Music / RM

You are my pain, divine, divine...

I wanna be a human
'Fore I do some art
It's a cruel world
But there's gon' be my part
'Cause true beauty is a true sadness
Now you could feel my madness

— "Yun"

Kim Nam-joon (born September 12, 1994), known professionally as RM (formerly Rap Monster), is a South Korean rapper best known for being the leader and one of the main songwriters in the K-pop boy band BTS.

RM is known to use poetry as a major influence on his songwriting. As a child, Namjoon often wrote poems in school and won awards for his writing. He also became interested in hip-hop as a fifth-grader and would become involved in Korea’s underground hip-hop scene as a teenager. In 2010, after signing with the then-obscure Bighit Entertainment label, he joined a new rap group that would ultimately debut as BTS in 2013.

Along with fellow BTS rappers j-hope and Suga, RM released solo mixtapes as side projects. His 2015 self-titled debut mixtape made him the first member to get a solo release, predating the members having solos on group albums starting with Wings the following year. He made his official solo debut with the 2022 album Indigo. His solo work is primarily hip-hop mixed with pop and R&B.

RM enlisted in the military in December 2023 alongside the rest of the BTS members. His second official solo album, Right Place, Wrong Person, was released in May 2024, five months into his service.

Solo discography:

Studio Albums

• 2022 - Indigo
• 2024 - Right Place, Wrong Person

Mixtapes

• 2015 - RM (as Rap Monster)
• 2018 - mono.

Soundtrack Appearances

• "Fantastic" (as Rap Monster) (featuring Mandy Ventrice) (Fantastic Four (2015))

Remixes

• Fall Out Boy - "Champion (Remix)" (2017)
• Lil Nas X - "Seoul Town Road" ("Old Town Road" remix)" (2019)

Fuck the tropesetter:

• Album Intro Track: Right Place, Wrong Person starts with "Right People, Wrong Place", a quasi-instrumental electronic track with a looped Title Drop mostly in the background and some lyrics at the end.
• Anaphora: Appears in a lot of songs, such as "Yun".
  What is it with the techniques?
  What is it with the skills?
  What is it with all the words?
  In your lyrics that you can't feel?
• Animated Music Video: "Forever Rain" has a 2D-animated video using only black and white for artistic purposes.
• Call-Back:
  • "All Day" references two BTS songs in the same line.
    "We got Dynamite in our DNA"
  • The end of "Hectic" refers back to "Seoul" and his love-hate relationship with the city.
    "We still love and hate this city, yeah"
• Changed for the Video: The video version of "Come Back To Me" is a bit longer than the radio edit but still has a shorter outro than the full version.
• Concept Album: Right Place, Wrong Person has a Central Theme of the paradox of wanting to explore new territories yet being content with living in the present.
• Concept Video: "Come Back To Me" has him wandering through a series of rooms putting him in different situations. This includes him having a family, trying to escape from a psychotic girlfriend, and being in a giant crib and terrified of creepy doting parents.
• Cluster F-Bomb: His solo work contains a lot of hard swearing, most notably on "Do You" and "Monster", despite BTS being mostly clean.
  "R to the M I'm a mu-fuckin monster
  R to the M I'm a mu-fuckin monster"
• Creative Closing Credits: The "Lost!" music video's credits appear on papers, a computer, boxes, and a calendar.
• Darker and Edgier: ''Right Place, Wrong Person” is very noisy and trippy compared to anything else that anyone from BTS has done.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: His first mixtape is more Hardcore Hip-Hop than the Pop Rap of subsequent releases. It also has some boastful raps, whereas later releases have more introspective lyrical themes.
• Epic Rocking: The full version of "Come Back To Me" (6:29) is a rarity in the Korean music scene.
• Face on the Cover:
  • The self-titled mixtape has a black-and-white photo of RM with black covering one side of his face.
  • Indigo has him sitting with his back against the wall in a room with an abstract painting and a stool with a stack of jeans.
  • It's easy to miss him at first on the "Come Back To Me" single, as he is just one of many faces. This also applies to other Right Place, Wrong Person concept photos, including the album cover proper, which has him standing on the far right in a group of nine.
• Gray Rain of Depression: The narrator in "Forever Rain" wants this to happen at all times so no one would stare at him when he’s down.
• Heavy Meta: The RM mixtape reflects about the dilemma of being both a rapper and an idol, and the difficulties and criticism RM faced after becoming the latter.
• Journey to the Center of the Mind: The "Lost!" music video is set in Namjoon's brain, where he appears as a reluctant guest on a variety show. Mind Screw ensues.
• Large Ham: Not to the extent of the other BTS rappers (except on the first mixtape), but he still has moments in the authoritative delivery of his raps.
• Lighter and Softer: mono. is mostly more reserved than the Self-Titled Album and has virtually no swearing.
• Limited Lyrics Song: The second verse and second pre-chorus in "Come Back To Me" are merely the second halves of their respective firsts. After the second post-chorus is a two-minute loop of "You are my pain, divine, divine"
• Location Song: "Seoul" is about his love-hate relationship with the eponymous city, which is his home city.
• Longest Song Goes Last: Right Place, Wrong Person ends with "Come Back To Me" (6:29).
• Lucky Charms Title: Right Place, Wrong Person has "? (Interlude)" and "ㅠㅠ (Credit Roll)".
• Minimalist Cast: He is the only person on screen in the "Wild Flower" video, not counting the shadowy CGI crowd in the climax.
• Minimalistic Cover Art: The mono. mixtape is made to resemble scribbles on a piece of paper.
• Miniscule Rocking: "Badbye" (1:52), "Change Pt.2" (1:54), "Right People, Wrong Place" (1:57), "? (Interlude)" (1:53), and "ㅠㅠ (Credit Roll)" (1:14).
• Motor Mouth: Mainly on the first mixtape, with tracks like "Joke" and "Rush".
• Multilingual Song: With some exceptions here and there, his solo songs tend to have a more-or-less equal balance of Korean and English lyrics. It helps that he is bilingual and, therefore, can more easily avoid the Gratuitous English that is omnipresent in K-pop. "Domodachi" also has a bit of Japanese in it.
• Ode to Youth: He brings up and reflects on his youth a lot in his songs. "Wild Flower" has him trying to reminisce on his aspirations from when he was young, but he no longer remembers what, exactly, he wanted as he started to experience the dark side of fame.
  "I yearned for the flames
  I yearned for a beautiful fall
  Even before the start, I imagined
  An end where I could applaud and smile
  That's what I wished for
  When everything I believed in grew distant
  When all this fame turned into shackles
  Please take my desire away from me"
  (English translation)
• Recycled Title: "Lost!" shares its name with "Lost" from Wings (BTS Album). Downplayed in that RM co-wrote but did not perform on the BTS song (a vocal-line subunit song).
• R-Rated Opening: The first line on Yun, the first song on Indigo, starts with swearing to make it clear that his solo work is edgier than his then-recent hits with BTS (particularly "Dynamite" and "Butter").
  "Fuck the trendsetter."
• Scenery Porn: The "Wildflower" music video has some scenes of him in a meadow and on a flowery hill surrounded by other hills at sunset.
• Self-Titled Album: The RM mixtape is a retroactive example. He was going by Rap Monster at the time but changed his name to RM two years later.
• Songs of Solace: Many songs, such as "Closer":
  "I keep you right next to me
  Only just in my dream
  I see you in red, blue, green
  Don't wake me up from sleep
  I think I'm losin' my grip
  Everything off the beam
  Why you showed up in my life
  Like this? So sudden, oh God no"
• Solo Side Project: The RM and mono. mixtapes consist of solo songs he recorded during his spare time while working on music with BTS.
• Special Guest: All but two songs on Indigo have guests. With some exceptions (most notably Anderson .Paak), the guests tend to be more obscure in the West.
• Stage Names: Kim Nam-joon was known professionally as Rap Monster until he officially shortened his stage name to RM in 2017.
• Surprisingly Gentle Song: Right Place, Wrong Person is his most experimental and noisy album, but "Heaven" and "Come Back to Me" are calmer and more melodic to an extent.
• Tick Tock Tune: The percussion-driven "Do You".
• Two-Faced: The RM mixtape cover has half his face covered in black tar.
• Video Full of Film Clips: "Fantastic", for Fantastic Four (2015).

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