BLINGY

The record

BLINGY is NCT 127’s seventh full-length album, released on 24 August 2026. It carries nine tracks and the title track is ‘Blingy’. SM Entertainment’s album introduction on Bugs says the record moves across rock, pop and indie pop with hip-hop at its centre, and calls the title track “a hip-hop number in which a distorted synth sound, a heavy drum beat and a chanting chorus meet”. The same text says Taeyong took part in making the choreography himself. The Korea Herald reported from a press conference at Lotte World Tower the day before release, where the album was described as the group’s first full-length record in about two years since WALK in July 2024, with five members leading promotions and seven contributing to the album.

Reviews

Idology (아이돌로지) carried Kwibi’s short piece in ‘Weekly’, its round-up of new releases from the fourth week of August 2026. He opened by reaching back to the previous record’s title song: “It is the title track of the previous album, but there seems to be no better way of describing this one than the lyrics of ‘Walk’.”

NME’s Carmen Chin published her review on the day of release. “Where past records leaned into R&B, the boyband step decisively toward hip-hop on ‘Blingy’,” she wrote, and of the title song: “A frenetic blend of dubstep with distorted synths, hard-hitting drums and chanted hooks, title track ‘Blingy’ is a feisty showcase that NCT 127 understand the larger-than-life world they’ve created and how to build upon it.”

Among the tracks

‘Piñata’ is the song both pieces stop at. Kwibi wrote that “the wildness of ‘Piñata’ alone — which throws away the close vocal ensemble and strikes the members’ different vocal tunings against one another like flints — is enough to make the case for NCT 127 here and now”. Chin wrote of the same song that “‘Piñata’, a buzzy cocktail of rock and hip-hop is brimming with the energy of a band with something to prove – it’s all snarl and swagger through electric guitar riffs and breakbeat drums”.

Chin picks out ‘IKR’ and ‘Legacy’ next. “This album’s experiments yield the best results on ‘IKR’ and ‘Legacy’,” she wrote. “‘Legacy’, on the other hand, is the boyband’s maximalist nature firing on all cylinders. It’s a dauntless, multidimensional soundscape packed with layers of rap, rhythmic vocal harmonies and a warped bass.” The album introduction describes ‘Legacy’ as a song about colouring Seoul with positive energy, and ‘Piñata’ as one that carries the message of bursting a stage open like a festival, in the bold manner of rock hip-hop. The same text sorts the rest as the old-school hip-hop of ‘Step Up’, the arcade synths of ‘IKR’, the indie pop of ‘Getaway’ and the hyper-trap hip-hop of ‘Day After Day’.

Numbers

The Korea Herald reported that the album arrived on the tenth anniversary of a group that debuted in July 2016. The same outlet reported that ‘127 Million Miles’ is the album’s only track featuring all seven members, and that it was recorded before their military service began. Of the record as a whole Chin wrote: “‘Blingy’ is proof that NCT 127 remain clear-eyed about who they are.”