The Korean pop juggernaut took the US by storm. Their style, however, was heavily inspired by Western influences, including Eminem.
This was disclosed in a massive cover feature on BTS that Rolling Stone ran this week by RM, Rap Monster, who the publication hailed as a bandleader.
RM indeed contributes gritty rap intermissions into melodic K-pop that the band champions. How did he build his flow, Rolling Stone asked, what were the influences? The Korean artist could quickly narrow them down to three names:
I started with Nas, Eminem, the golden age of hip-hop. And the turning point was Drake, in 2009, when he released Thank You Letter. That album was kind of shocking for me because it was kind of a freaky thing that a rapper actually sang. So after that, a lot of rappers began to sing, deciding to put the melodies into their songs across the genres, between raps and melody. So, yeah, that was the moment.
While RM struggled with fitting his rapping identity into the working pop framework, eventually, he found a way to reconcile his identity as a rapper with the pop path the group was following. The K-pop star feels that he has managed to maintain the equilibrium between authenticity and its marketable stage expression. Something that makes BTS unique, RM believes.
