Lisa, already a Coachella headliner in Blackpink, just demolished the Sahara Tent as a solo star

To think that Mike White didn’t know who Lisa was and had reservations about casting her.

The “White Lotus” creator might not have been a Blink right out of the gate, but if he happened to tune into the Sahara tent live stream on Friday night, he’d have seen one of his supporting cast come into solo stardom with full, pyrotechnic force.

“For the White Lotus fans, you might be surprised to see Mook onstage,”Lisa said, laughing at the whiplash between her recent roles. “This is her when she’s not working.”

Blackpink fans saw her on this stage in 2019 and the main stage as recently as 2023, but this is a newly assured Lisa blowing through her own lane. (She did not allow photographers to shoot this performance). Emerging on a monolithic pillar to “Thunder,” Lisa wore a bodysuit rippling with metal claws and singing some of the most virtuosic lead lines and, veering into the heaving trap of “FXCK Up the World,”double time rapping I’ve heard from a K-pop act at Coachella. Of course she’s great at this, but in this new setting, you could really, definitively hear it.

It’s a stock standard solo star move to emerge from a popular group with an edgier set of influences. But when she played the early solo cut “Money” too, a leering rap banger, she showed she’s always had this in her. This set was Blackpink shorn of any typical K-Pop melodic tricks and pivots. These songs have room to breathe, eeriness to spare and new muscle to kick with.

There were tender moments too to show her range like the throwback R&B of “When I’m With You.” And she showed she’s a close study of au courant Gen Z retro hits, slipping into the breezy disco of “Moonlit Floor,” her kinda-cover of Sixpence None The Richer. “Elastigirl” riffed off Ciara’s “Oh,” as did “Rockstar” for M.I.A.’s “Bad Girls,” allusive moves that might be hack if she wasn’t so expert at it. The artfully racy dancing in the latter was enough the leave the crowd howling.

The real smoker was her disco masterstroke “Born Again,” or maybe the drum-heaving “Lifestyle.” But the lighters up, lost-love ballad of “Dream “ was emblematic. In the lyrics she called back to the year of her band’s debut here, maybe the last good year before the world fell apart. K-pop moves so fast that six years ago feels like a lifetime, but Lisa has already evolved enough to have earned quick a look back. Mook would have loved to see it.