
'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
Kim Nam-joon (Hangul: 김남준 — born on September 12, 1994, in Seoul, South Korea), known professionally as RM (아르엠) and formerly known as Rap Monster (랩몬스터), is a South Korean rapper, singer, and producer best known for being the leader and one of the main songwriters in the K-pop boy band BTS.
Born in Sangdo-dong, Dongjak District, Seoul and raised in Ilsan District, Goyang since he was around five, RM is known to use poetry as a major influence on his songwriting, his work also contained philosophical undertones that were inspired by many books he read (and recommended to fans), some modern contemporary pieces of art he saw and shared on social media, and many genius wordplays that were often unnoticed by many. His remarkable skills gave him the title of Philosopher who raps by music critics. 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, but after the CEO of Bighit changed the group concept into an idol group, most of the original members left, save for RM, SUGA, and j-hope, who remained. After several years of Idol training, RM would ultimately debut as a member of BTS in June 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. A documentary about the making of his second solo album and his journey to search for his true self titled RM: Right People, Wrong Place was premiered at the Busan Internasional Film Festival and official release on global cinemas on December 5, 2024. His military service was completed in June 2025.
- 2022 - Indigo

- 2024 - Right Place, Wrong Person

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

Lead Singles
- "Awakening"
(2015) - "forever rain"
(2018) - "Wild Flower"
(featuring Youjeen) (2022) - "Still Life"
(featuring Anderson .Paak) (2022) - "Come back to me"
(2024) - "LOST!"
(2024)
Other Singles
- "Do You"
(2015) - "Joke"
(2015) - "Groin"
(2024) - "Domodachi"
(featuring Little Simz) (2024) - "ㅠㅠ (Credit Roll)"
(2024) - "Around the world in a day"
(featuring Moses Sumney) (2024)
Digital Singles
- "Bicycle
" (2021)
Solo Singles Credited as BTS
- "Intro: 2 Kool 4 Skool
" (Featuring DJ Friz) (2 Kool 4 Skool) (2013) - "Intro: O!RUL8,2?
" (O!R U L8,2?) (2013) - "Intro: Skool Luv Affair
" (Skool Luv Affair) (2014) - "Intro: What Am I To You
" (DARK&WILD) (2014) - "Reflection
" (Wings) (2016) - "Trivia 承: Love
" (Love Yourself: Answer) (2018) - "Intro: Persona
" (MAP OF THE SOUL : 7) (2020)
Soundtrack Appearances
- "Fantastic
" (as Rap Monster) (featuring Mandy Ventrice) (Fantastic Four (2015)) (2015) - "All Night
" (With SUGA and Juice WRLD) (BTS World Original Soundtrack Part.3) (2019)
Collaborations
- ''Perfect Christmas''
(with Jo Kwon, Lim Jeong-hee, Joohee and Jungkook) (2013) - ''P.D.D''
(with Warren G) (2015) - ''Change''
(with Wale) (2017) - "Stop The Rain"
(with Tablo) (2025)
Features
- Lim Jeong-hee - "Ashes"
(with Iron) (2010) - 2AM - "Love U, Hate U"
(with Supreme Boi and Iron) (credited as Bangtan Boyz) (2010) - Lee Hyun - "Bad Girl"
(with Jiyeon of GLAM and Iron) (credited as Bangtan Boyz) (2011) - Kan Mi Youn - "Because I'm a Foolish Woman"
(with Supreme Boi and Iron) (credited as Bangtan Boyz) (2011) - Lee Seung Gi - ''A Song Make to You Smile''
(with j-hope and Hareem) (2011) - MFBTY - ''Buckubucku''
(with EE and Dino-J) (2015) - Yankie - ''ProMeTheUs''
(with Dok 2, Juvie Train, Double K, Topbob, and Don Mills) (2015) - Primary - ''U''
(with Kwon Jin Ah) (2015) - Gaeko - ''Gajah''
(2017) - Drunken Tiger - ''Timeless''
(2018) - Younha - ''Winter Flower''
(2020) - Agust D - ''Strange''
(2020) - eAeon - ''Don't''
(2021) - Balming Tiger - ''SEXY NUKIM''
(2022) - So!YoOn! - ''Smoke Sprite''
(2023) - Colde - ''Don't ever say love me''
(2023) - Megan Thee Stallion - "Neva Play"
(2024)
Original Songs
- "Monterlude"
(sampled track "Interlude" from 2 Kool 4 Skool album) (2014) - "Unpack Your Bags"
(with DJ Soundscape) (2014) - "I Know"
(with Jung Kook) (2016) - "Always"
(2017) - "4 O' CLOCK"
(with V) (credited as R&V) (2017) - ''Ddaeng''
(with SUGA and j-hope) (2018)
Adapted Songs
- "Rap Monster"
(adapted "Look At Me Know" by Chris Brown) (2012) - "Vote"
(adapted "Power" by Kanye West) (2012) - "A Typical Trainee's Christmas (Full Version)"
(adapted "Christmas In Harlem" by Kanye West and "Last Christmas" by Wham!) (with Jin, SUGA, Jimin, V, and Jung Kook) (2013) - "School Of Tears"
(adapted "Swimming Pools" by Kendrick Lamar) (with Jin and SUGA) (2013) - "Favorite Girl"
(adapted "Favorite Girl" by Marques Houston) (2013) - "Like A Star"
(adapted "Like A Star" by J. Cole) (2013) - "Expensive Girl"
(adapted "Take It Off (Dim The Lights)" by Pharrell Williams) (2013) - "Adult Child"
(adapted "Celebrate" by Common) (with Jin and SUGA) (2013) - "Something"
(adapted "Something" by Drake) (2013) - "Too Much"
(adapted "Too Much" by Drake) (2013)
Remixes
- Fall Out Boy - "Champion (Remix)
" (2017) - Honne - ''Crying Over You ◐''
(with BEKA) (2019) - Lil Nas X - "Seoul Town Road
" ("Old Town Road" remix)" (2019)
- GLAM - "Party (XXO)"
(2012) - Homme - "Dilemma"
(2016) - TXT - "0X1=LOVESONG (I Know I Love You)"
(featuring Seori) (2021)- "0X1=LOVESONG (I Know I Love You) (Emocore Mix)"
(featuring Seori) (2021) - "0X1=LOVESONG (I Know I Love You)"
(featuring pH-1, Woodie Gochild, Seori) (2021) - "0X1=LOVESONG (I Know I Love You)"
(featuring MOD SUN) (2021) - "0X1=LOVESONG (I Know I Love You) (Japanese Ver.)"
(featuring Ikuta Lilas) (2021)
- "0X1=LOVESONG (I Know I Love You) (Emocore Mix)"
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.
- all lowercase letters: mono. and all of the songs within it.
- 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.
- Author Appeal: Discussed in "Bicycle", a song about his loneliness as he rode his bike over his hometown during the COVID-19 Pandemic.
- 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"
- "All Day" references two BTS songs in the same line.
- 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 being 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" - Cosmic Motifs: there's mono. with "Moonchild".
- Creative Closing Credits: The "Lost!" music video's credits appear on papers, a computer, boxes, and a calendar.
- Deliberately Monochrome: RM's "Do You" mv is completely black and white from start to finish.
- Darker and Edgier:
- His Self-Titled Album has more prominent aggressive raps and lyrics in contrast to his more calm raps and introspective lyrics he take in his later release in mono. and Indigo.
- ''Right Place, Wrong Person” is very noisy and trippy compared to anything else that anyone from BTS has done.
- "Change pt.2" stand out for it's experimental composition among other calm and melancholic tracks in Indigo.
- 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.
- Genre-Busting: RM defies the notion of being a one-genre-only group; one of the reasons he gave for changing his Stage Name from "Rap Monster" to "RM" is that the old name limited him in the kind of music he wanted to make. He has even said through the lyrics of "Do You" (from the RM mixtape) that the genre is "a trap", refusing to stick to one label:
- IÂ’m not pop, IÂ’m not rock, IÂ’m not funk, IÂ’m not R&B or hip hop
- Gray Rain of Depression: The narrator in "Forever Rain" wants this to happen at all times so no one will stare at him when he’s down.
- Heavy Meta: The RM mixtape reflects the dilemma of being both a rapper and an idol and the difficulties and criticism RM faced after becoming the latter. RM also uses "Do You" as a refusal to conform to others' expectations and adhere to one specific genre.
- 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)".
- Meaningful Name: His old Stage Name "Rap Monster", aside from the fact he used to think the stage name sounded cool, is often misunderstood as means that he's raps like a monster when it drives the song "Rap Genius by rapper SanE where the latter rapper called himself a rap monster because he raps non-stop. Nowadays he regards the name as nothing but an old shame he would rather hear as a running joke from his bandmates and fans, see Meaningful Rename below for the explanation for "RM".
- Meaningful Rename: As of November 2017, he officially changed his Stage Name from "Rap Monster" to the more simplistic "RM". While at first, this may be a reference to his Self-Titled Album, the change also alluded to RM himself no longer wanting to be associated with his "Rap Monster" image as he has grown from a foolish rebel teen who wants to be cool into a much more mature and responsible adult and started to accept his Real Me.
- 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:
- mono.: "Badbye" (1:52)
- Indigo: "Change Pt.2" (1:54),
- Right People, Wrong Place: "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
) - One-Word Title:
- RM: "Voice", "Awakening", "Monster", "Joke", "Rush", "Life", and "Drift"
- mono.: "Tokyo", "seoul", "moonchild", "badbye", "uhgood", and "everythingoes"
- Indigo: "Yun", "Forg_tful", "Closer", "Lonely", "Hectic", and "No.2"
- Right Place, Wrong Person: "Nuts", "Domodachi", "Groin", "Heaven", and "LOST!"
- Phrase Salad Lyrics: Almost all of "Joke" from RM's mixtape RM is this.
- Pop-Star Composer: RM for the Korean version of Fantastic Four (2015), with the song "Fantastic".
- 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.
- Sequel Song: Subverted with "Change pt.2" by RM, which is about how people (including himself) change with time, as opposed to his previous song "Change", which is about wanting change in society.RM
: I released a song in 2017 titled "Change". It was a song I did with Wale. But this song has nothing to do with that one. - Shout-Out: "Yun" (feat. Erykah Badu) from his solo album Indigo is titled after and contains narration of
the late visual artist Yun Hyong-keun
. His paintings are also featured in the album itself
. - Songs of Solace: Many songs, such as "moonchild" and "everythinggoes" from mono. and "Closer" from Indigo:"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"— "Closer" - 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 Erykah Badu in "Yun" and Anderson .Paak in "Still Life"), the guests tend to be more obscure in the West.
- Right Place, Wrong Person brings more diversity with British-Nigerian rapper Little Simz for "Domodachi" and Ghanian-American Singer-Songwriter Moses Sumney for "Around the world in a day".
- 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.
- Take That, Critics!: "RM" mixtape deals with RM's dilemma of being both a rapper and an idol, proving his skills and affirming himself as both despite what his critics and former friends (the ones he lost for becoming an idol) say, with the overall message being to just do what you want without defining yourself by labels (with one of its singles being titles, well, "Do You").
- Textless Album Cover: both indigo and Right Place, Wrong Person did not featured the album title.
- Tick Tock Tune: The percussion-driven "Do You".
- Two-Faced: The RM mixtape covers half his face in black tar.
- Video Full of Film Clips: "Fantastic", for Fantastic Four (2015).
