Fire Divine in Right Place, Wrong Person
RM’s Right Place, Wrong Person’s complex soundscape feels like a fire siren’s call to a divine maze, coaxing the mind into the unfamiliar, then pulling it somewhere else altogether. The intoxication of the opening song’s “Feelin’ high on a forest fire” and the closing song’s “You are my pain divine, divine” — what is this magic, this alchemy?
In the beginning of the “Come back to me” music video, RM’s face is bathed in orange-yellow light, surrounded by faint smoke which dissipates as the camera pulls back. He twice rejects a cigarette offered to him.
Vaguely annoyed, the rest of the video sets him on a trajectory of self-discovery, ending with a seemingly divine moment of understanding. “Come back to me” is the last song of RPWP and this scene of disappearing smoke and rejection of a cigarette brings full circle the layers of lyrical fire imagery in the first half of RPWP.
In Indigo’s “Wild Flower,” fire imagery is symbolic of inward struggle, beginning with RM’s rap that “I wished to be a flower of fire.” The music video begins with an image of fireworks bursting through a cloud, shifting to night and an image full of fireworks explosions.
At other points in “Wild Flower,” lyrical images include light, dawn, combustion, stars, and flaming. The refrain repeated by Youjeen throughout “Wild Flower,” “Light a flower, flowerwork,” guides toward the burning flower, the flowerwork, an amalgamation of firework and flower. Fire is seemingly a means of examining inner turmoil.
“Wild Flower’s” themes of burning and fire are revisited in the first half of RPWP, where each song contains images of fire, beginning with “Feelin’ high on a forest fire,” repeated three hypnotic times in “Right People Wrong Place.” In the video “교환앨범 MMM(Mini & Moni Music) — RM,” he says this lyric means, “I’m feeling good in a forest fire,” suggesting that there is a unique, intoxicating power in fire. There’s no suggestion that he wants to escape the challenge and danger. Fire is burning off layers, catharsis, and regeneration, born of ashes, to define the deepest most honest self.
“Nuts” describes “gaslighters” as people who can’t be fought or stopped, perhaps signaling how difficult finding oneself amidst the chaos of life can be. “out of love’s” reference to fire is particularly ingenious because topically it seems to be about smoking cigarettes (as in the “Come back to me” music video), but it becomes something more when looked at within the framework of fire imagery on the rest of the album. RM refers to himself as something that burns–a pack of cigarettes. He burns each one by one, rapping about burning down love and hate as ashes fall like snow:
I’m just a pack of cigarette
I’m going to burn down all the love and the hate, the right, the wrongs
Even the goddamn world I’ve been livin’ in for my whole life
Smoking kills, I know
It’s my business, you bitches stop, don’t talk shit
Ashes falling like snow
I’ve been changin’ the flow
Time to let go of the past, the memories, the stacks of truth
“Domodachi’s” fire imagery is of a community gathered around the embers of a bonfire, getting high, preceded by the first instance of heavenly imagery on the album:
All the suckers wanna hit it, I’ma lead you to the heaven, blow the flute
All my friends wanna get around in O’s, all my friends wanna take another pose…
Just light up the embers of this bonfire, my friends gather around me, one by one
Gеt high, gettin’ fire, we in Saudi, lеt me go ape, get down with the party
As in the album’s introductory song, fire is a source of power for letting loose, feeling high, and exploring self-understanding amidst human chaos.
Similarly, the “Domodachi” music video is propelled by images of fire. The bicycle light illuminates and disappears when the boy enters the chaotic space filled with people. The boy carries a flashlight as he crawls through the culvert pipe, orange fire-like lights and a burning sparkler framing the top of the pipe. When he leaves the culvert, there are no lights save a spotlight on the boy as the crowd jostles him and he escapes over a fence. There are sparks on train rails as it careens through the scene. The boy is “saved” and walks out into a dawning fire orange sky before he turns back around, seemingly not perceiving the challenge of fire and chaos as something to be avoided.
From the fire and catharsis of the first half of RPWP comes the journey to the divine in the second half. In “Groin” RM raps, “I step on the gas, I just step on the gas,” propelling his fiery journey to speed up, describing himself as, “Not a fuckin monk.” He rejects rigorous religious spirituality in his search for divine understanding.
“Heaven” repeats the lyrics “Take my heaven” in the context of devils, commonly thought of as an embodiment of fire:
My peace is unbreakable
Take my heaven for free…
I’m happy where the devils are
“LOST!” suggests an ascension into clouds, echoing a hurried pace and the clouds in the opening of the “Wild Flower” music video:
I never felt so fine before
I hit the cloud…
And I look up in the sky I see silver cloud, yo hurry
“Around the world” in a day also references clouds and a rough awakening:
And above cloud, and I’m down with you, let it loose
If I fall asleep again, hit me
As the album ends, “ㅠㅠ (Credit Roll)” lightens the mood and provides a kind of reassurance, and the refrain in “Come back to me” deepens the spiritual imagery: “You are my pain, divine, divine” is repeated 16 hypnotic times. Pain and catharsis in fire, pain in the divine– alchemy on a journey of self-understanding.
— Kim
For the companion essay, please see The Divine in Come back to me.
