There’s something incredibly paradoxical about being in a group like BTS.
It’s the biggest platform an artist could ever ask for and it comes with an audience that will support you almost unconditionally. Yet, when you’re making music for seven people, there’s an individuality that is unavoidably compromised. Right Place, Wrong Person, RM‘s second studio album and fourth solo effort, is simultaneously a product of that compromise and an example of how to navigate it.
Listening to Right Place, Wrong Person, you can’t help but wonder where RM would be as an artist today without BTS. The sound of the album is so far removed from anything he’s ever written for the band he has been leading since 2013, that you question whether the group was holding him back from growing as a musician. Maybe if he had been a solo artist from the jump, the turn towards the experimental sound of Right Place, Wrong Person would have happened years ago.
But what’s more interesting is that Namjoon himself would most likely reject that reading. For one, being in BTS has given him a pull within the music industry that he probably would not have attained without the success of the band, as well as the proper tools to make the most of it, which has allowed him to create the music he truly wants to create without having to worry about label support or commercial value. The influence of Balming Tiger, the alternative South Korean musical collective with whom RM collaborated in 2022 on the trippy hip-hop track “Sexy Nukim,” is evident all over Right Place, Wrong Person.
More importantly, it’s the very specific experiences of the last decade that have resulted in the artist RM has become. The difference between his pre-BTS Runch Randa persona and who he is, musically, now is staggering, yet you see traces of all the identities he’s inhabited scattered across this new album. Right Place, Wrong Person is a simultaneously logical and totally unexpected evolution of an artist who has been pushing himself to create challenging music since 2018’s Mono.
To put it simply, we wouldn’t have Right Place, Wrong Person without the trajectory that BTS has taken RM on, but the album also functions as a sharp reminder of why it has been so crucial that the members were allowed the space, throughout the years, to develop as individual solo artists. It’s hard to imagine the artist who made this album as one-seventh of a pop boy band again, but it’s also exciting to picture what the future holds for BTS’ music now that their leader has developed a sound for himself that is almost the antithesis of the group’s own.
10. “Right People, Wrong Place”
The album opener sets the mood and the atmosphere for the rest of the tracks, both sonically and thematically. The interlude’s rich, unconventional, risk-taking production is a taste of what’s to come, and the way its title subverts that of the album immediately lets us in on what RM intends with this follow-up to 2022’s Indigo. To explore the variable meaning of “right” and “wrong” both universally and within the specific context of the contrast between RM’s public and private personas.
9. “ㅠㅠ (Credit Roll)”
Even the interludes in Right Place, Wrong Person are special. “Credit Roll” (also listed as the Korean crying emoticon) is a meta track that sets the album up for its epilogue, asking the listeners if they will stick around for the credits or leave the theater as soon as the movie’s over. Paired with the album’s last song, “Come back to me,” it doubles as a reflection of what RM’s career will look like once he returns from conscription in 2025.
8. “out of love”
It’s safe to say the common denominator in Right Place, Wrong Person is RM’s frustration with the pressures of being not only a public figure in South Korea but also the leader of the country’s most popular musical act ever. In that sense, “out of love” is the rapper at his most disillusioned and soul-baring. He delves into past controversies and opens up emotionally, but his even-paced flow can come off as monotonous and less memorable than the rest of the wildly innovative album.
7. “Groin”
“Groin” is definitely a statement piece. RM takes no prisoners in this old-school hip-hop track as he raps about his rejection of the expectations that come with the roles that he’s had to play throughout his career. Tracks like this put into evidence just how big of a leap this album is in relation to what the musician has worked on in the past. From losing the fear to tell it like it is and addressing his issues directly in his lyrics to the complexity and layeredness of the production, “Groin” is the definitive example of the new RM.
6. “Come back to me”
As mentioned, there are traces of RM’s back catalog all over Right Place, Wrong Person. If the angrier songs remind us of 2015’s RM, the album’s quieter moments take us back to 2018’s Mono. The rapper’s music has always been synonymous with comfort for fans, and that’s thanks to tracks like “Come back to me.” The album’s closing track is a Namjoon his listeners are most familiar with: soft-spoken, introspective, and resilient.
5. “Heaven”
“Heaven” is easily the most commercial track on Right Place, Wrong Person. It’s just pure R&B/Neo-soul goodness, adorned with Namjoon’s warm vocals, groovy melodies, and reassuring lyrics about maintaining your peace even when the world around you is trying to disrupt it. While it’s nowhere near close to being the album’s most revolutionary sound, “Heaven” is RM at his very best.
4. “LOST!”
To put it simply, “LOST!” is a major bop. The frenetic synths reflect the disoriented nature of the lyrics as RM sings and raps about the unpredictability of growing up without a manual, as well as the challenges and wonders of searching for your true identity among the noise. It’s also got the most infectious chorus in all of Right Place, Wrong Person.
3. “Around the world in a day (Ft. Moses Sumney)”
There are only two features in Right Place, Wrong Person and they’re both exquisite. Moses Sumney lends his soulful, butter-smooth vocals to a song that is novel at every turn as its lyrics expand on the right/wrong dichotomy that permeates the album. The dispersed horns and brassy electric guitar, the mid-song switch from mellow R&B to the excited, passionate hip-hop that defined the first half of the album, and the epic rock and roll wall of sound make “Around the world in a day” an epic climax in the 11-track album.
2. “Nuts”
Beyond the exploration of RM’s very specific brand of celebrity, fans have theorized Right Place, Wrong Person is also a break-up album. Of course, the members of BTS, like most K-pop idols, are impossibly private about their romantic life, but some of the lyrics in RM’s new album as well as things he has alluded to in the past have resulted in heavy speculation that, on top of dealing with the confusion and anxiety that came with his enlistment, the rapper was also dealing with the ending of a relationship.
In “Nuts,” RM is the most open he has ever been about relationships and love, expressing resentment for someone who wronged him and skepticism about love in general. The cheeky lyrics and provocative sound have made this one of the most talked about songs on the album.
1. “Domodachi (Ft. Little Simz)”
There is so much happening in “Domodachi” that it could almost backfire, yet the production is tight and intentional enough to prevent that from happening. Instead, the song hits a sweet spot between digestible and challenging, familiar and unexpected. “Domodachi” is the romanticization of the Japanese word 友達 meaning “friends,” and is essentially an anthem about having the best time with your best people. Sonically the dragged-out, off-beat chorus seemingly and cleverly mirrors the drunken effects of a night out.
This is the best track on Right Place, Wrong Person because of its playful, almost erratic production defined by a nearly-dissonant jazzy mix of instruments, changes in tempo, and in language (a record of three different languages are used in this song), but also because of RM and Little Simz’s talent as two of the best young rappers of this generation. It’s a collaboration for the ages.