“I’ve been broken and then put back together so many times,” BTS leader RM told the fashion brand 032c in his final interview before enlisting in the Korean military last year. “I realized that the person I think I am doesn’t really exist.” On his heady second solo album, RM digs into that existential dilemma, interrogating the relationship between his world-conquering presented self and the “ordinary young man named Kim Namjoon” that he would be if he hadn’t taken the pop-star path.
RM’s lyrical ride is made even more mind-expanding by the music laid down by RM and his collaborators, including San Yan of the K-hip-hop collective Balming Tiger and the Dallas duo DOMi and JD Beck. Building on the sonic palette of RM’s 2022 solo debut Indigo, Right Place, Wrong Person is psychedelia-tinged and soulful, its lyrics’ intense self-interrogation balanced by music that feels like an invite to further explorations.
“Right People, Wrong Place” kicks off the album on a leery note, RM turning over the title’s four words as if the right combination of them will unlock a core truth while claustrophobic synths close in on him. From there, RM digs in; “Nuts,” which pivots out of a blown-out robo-funk bass, finds RM in a stop-start seductive mode, wrestling between wanting someone and feeling down on love, while “Domodachi,” which features an assist from the British MC Little Simz, depicts RM and his friends closing ranks, with an insistent woodwind loop and a furious guitar riff acting as de facto clubhouse doors.
Even the more upbeat songs have a sense of unease about them. “Heaven,” has gauzy guitars and a steadily thudding bassline which cloak its unease; “Take my heaven/Oh, you ain’t invited/ Go grab your knife/ And watch me collapse,” he sings as backing vocals ooh and ahh around him, turning the idea of surrender into something startlingly beautiful. “LOST!” is peppy with a sticky-sweet hook, but RM’s proclamations of liberation are countered by admissions that he feels “lonely as fuck” and worried about how he’ll “never love while I’m low.” The Moses Sumney collaboration “Around the world in a day” is a stunner, blossoming from a tightly wound duet accompanied by an acoustic guitar into glitchy bedroom soul before taking full flight into fierce funk-rock, RM taking on all comers (including “digital trendsetters”) as he picks up the mic and throws down the gauntlet.
“I’m a person who has so much dirt, filth, love, kindness, and consideration in me that I feel l would go insane if I didn’t bring it out candidly, into the world, in some way,” RM told 032c last year. Right Place, Wrong Person grapples with the inner and outer dualities RM sees and feels every day in fascinating fashion, its search for meaning coupled with music that’s as intensely curious as the man making it.
Jay-Z performing at the Stade de France in Saint-Denis in Paris.
Jay-Z Deserves the Super Bowl Halftime Gig
Where’s the love? Jay-Z asked that question 25 years ago, in the chorus of one of many songs in his catalog that still move audiences today. If he performs “Heart of the City” as part of his Super Bowl halftime show next February, those indignant bars are sure to be a highlight: “First the Fat Boys break up, now every day I wake up, somebody got a problem with Hov…” It would be an appropriate choice, too — because then as now, any time Jay-Z notches a new achievement, people find a way to complain.
The jokes and nonsense started almost as soon as the first rumors trickled out that Jay, whose company Roc Nation has executive-produced the Super Bowl halftime show since 2019, might be choosing himself to headline next year’s show. “Jay-Z just Dick Cheney’d himself for the Super Bowl,” Puck‘s Matthew Belloni quipped on X last week, alluding to the time that the late prince of darkness, who’d been asked to run the vice-presidential search committee for George W. Bush’s 2000 campaign, put himself on the ticket. (Super hip and current reference, and not at all apples-and-oranges.) Others pointed to TMZ reports that pop stars like Harry Styles and Justin Bieber had been asked first. “How are they the frontrunners, and he end up in the front?” Cam’Ron, who’s delighted in trolling Jay for many years, wondered aloud on his podcast. “Out of all the people on the roster, they couldn’t pick nobody else?” asked Cam’Ron‘s co-host, Ma$e.
These critiques miss the point, which is that Jay-Z is one of the best choices for a high-profile gig like this. He’s a superstar with a comparable level of name recognition to any other A-lister in music. He has a deep stack of classic songs going back decades. And he’s a highly skillful live performer who knows his way around a stadium stage, as he’s spent this year reminding people on his Jay-Z 30 tour. He tore down Yankee Stadium three nights in a row this summer; just last week, he rocked SoFi Stadium, which happens to be the same place where the 2027 Super Bowl is being held. He held the crowd’s attention with ease at all of those shows, and though there were plenty of glittery guests — that’s a given at a Jay show, and it will surely be true at the Super Bowl, too — he did it mostly through the force of his own magnetic energy. Let’s state the obvious here: Jay-Z is really, really good at rapping. We’re talking about one of the slickest, sharpest talkers in the history of words, someone who made it to the top through a sustained act of myth-making, then kept going. Are we seriously asking whether he can handle a 15-minute televised performance?
And yeah, there’s a touch of self-congratulation in the way he appointed himself. So what? Praising his own gifts is arguably Jay-Z’s greatest talent of all. He made a fine art out of self-applause. He told his story again and again, retracing the steps from Marcy Projects to the corner suite, and he made us believe. It would almost be insulting to the audience if he didn’t give himself the gig at some point.
Pop culture observers in recent years surely remember the backlash to Super Bowl headliners like Kendrick Lamar and Bad Bunny — all of it at least culturally conservative, and much of it frankly just racist. The blowback to Jay’s announcement is mostly coming from other quarters, at least for now (let’s just wait to see what the right-wing swamps make of this one). But it’s disappointing in a different way. Jay-Z has spent his career expounding hip-hop as a mainstream commercial force. He’s not a businessman, he’s a business, man. But he’s also an artist. He’s made huge amounts of money, and gotten himself into the rarefied rooms where he even has the ability to give himself a gig like this, by spinning his experiences into compelling narrative art, one verse at a time. Let’s not lose sight of how impressive his life’s work really is. Jay-Z is not some random C-suite bro, and he’s definitely not Dick Cheney. He’s one of the greatest rappers of all time, by any measure. He’s earned that Super Bowl spot.