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Jennie from K-pop girl group BLACKPINK teased a snippet of her new song ‘Like Jennie’ on Monday, leading to immediate comparisons with the ‘Rani’ theme from Bollywood star Alia Bhatt’s Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani. The song is the second track on Jennie’s highly-anticipated debut album, Ruby, scheduled to be released on Friday.

Social media was flooded with comparisons to the ‘Rani’ theme, highlighting the similarities, such as the chorus chanting “Rani” and “Jennie”.

“All I hear is plagiarism,” said one user in reply to a post on Jennie’s announcement.

People compared the two songs, theorising that Jennie “ran out of ideas”.

BLACKPINK fans — referred to as Blinks — rushed to her defence by claiming it’s not stealing if Jennie credits the original creators. However, she hasn’t credited anyone in the snippet.

Other fans joked about the irony of Jennie allegedly stealing from Pritam, a Bollywood singer who has been called out many times for copying music from others.

Jennie titled her first solo album Ruby after her middle name and it hints at the difficulty she faced in establishing a musical identity outside of Blackpink, where she’s considered the ‘face’ of the band, as well as its lead singer.

BLACKPINK was the first K-pop girl group to play at Coachella and to reach 1 billion YouTube views, according to Vogue. It is also the first girl group from any country to feature on Forbes Asia’s 30 Under 30 list.

“I struggled a lot in the beginning,” Jennie said in an interview with Billboard. “A few months, I would say, was just me throwing myself out there, walking into rooms filled with new people. I just had to keep knocking on the door, like, ‘Is this it?’, ‘Is this it?’”

Earlier in 2020, the group faced backlash after releasing a music video for its song ‘How You Like That’ featuring the Hindu god Ganesha on the floor near a bejewelled Aladdin lamp.

That glimpse, although lasting mere seconds, was enough for sharp-eyed K-pop fans to accuse the group of cultural appropriation.