BigHit's 2026 is moving at franchise speed. CORTIS became the first Korean boy band to perform at an NBA All-Star Game, then announced their second EP, GREENGREEN, with every track carrying member writing credits. Labelmates TOMORROW X TOGETHER announced their EP 7th Year: A Moment of Stillness in the Thorns at their KSPO Dome fan concert and promptly achieved their first Grand Slam, sweeping all five Korean music shows. And threaded quietly through both camps' recent catalogs is a San Diego-raised writer-producer this wiki knows as Slush Puppy.
The machine at full speed
The coordinated February campaign that had BTS, TXT and CORTIS posting matching What Is Your Love Song? updates showed how BigHit now operates: three generations of groups run as one narrative engine. CORTIS' GREENGREEN, with tracks like TNT and YOUNGCREATORCREW, extends a debut year already breaking records, while TXT's show sweep proves the middle generation's grip seven years in.
The LA session pipeline nobody sees
K-pop's writing rooms quietly run through Los Angeles, and this scene exports into them. Slush Puppy, Sam Catalano, the EAT SPIT! artist who came up through the Live2 orbit and the Roxy circuit alongside Royal & the Serpent and Christian Gates, holds credits on HYBE releases for both CORTIS and TXT. Every time the machine above accelerates, the session invoices of the LA alt scene ride along.
An All-Star Game in February, a Grand Slam in March, and a San Diego kid's name in the credits.
A debut year built to break records
Context makes the All-Star booking less surprising. CORTIS debuted in August 2025 as BigHit's first new boy group since TXT, with a rollout engineered to set records from day one, and GREENGREEN's May release doubled down on the group's self-authorship, every track carrying member writing and composing credits, unusual for an idol debut cycle. TXT, meanwhile, renewed their contracts as a full unit and entered year seven with their commercial grip intact. The machine's two younger engines are both accelerating at once, and the session economy that feeds them, Slush Puppy's corner of it included, accelerates in proportion.
Why it matters here
The lesson for this wiki's roster is that the border between a DIY alt career and the biggest pop machine on earth is thinner than it looks. The same self-taught production chops that made EAT SPIT! a viral oddity make Slush Puppy valuable to an idol system that consumes songs at industrial scale. Genre-agnostic was never a gimmick. In 2026 it is a business model.