Kim Namjoon on Identity
Namjoon explores the concept of identity time and time again in his life and in his music. He tends to focus on how different parts of himself might be in conflict with each other, and the tensions and confusion that goes with that experience. People are filled with duality, sometimes to the point that it tears us apart. The question of “who am I?” seems a simple one, but underneath it lies a lot of complexity. Who do I want to be? Who do other people want me to be? How much of my identity is formed by my past? Can I change who I am? Can I be multiple things at the same time? Who is the real me? What does it even mean to be the real me?
The question of “who am I?” seems to both fascinate and terrify Namjoon. In this essay we will tackle the question together as I explore all the different ways that Namjoon contemplates identity in lyrics and interviews.
From his decision to become a rapper in the first place to the struggle of taking care of himself as a world famous idol to the questioning of what having an identity actually means, we will travel through Namjoon’s career and highlight all the moments that he asks himself:
“Who the hell am I?”
It’s no secret that Namjoon was a very intelligent and driven student who got good grades in school. In his earlier lyrics he often writes about the pressure that was put on him to succeed and follow a certain path in life. As someone who was good at studying it was expected of him to prioritize his education above all else. Namjoon fit into that role well, but behind the scenes his heart was longing for music. He discovered rap and decided that he wanted a different path for his life. BTS’s early work is filled with messages of following your dreams and not letting other people decide what type of life you want to live. Namjoon often talked about the struggles of living in between the expectations of those around him and his own desires for his future. Some of those conflicting feelings are expressed in Voice, the intro song to his 2015 mixtape RM:
Straight A student and underground rapper
I occupied myself all day with being graded with meaningless numbers like beef gets graded
I just wanted to succeed
because that’s the only thing I was told by others so much that I almost got sick of it
The mirage called happiness- I thought it would be held there
But, sitting at my desk, I was never happy, not for a single moment
I secretly hid a blank sheet of paper between the pages of my study book without my mom’s knowing
My identity that I wrote down along the sound of drums and bass
The feeling of breathing that is different from that of receiving grade reports
Even when I was the top of my class, my mind was never at ease
Is it absolutely necessary to want something that others want?
I secretly raise the volume of my voice
so that you can know, so that it can reach you
I again raise the volume of my voice
so that you can know, so that it can reach you
He also touches on the subject in Born Singer, which was released in 2013:
To be honest, I was scared that I was to prove myself after talking big
that I, who used to know only pen and book, was then to surprise the world
I dunno, that I and the world’s expectations are too asymmetric,
I was scared that I might betray everyone who trusted me
I stretch my burdened shoulders and step onto the very first stage
BTS and Namjoon will continue to talk about the pressure of society's expectations and the difficulty of following your own path in songs like No More Dream, N.O and School of Tears. Fighting back against the oppressive school system is a huge part of their message and mission in their early career. They ask their fans and themselves to look at the person that they are expected to become and question if that image is in line with their own dreams and desires. Namjoon wrestled with this question himself, and therefore has the experience and passion to guide others who might be struggling with their identity and the identity that is put on them.
Idol and artist
The concept of being an idol vs being an artist is one that comes back often in BTS lyrics. Namjoon is an underground rapper who ended up in a boyband, and the identity of being an idol is one that he has wrestled with quite a bit. Can you be both an idol and an artist? Does becoming an idol mean that you have to give up on being an artist? Does it matter if you call yourself an idol or an artist? Does it matter what other people say about it?
Namjoon mentions this conflicting identity in Awakening on his 2015 mixtape RM:
Every night I fight myself inside me
My heart pounds, and my colleagues stab me in the back
saying I became a cripple after going into a company
Yeah fuck you I’m an idol, yeah yeah i’m an idol
I hated it at one time but now I love to get that title
Unlike some keep denying [their identity] to the end on television,
I now fully accept myself, and I just do me
Whether I’m an idol or an artist- it actually never mattered
The way you guys look at me was what defined me
I was obsessed over titles and hung up on how people described me
Listen to the rap of the guy who became a bit smarter as time passed
Namjoon gets shit for being an idol from the underground rap scene and gets shit for being an artist from the idol scene. He is hovering in between, writing his rap lyrics with the power and authenticity of a hip hop artist while simultaneously dancing and looking like a full fledged boyband member. He responds to this dilemma with unwavering pride, the drive to prove himself and a fuck you attitude. This energy dominates a lot of early BTS music. They are still trying to find their place in the industry while not really knowing where exactly they belong. Songs like the Cyphers and Mic Drop highlight the anger they feel about the mistreatment they face from both sides of the industry while boasting about their accomplishments and pride in who they are. Just like Namjoon in Awakening, Yoongi also often mentions his struggles with the identity of being an idol in his solo work. In Idol, the title track of the 2018 album Love Yourself: Answer, BTS face the subject head on:
You can call me artist
You can call me idol
Or you can call me anything else
I don’t care
I’m proud of it
I’m free
No more irony
Because I’ve been me all the time
You can point your fingers at me, I don’t care at all
Whatever reason you have to denigrate me,
I know what I am
I know what I want
I never gon’ change
I never gon’ trade
Why do you talk loud “blah blah”
I do what I do, so mind your own business
You can’t stop me loving’ myself
Idol is a proud, joyful, wonderfully weird and confident self love anthem. It’s a celebration of who BTS are at their core. In the song, they have accepted all the different aspects of their identity and they don’t feel the need to fit in with just one label. In the future, they will go on to say that BTS’s genre is just BTS, and they see no point in categorizing themselves.
RM and Namjoon
In 2018, BTS released a documentary series called Burn The Stage. The series followed them throughout the Wings tour and was supposed to show a more raw version of them.
In episode 6, Namjoon said:
Being an idol star, you don’t have a choice but to have two identities. I invested a lot in my identity as BTS and RM, and this is really a dilemma. We need to find ways to overcome this, and I’m trying different things. I study, I read books. I need time to be wholly me, the original me that I know.
Everyone in BTS has a stage name, a person they become when they present themselves in front of their fans. On stage Namjoon is RM, a fierce and confident rapper, a powerful and charming performer, a dependable leader and someone who lives a fiery and intense life.
Behind the scenes, Namjoon is Namjoon, a man in his twenties who is trying to figure out how to be an adult just like everyone else. He likes to go on bike rides, take care of plants, go to museums, read books and spend time in nature. He gets lazy and reads webtunes for 5 hours straight and sometimes argues with the people around him because they annoy him.
Namjoon spends the years of his youth as part of BTS, in the public eye, and sometimes that causes tension between these different parts of himself; the stage persona and the private person. In Break The Silence: The Movie which came out in 2020, there was a lot of talk about identity. During one of Namjoon’s segments he said:
There is also the fear of how well I’m taking care of myself, the Kim Namjoon as a person. Aside from money, fame, and a sense of calling, what do I really have? When you have those things all other things start to feel really valuable. Those who don’t have them would find them really special. I think it’s a repetition of that, so for me, there is a fear about whether I’m faithfully living the story of my life to the fullest.
He also mentions this dilemma in Airplane pt.2 on the 2018 album Love Yourself: Tear where the lyrics go:
Who should I live as today, Kim Namjoon or RM?
25, I still don’t know how to live well
For Namjoon and anyone in BTS, there is no simple answer to this question, as the nature of their job puts them in a position that makes it hard for them to develop a sense of self outside of the work they are doing. Even though Namjoon is part of an incredibly successful band, that doesn't mean he got it all figured out. As he has poured his youth and his energy into becoming the best performer he can be, he now feels like the Kim Namjoon behind the scenes deserves some energy and space to exist too.
Rap Monster and RM
Before Namjoon was RM, Namjoon was Rap Monster, a stage name that he used until November of 2017. The name Rap Monster fits the fierce and somewhat angst-ridden style of music that Namjoon was making in the beginning of his career. He decided to move on from the name in 2017 because it was no longer representative of him and the music that he was making.
In an interview with Entertainment Tonight Namjoon said that RM could stand for many things. He mentioned Real Me as one of the possibilities, but seems to prefer not to pin one specific meaning to the name.
In another interview with J-14 Magazine when asked what kind of advice he would give to himself in 2013, he said:
Hey Namjoon, Don’t name yourself Rap Monster. You’re a human. You’re not a monster. You’re a beautiful human.
Namjoon has often said that one of his missions in life is to love himself. This struggle to love himself often reflects in his lyrics, and now also in his decision to change his stage name, as the old one had some negative connotations to it. Perhaps Namjoons struggle with self acceptance, self worth and self love is one of the reasons that identity is such a big theme for him, as he is trying to figure out how to be a Namjoon that he can love. RM is a stage name that is more aligned with that goal as it leaves more room for flexibility and change.
Map of the Soul
The subject of identity is explored to the fullest in the Map of the Soul era that started with Map of the Soul: Persona in 2019, followed up by Map of the Soul: 7 in 2020.
Map of the Soul is inspired by the ideas of psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung. The words persona, shadow and ego that are used in Map of the Soul come directly from his theory. BTS uses these concepts to examine different parts of themselves and their career over time. A lot of this era feels like a final examination of the question that Namjoon has been asking himself in different ways throughout his entire career: Who am I?
In Intro: Persona, the opener to both albums, Namjoon writes about his journey with identity in the first few lines of the song:
“Who am I,” a question that I’ve been asking myself for my whole life
A question that I will probably never be able to find the right answer for
If I were answerable with only a few words,
God wouldn’t have created all those many beauties
Namjoon realizes that he will probably never have a clear answer to the question of “who am I?” and he accepts that. He recognizes that his identity can’t be summed up by a few words or traits and that this isn’t a bad thing. Sometimes it can feel more secure to build our entire sense of identity around one aspect of ourselves (I am a straight A student, I am an underground rapper) but that puts us in a position without flexibility and without space for growth. As different parts of ourselves clash with each other we end up feeling scattered, unsure of who we are, and angry at ourselves. It’s only when those different parts of ourselves are allowed to co-exist that we can find peace and a true sense of self.
BTS will talk about this idea in other songs too, like in Idol, where Taehyung sings:
There are tens and hundreds of myself within me
Today, I greet my another self
They are all me after all,
so I just run rather than worrying
The notion also comes back in the speech that BTS held for the United Nations in 2018. The final message of that speech was to find your name and find your voice by speaking yourself. There was a lot of talk about losing your identity as a young child in favor of fitting in, and Namjoon encouraged everyone to be their own person and to find their own voice back. Throughout the speech he mentions how he is both an idol and artist, Kim Namjoon and RM, and also just an ordinary 24 year old guy. He is saying that he can be many things at once and strives to love all those different parts of himself at the same time.
In the final verses of Intro: Persona, Namjoon boldly and confidently claims that he is no longer ashamed of the different parts inside of him, writing:
Yeah my name is R
The ‘me’ who I remember and who people know
The ‘me’ who I created by myself to speak my mind
Yeah, I might have been deceiving myself, I might have been lying
But, I’m not ashamed of it, this is the map of my soul
The lyrics continue, focusing on duality, complexity and balance within his identity, accepting the different parts of himself that coexist together even if they clash:
Dear myself
You must never lose your temperature
because you don’t need to be warm or cold
Though I might sometimes pretend I’m good and sometimes pretend I’m evil,
this is the barometer of my direction that I want to set
The ‘me’ who I want to be
The ‘me’ who people want
The ‘me’ who you love
And the ‘me’ who I craft
The ‘me’ who’s smiling
The ‘me’ who’s crying sometimes
Living and breathing every second, every moment, even now
Within these lyrics there is a tone of direction and intent rather than one of being lost and questioning. This tone is very strong throughout the entire Map of the Soul concept, especially in ON, suggesting that maybe “finding” your identity isn’t about anxiously defining every single part of your personality, it’s more about choosing who you want to be and boldly pursuing the world as an incomplete human being. In the end, there is no simple answer to the question of “who am I?” and that’s okay.
All lyrics translations come from Doolset. Visit the website for additional notes and interpretations of BTS lyrics.
