In the Morning

"In the morning" — stylized as "마.피.아." in the Korean title, a wordplay on "Mafia in the morning" — is ITZY at their most rhythmically hostile. The beat is skeletal: a sparse trap skeleton, a bass that pulses rather than melodies, whistling synth accents, and long stretches where the arrangement drops to almost nothing so a rap can sit exposed. The hook is chanted rather than sung, and it repeats past the point of comfort, which is the design. The concept borrows the party game Mafia: someone in this room is lying, someone is hunting, and the narrator claims both roles — I'm the one who's after you, you didn't notice. Ryujin and Yeji handle the rap sections with a flat, clipped menace that avoids the usual K-pop rap theatricality, Lia's cleaner tone provides brief melodic relief in the pre-chorus, and Chaeryeong and Yuna deliver lines with a taunting upward lilt. Coming out of the "teen crush" era ITZY helped define, this pushed further into something colder and less approachable than "Wannabe" or "Not Shy." It's built for choreography and for volume — a song best used as fuel, in a mirror, before going somewhere you intend to be looked at.