Indigo

The record

Indigo is RM’s first official solo album, released on 2 December 2022 with ten tracks. The title track is ‘Wild Flower’, with youjeen of Cherry Filter. The album introduction on Bugs places it about four years after the mixtape mono. of October 2018, and says the title comes from indigo, the base colour of denim, set against the black and white of mono. and carried from the sleeve through the whole album.

The same text says RM led the work throughout — the writing and composition of every track, the concept, the design and the planning of the music video. It says the cover carries a work by the late painter Yun Hyong-keun, and names Pdogg, HONNE, eAeon, john eun and DOCSKIM as producers. The video for the title track went up on the HYBE LABELS channel on the day of release.

Reviews

IZM’s Park Su-jin opened her album review of January 2023 by writing that the record is full of the desire to speak and the eagerness to be heard. She wrote that it raises the pleasure of listening by placing rock, electronic music and folk where each belongs, and that “this variety of genre shines on tracks like ‘Still Life’, ‘Forg_tful’ and ‘Wild Flower’”. The same piece says that “RM’s new record combines the easy and the comfortable with a fitting musicality between them”, and closes that it “smoothly renders the present of RM as a musician who knows how to take the helm and move, and proves the musicality and the popular instinct he has”. That December the same writer put the record among IZM’s ten Korean albums of 2023, writing that “this command and audacity, criss-crossing the album at will, is of a kind not to be found in the last several years”, and calling it “an excellent record that lays out what the human Kim Namjoon, beyond the pop star, wants to say”.

Yemi, writing for Idology (아이돌로지), placed the record among that site’s 20 albums of 2022 and wrote that “Indigo offers the experience of reading an artist’s taste and searching the self alongside him”. She wrote that “the restrained sound and the tidy melody over it meet an approach that wants to carry the message whole, and, tied to the album’s theme of turning inward, draw the figure of a young man of that age passionately searching music and self”, and closed that “the depth to place himself at the centre while lighting up the aura of his guests is what makes Indigo shine”. The same piece ran again about a month later in Idology’s Monthly for November and December 2022.

NME’s Rhian Daly gave the record five stars out of five, writing that “the follow-up to RM’s two mixtapes, 2015’s RM and 2018’s mono., is unpredictable and restless” and that “it exists in a constant state of metamorphosis, all the while searching for – and eventually finding some – answers”. She wrote that “Indigo is an album that feels unperturbed by current trends and sounds most likely to score a hit, instead focusing on building its own inimitable world”.

Clash’s Abbie Aitken gave it 8 out of 10 and wrote that “Indigo has redefined previous interpretations of RM”. The same piece says “RM’s choice of collaborators on Indigo feels meticulous” and closes: “Indigo is a charming look into the mentality of a global superstar.” Rolling Stone’s Michelle Hyun Kim wrote that, “created with this reinstated self-commitment, Indigo is an adventurous sonic portrait of RM’s inner world, the work of an artist who finds his voice by bringing together the influences that resonate with his soul”.

Among the tracks

The opening ‘Yun’ begins with a narration by the late painter Yun Hyong-keun. The album introduction calls it old-school hip-hop and says RM, moved by the painter’s work and message, set down his thoughts about the group and himself. Daly called it “a pensive callback to ’90s boom-bap that asks questions of identity, art and purpose”, and Michelle Hyun Kim wrote that RM folds his feeling for Korean contemporary art into Nineties American hip-hop and R&B, making a sonic meeting ground for the two.

The title track ‘Wild Flower’ features youjeen of Cherry Filter. The album introduction says RM set into it his wish to live not as fireworks that dazzle and vanish but as a quiet wild flower. Park Su-jin wrote that “‘Forg_tful’, which lays a warm melody over acoustic guitar, raises the appeal of a song that could easily have run dry by weaving in the clear, limpid vocals of the musician Kim Sawol and a warm lyric, while ‘Wild Flower’, the rock track that climbed to number 83 on the Billboard singles chart, binds the centre of the work firmly with its forceful development”. Daly wrote that “‘Yun’ and ‘Wild Flower’, in particular, showcase some of RM’s best work yet, their lyrics powerful whether you hear them in tandem with music or read them on a page”.

Of the second track, ‘Still Life’, Park Su-jin wrote that it is a funky hip-hop song that packs clap sounds and horns densely together. The album introduction reads the title both as a still life and as “it’s still life”, a message about refusing to stay framed and moving forward. The Guardian’s Tara Joshi wrote: “The production gleams – take the rippling sweetness of Closer, or the crunchy abrasiveness of Change Pt 2.”

Of the closing ‘No.2’, the album introduction says it carries the message not to look back, and Park Su-jin wrote that a clear consolation runs through the record, down to its cry that it is you, not the musician, who will keep you safe.

Numbers

Park Su-jin wrote that the rock track ‘Wild Flower’ climbed to number 83 on the Billboard singles chart. Idology placed the record among its 20 albums of 2022, and IZM placed it among its ten Korean albums of 2023 the following December. The label’s own distribution metadata prints the record as Indigo, dated 2 December 2022.

What came after

RM’s next album under his own name is Right Place, Wrong Person, released one year and five months later on 24 May 2024, with the pre-release single Come back to me ahead of it on 10 May. Before this record came mono. of October 2018.