I am NOT

The record

I am NOT is the debut mini album Stray Kids released on 26 March 2018. The debut single is ‘District 9’, and the record opens the three-part ‘I am’ series. It follows the single Hellevator by four months.

The album introduction on Bugs says the members wrote all eight tracks themselves, and that the album title — a declaration of what one is not — opens the musical identity they would go on to build. The same text describes ‘District 9’ as a song about breaking out of a standardised frame to build a territory of one’s own, in a hybrid of hip-hop, rock and EDM. It annotates the other tracks too: ‘Mirror’ is about holding one’s own mind up to the light and asking who is there, ‘Awaken’ puts a rock sound behind the will to break one’s own frame, ‘ROCK (돌)’ turns on the witty conceit of wanting to become a stone rather than stay confused, and ‘Grow Up’ is a lyrical, warm-hearted hip-hop track carrying a message of comfort.

Reviews

Five critics took the record in Idology (아이돌로지) and its new-release column, 1st Listen. Mimyo opened on the sound: “the bubbling energy and the pleasure of listening to the rapping are good.” Being excited by a self-produced debut album is nothing new in itself, he wrote, “but this team’s feel for the grammar of music is worth watching”, and gave his reason: “the hybridity of genre stands out starkly and produces frequent, violent changes of scene.” The way the record uses rock, he added, “goes past the simple formula of the 1990s”.

Seodeu read the record as a construction. “‘Rock’, which puts the rap parts out front, ‘Grow Up’, which shows they can also handle a melody with feeling — the whole album is laid out like a portfolio suited to promoting a new act”, he wrote, and closed: “I want to keep watching what comes next, with interest.” Yu Je-sang took the title track: “‘District 9’, a title plainly inspired by the film of the same name, delivers an intensity that matches it.” He added that the mini album “surprised me as an unexpected one for pure listening. Really.” Simdyang wrote that it is “an album that can wake, for a moment at least, the hidden teenage self in anyone who has one”.

Clash came to the record twice, in retrospective features in 2023 and 2025. Taylor Glasby wrote of the title track: “There’s a gratifyingly rough-around-the-edges feel to ‘District 9’ that’s both stylistic choice and reflective of the youthfulness of its writers.” The instrumental, she wrote, “lumbers in its opening, whines like a mosquito on the post-chorus, and stomps through the verses like a tetchy, disgruntled creature, and Stray Kids are its precocious sparring partners.” She closed on what the song refuses: “There’s always an expectation of polished perfection with K-pop but the power of ‘District 9’ is in how unapologetically it refuses to dilute its raw energy.”

Among the tracks

The song three critics put first is the closing track, ‘3rd Eye’. Glasby wrote that “given the breadth of Stray Kids’ influences (from rock to jazz, and hip hop to drum & bass), and how fervently they experiment in their side projects, SKZ-Player and SKZ-Record, it’s surprising that ‘3rd Eye’ still manages to defy categorisation in their oeuvre.” She called it “a slow burn exploration of the struggle to truly know oneself”, and wrote that “the more they unravel lyrically, the deeper Stray Kids plunge into the sonic psyche, layering distorted voices, heavy breathing, compressed drums and a frantic organ that renders ‘3rd Eye’ almost genre-less, with a claustrophobic, dream-like effect that’s hard to forget.”

Sara Conway put the same song among the group’s eight essential deep cuts for Clash in 2025, and read it the other way about. “For a K-pop group who established their identity around their ‘noise’ music and almost brash confidence, ‘3rd Eye’ reveals a different perspective”, she wrote: the track “uncovers the vulnerability beneath the confidence.” She added that “while ‘3rd Eye’ is not a ballad, there is a gentleness woven into the production and the lyrics that is often difficult to balance successfully”, and finished: “Stray Kids can turn up the noise, but they can also crack open emotional stories, too.”

The track Mimyo named for himself was ‘Mirror’. His last line was an instruction: “Among the album tracks, don’t miss ‘Mirror’.” Simdyang picked ‘Grow Up’ — “personally, I find myself comforted by the self-hugging and the whistling in the lyrics of ‘Grow Up’.”

Numbers

The album introduction on Bugs says that the pre-debut record Mixtape, released in January 2018 ahead of the formal debut, reached number one on the iTunes album chart in four countries including Finland, Norway, Sweden and the Philippines, and that Billboard placed the group first among the five new K-pop acts it named to watch in 2018.