, it's said that they got neglected by the company due to their visuals.

This was never confirmed though, so it remains just speculation.

But then came 2NE1 and things got complicated.

If we were to get into the full extent of their mistreatment by the company, we would have to make a whole video about it, so let's just discuss the basics.

It seems like YG was obsessed with coming off as a company that didn't care much about the looks of their idols as they were focusing more on their talents.

They tried it with Big Mama, and when the group disbanded, they attempted the same strategy with 2NE1.

They were marketed as this insanely talented group with members who weren't necessarily conventionally attractive.

If that wasn't enough, the members were constantly called ugly by Young Hyunsuk himself.

In 2012, CL recalled a time when YG came to a concert rehearsal.

As CL said, the members didn't usually put any makeup on when they were rehearsing since they were constantly moving and sweating.

She said, He looked from afar into the screen and said, They are really ugly in front of all the staff.

I was a bit disappointed.

CL also revealed that she was encouraged by the CEO to get plastic surgery before she debuted, but she had refused because she liked how she looked.

Getting hate comments from random strangers is not uncommon in K-pop, but getting insulted occasionally by the company's CEO really ruined the members' self-esteem.

Minji herself said that her appearance was insulted on multiple occasions by Young Hyunsuk.

She explained that it was tough for her when she was young because she only saw Korean comments criticizing her appearance, even though she had a supportive international fan base that loved her visuals.

Minji said, We were the ugly group.

I didn't know how to process that.

It was hard.

I tried to brush it off like it was no big deal, but I couldn't.

In addition to all that, the group and the members had limited releases during the time they were artists under YG.

In all seven years that they were together, they only released two full albums.

If you were to ask the members, they would have released a lot more, but a lot of their music ended up getting scrapped for whatever reason.

For example, the group planned to release an English album produced by Will.i.am from Black Eyed Peas.

Although there were announcements, the album never ended up coming out.

You can catch snippets of some songs in the episodes of 21TV showing them recording with Will.i.am in London and Los Angeles.

It's believed that Take the World On is one of the songs that was supposed to be on the album, and Will.i.am's Gettin' Dumb featuring the group from his 2013 album might be a song repurposed from the unreleased album.

To this day, we still don't know the reason why the release of the album was cancelled.

There were some rumors that suggested Teddy wasn't happy with how the making of the album was going, but it's not confirmed.

It was also said that at the time, Young Hyunsuk decided to scrap the album because he wanted the group to focus on their Korean and Japanese audiences, but again, nobody knows what happened exactly.

There's talk about another album that was supposed to be called Love.

If you're a fan of the group, you might remember the time when they released a lot of singles with the word love in it, like Falling In Love, Do You Love Me, and I Love You.

It was suspected that the releases were supposed to be for a mini album that would come out after Crush and be titled Love, but it never came out.

It's also said that Blackpink's songs As If It's Your Last and Playing With Fire were supposed to be on the album, which is an interesting story.

As If It's Your Last was originally going to be called Blame It On Your Love, and as for Playing With Fire, one of the lyrics in 2NE1's song Missing You literally says that love is like playing with fire.

It's widely known that these songs were originally recorded by 2NE1 and then given to Blackpink, but these aren't the only ones.

In fact, the 2NE1 members themselves confirmed that they recorded a lot of songs throughout the years, but instead of letting them release these songs, the company gave them to Blackpink and other YG artists.

The group were also neglected and mistreated when it came to solo releases, especially Minji, who never got one.

Even the most quote-unquote favored member of the group CL didn't get treated properly by the company.

In 2018, CL performed at the PyeongChang Winter Olympics closing ceremony with little help from YG Entertainment.

She had to do her own makeup and outfit adjustments, and her backup dancers had to find hairstylists online for their hairstyles.

Not only that, but even though she recorded over 200 songs during the three years she was in the US, only Lifted was released.

CL also blamed YG publicly for blocking her album release and criticized Yang Hyunsook multiple times for ignoring her messages.

The peak of the company's mistreatment towards the members was during Park Bom's scandal.

If you don't know, in 2014, Bom faced a shocking scandal as she was accused of bringing in illegal substances mixed with gummy bear candies from the US to Korea.

Even though she was just taking prescription medicine, she was treated as she was a full-on criminal by the media and the police.

The media made up lies and stories about her, and since the public are hungry for drama, they ate everything up and attacked Bom from all sides.

Instead of defending her, YG Entertainment stayed silent and let her deal with everything.

It's said that Hyunsook refused to acknowledge Park Bom and saw her as a business failure despite the fact that the situation wasn't really fair towards her she got the medicine prescribed in the US.

When the group finally came to an end, the members weren't notified by the company, but instead found out from others and through the media.

CL, Bom, and Dara learned about 2NE1 disbanding from news articles, with CL saying that her phone blew up as she was having Thanksgiving dinner.

Minji also found out through the media even though she had already left YG Entertainment and 2NE1 before the disbandment occurred. 2NE1 were arguably one of the biggest girl groups in the industry, but that didn't matter to YG Entertainment as they couldn't even tell them the sad news themselves.

It's devastating to think how the members must have been feeling at the time.

You would think that the company would change their ways with Blackpink.

It seemed like the company favored them from the beginning since they were basically marketed as a prettier version of 2NE1.

The group was supposed to debut in 2014 under the name PinkPunk and they had even posted Jennie's teasers to hype everyone up.

However, their debut kept getting pushed, which was very hard on the members.

Five of the trainees that were supposed to debut left in the meantime, leaving the current lineup of the members to debut in 2016 with Boombayah.

Their debut was a mess on its own.

First of all, they were one of the very few artists under YG to debut with a single.

The single itself was very poorly promoted, had low quality teasers, and as for variety, they didn't go on any shows until the Playing With Fire era.

Seeing the success they had at the very start, YG promised the group would have eight music videos by the end of the year.

However, they only released their eighth video in 2020 with How You Like That four years later than promised.

The group also took unnecessary breaks.

Between Square One and the following comeback As If It's Your Last, the group took a seven-month hiatus.

This was before they even had their first anniversary.

It came to a point that the members were genuinely worried whether their releases would do well.

When it came to Blackpink, the company also had a pattern of promising things and then never following up on it.

In addition to the music videos, they also hinted towards the release of Square Three, which never happened.

They also confirmed a comeback in January of 2018 with YG boldly claiming that it made no sense for a group like Blackpink to release only one song in 2017 as if they weren't in charge of everything.

When Square Up was finally announced, the teasers were quite underwhelming.

The comeback was hurried and the company pushed the girls to work excessively, with Rosé not getting any sleep and Jennie and Jisoo practicing in the training room until 2 a.m. on the day of the comeback.

The solo releases of the members weren't handled any better.

First of all, it seemed strange for the members to be given solos this early on, especially since the group itself didn't have many comebacks.

However, the promotions for Jennie's solo, lazily named Solo, were minimal and she received a lot of hate for being the first member to get a solo release.

YG had also promised solos for the other members in the same year, but it never happened and it took them many years to release everyone's solo work.

In general, the time between comebacks kept getting longer and promotions shorter.

Their first full album came out four years after debut, while other groups like Big Bang, Treasure, and iKon released albums much sooner.

It really showed that the company was holding them back since after leaving, all members have released songs and collabs, have taken parts in variety shows, and taken up roles in dramas and movies.

If that's how they were treating their most successful artists, what hope is there for their other groups that don't hold up to their standards?

This brings us to YG's latest group, Baby Monster.

Despite being talented and full of potential, the members were doomed ever since their debut.

Not only was young Hyunsuk trying to restore his image by strongly associating himself with the group, but he never gave them a chance to shine as a group on their own, separate from the shadow of their seniors.

Once they released Batter Up, there were accusations that the company was trying to replicate Blackpink's song formula and structure, which was true.

In addition to all this, there were also issues with Ahyeon, which YG handled so horribly that people genuinely thought she had left the group altogether.

Who could blame them?

After all, her hiatus was announced shortly before Baby Monster debuted.

The song flopped horribly, especially for a group that was under one of the big three companies and wasn't promoted anywhere, but since they hadn't released anything with Ahyeon, people held out hope that there was still chance for Baby Monster to turn their luck around and get rid of the Blackpink's juniors label.

When the group officially released their first mini album, Baby Monster, the title track, Sheesh, sounded like yet another song that was rejected by Blackpink in 2018 and was left in the vault since then.

It did showcase the members' talents a bit more than Batter Up, but once again, failed to give them an identity of their own, which is what they desperately need.

With so many girl groups debuting during this time, having Baby Monster replicate a decades-old formula is only putting them up for failure.

Since Sheesh is doing a lot better than Batter Up, the company and their fans are trying to convince everyone that this was their real debut song, but unless they change everything about their internal structure, they won't see any of their groups have any success.

As an employee of the company put it best, the higher-ups at the company have lost touch and won't even try to follow market trends, which makes all of their releases sound outdated.

We just feel bad for the girls who have worked so hard to get the chance to debut and are now being treated as an afterthought by the company.