The five members of 4Minute would rather go head-to-head with two of K-pop's biggest groups, 2NE1 and Girls' Generation, both with new albums in recent weeks, than get in the way of the promotion for a fellow Cube Entertainment artist G.NA.

In an interview Friday with the Korean publication Star Today, 4Minute rapper Kim Hyuna explained the theory behind the release date of her group's new album "4Minute World."

"I think one thing we did pay attention to was our timing," she said.

"Truthfully, 'Whatcha Doin' Today?' was a song we started working on a long time ago. That was a time when we could work slowly on our album, but if we delayed it any more, our agency friend G.NA would have a very hard time, as she's anticipating a comeback soon.  We couldn't delay any longer.  We had to just prepare to launch."

But according to HyunA's bandmate Heo Gayoon, 4Minute is more than up for the challenge of competing with 2NE1 and Girls' Generation for album sales.

"We have confidence," Gayoon said.

"We are always overflowing with confidence.  Even this time, we heard a lot about Girls' Generation and 2NE1, but our songs give off different vibes and our outfits are also different, so I don't actually get the sense that we're competing."

4Minute vocalist Kwon Sohyun even likes the idea of the three girl groups competing for K-pop supremacy.

"If you watch movies, there's something like a man's world," she said. "As there is a feeling of a girl group battle this time, that kind of feeling is exciting to me."

Sohyun also pointed out that in the past, even when 4Minute attempted to avoid conflicts with other major artists' album releases, they couldn't be avoided.

"Last year and even the year before that, we overlapped with many bigger acts like Psy, Cho Yong Pil and Lee Hyori," she said. 

"It turned out that we were competing with them whether we tried to avoid it or not."