aespa have unveiled two new versions of their latest single ‘Rich Man’ — one featuring avant-pop provocateur Sevdaliza, the other a full English edition aimed at their growing global audience. It’s an unusual move for a major SM Entertainment group, stepping outside the predictable realm of glossy pop collaborations and into something far more left-field.

Sevdaliza, Iranian-born and Dutch-raised, has built her name on music that resists easy categorisation. Her productions bend and twist through trip-hop, electronica and R&B, matched with visuals that flirt with the surreal. On ‘Rich Man’, her touch pushes the song into darker, sharper territory, amplifying its central theme of self-empowerment. For aespa, it’s easily one of their most unexpected partnerships yet — a collision between mainstream K-pop polish and the experimental edge of the underground.

The timing is telling. While Sevdaliza is gearing up to release her new album HEROINA on 31 October, aespa are celebrating another commercial triumph. Their sixth mini-album Rich Man notched over 1.1 million pre-orders, making it their seventh consecutive million-seller and further cementing KARINA, GISELLE, WINTER and NINGNING as one of K-pop’s most reliable global chart forces.

The track itself is already a powerhouse. With its gritty guitar riff and surging energy, ‘Rich Man’ has racked up more than 26 million views on YouTube in under a week. The new versions open up fresh layers: Sevdaliza’s remix heightens the drama, while the English take underlines aespa’s continued ambition to reach beyond Korea’s borders.

What makes this collaboration stand out, though, is how it rewrites the usual playbook. Most idol–Western artist team-ups are about streaming scale and obvious star power. aespa’s choice of Sevdaliza feels riskier, more culturally curious. It pulls together two audiences that rarely overlap — fans of experimental, boundary-pushing pop and the global K-pop faithful — into the same space. In doing so, aespa show they’re willing to expand their world on their own terms.

That tension between mainstream dominance and conceptual ambition has always been part of aespa’s identity. Teaming with Sevdaliza, who has spent her career reshaping pop’s fringes, feels less like a marketing move and more like a statement of intent. aespa aren’t just chasing numbers; they’re looking to plant themselves in cultural conversations that stretch beyond K-pop.

In the wider landscape, it’s one of the most surprising crossovers of recent years. If most collaborations are about sheer scale, this one is about perspective — bringing two different creative languages into dialogue. The result doesn’t just remix a song; it gestures toward new possibilities for how K-pop can intersect with the global avant-garde.