⇀ THEIR HISTORY
EMPIRE ● The One Year Plan ● RESTARTING ●READ UPDATE :)
Empire doesn't fit into the category of the "traditional Korean girl group".
The traditional Korean girl group would be handpicked individually from their company
and would have to perform already written songs whether it reached their taste or not.
That wasn't the case with Empire...
Let's rewind back to the year of 2011.
Deciding to take their future into their own hands,
trainees, The Partner & The Add-on, set their sights on creating their very own girl group.
The Partner & The Add-on will be known as the founding members of Empire,
Because it was just the two of them and without the help of the company, who by the way had no idea of this,
all preparations plus finding members was just left to these two.
Even with training that they still attended to, the duo was able to fit Empire into the schedule.
Once everything was finalized, the two began to look for the third member of Empire, which they found in November that year.
I introduce you to Ahn Jina
a confident personality with a mix of spoiled in there but fortunately her talent made up for it.
Even with three members, Empire mostly focused on their dancing as the founding members wanted Empire to be memorable
for their synchronized dancing.
Having The Cut-off within in the group was very exciting for the three.
Not only did Empire have a rapper, two skilled dancers, but now a main vocalist.
Because of this, Empire was starting to look like a solid group.
Now the girls could have had stopped there seeing as they had all the components of a girl group
but it soon dawned on them that there was already a four member girl group existing under JYP, Miss A.
With not much choice, they continued in search of members.
By this time, some trainees started to question what they were doing.
Even though 'creating a group' wasn't listed as one of their don'ts on their trainee contracts,
Empire didn't want to risk getting in trouble with the company so they held off recruiting more members until rumors started to calm down.
Until then, the four decided to give everyone official positions. The Add-on being the Main Rapper & Producer
The Partner as the Main Dancer & Choreographer,, The Cut-off being the Main Vocalist and finally Jina as the Lead Dancer & self entitled Visual.
Empire was no longer a secret. Once the group started to become larger, saying that they were just a large
group of friends wasn't working anymore. Especially after members had to be kicked out of the group, there was no keeping them silent.
But that was okay.
Now that Empire was out in the open, finding trainees that had an interest in the group was easier but Empire
wasn't in need for any more members. By 2013 Empire had 9 members but the 9th girl was kicked out because she no longer fit the Empire image
So now Empire was a strong 8 member girl group...without an leader.
Finally deciding that it was time for a true leader, Jina thought she would be the best candidate.
With that being said, Jina was the one that went out of her way to make sure she got on everyone’s good side and it worked.
When she was appointed leader, however, she started to take her position a bit too seriously.
She started to schedule practice times that conflicted with the members’ normal training schedules, instead of the company over working the girls it was Jina,
and just having a poor attitude all together. She was like the Regina George of Empire. Jina felt that because she was leader
that she was higher up above everyone but we all know she wasn’t. Even though it has crossed the minds of the girls of Empire (at some point) to take the
position away from her, some would argue that she was doing good for the group.
Taking notice into the girls, J.Y Park decided to give the girls a chance of debuting. And because he believed in
their hard work, he allowed for the girls to call all the shots. The music, lyrics, and choreography was all done by them and by 2014 Empire
was ready to debut with Deepened. Until this day, girls of Empire have no idea what the reason was for the cancelation of their debut.
One minute the company was excited for them then next they were being dismissed.
Because now they are a signed group under JYP, they didn't have to go back to training. Even if they couldn't debut officially yet, they wanted to be ready.
Dance routines were created, songs had to be memorized, and occasionally they would get gigs to perform at events.
Everything started to change once J.Y Park started to ask each of them to participate on shows. Sadly, the only member
that wasn't asked to be on any shows was Jina. At this point she felt a bit betrayed but mostly by The Partner & The Add-on.
Jina couldn’t believe they were throwing away all their hard work that they put into their own group.
So by 2015, Jina said goodbye to the group and focused on her training.
Now we go to the present.
Empire is now a seven member girl group that J.Y Park just can't wait to debut.
The company has put some thought into how they want to showcase the girls since 2015
and can't wait to put the second part into effect.
Read the journey of how these 7 (maybe 8 who knows *wink**wink*) blossom into stars they were distended to be.
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