Content material Warnings: psychological and bodily abuse, suicidal ideation
With solely per week’s discover earlier than launch, Epik Excessive’s Tablo introduced a shock collaboration with BTS’ RM. The monitor, “Cease the Rain,” is a lo-fi hip-hop track whose comparatively spare manufacturing (and equally spare black and white animated MV) belies its depth. Tablo has described each Epik Excessive and BTS’s music as having a “wet sentiment”, with each teams writing introspective lyrics with rain imagery to evoke emotion, whether or not longing (“Rain Track”) or isolation (“Ceaselessly Rain”). Removed from repeating tropes and themes, “Cease the Rain” provides layers to the artists’ exploration of psychological well being and trauma. By its sincere lyrics and evocative music video, “Cease the Rain” demonstrates the potential for therapeutic in shared vulnerability.
Made shortly after their collaboration “All Day” on RM’s 2022 Indigo album, Tablo held on to the track for two years, fearing it was too private to be shared, till RM insisted upon its launch. “Cease the Rain” certainly discusses intense, deeply private experiences — for Tablo, the trauma ensuing from a strict non secular upbringing (“raised by guilt, raised by disgrace”) and corporal punishment (“raised by the rod”). In consequence, he grew to mistrust the “adults within the room.”
RM, however, frankly described ideas of loss of life. The opening strains to his verse, “After I was a child / I used to be satisfied I used to be destined for the 27 membership” significantly devastates. Whereas he had handed the age of 27, when many well-known musicians had misplaced their lives to suicide or drug abuse, RM nonetheless engaged in self-destructive types of escapism (“I’m twenty-nine, sinkin’ within the bathtub, sippin’ gin / In search of one other membership”). Uncooked and gut-wrenching, RM’s verse exposes the extent of his despair at varied factors in his life.
Tablo described “Cease the Rain” as diary entries, and fittingly, lyrics seem within the black and white music video in a font resembling handwriting. Because the lyrics fade in, some phrases are crossed out, and so they present further perception. As an illustration, when Tablo rapped, “Dad and mom known as me misplaced,” the textual content had ‘Icarus’ scratched out earlier than the phrase ‘misplaced’. The reference to the mythological character, recognized for falling after flying too near the solar, sadly suggests how Tablo’s mother and father considered his ambition as foolhardy.
A lot of the different crossed-out lyrics allude to track titles. Extra than simply intelligent Easter eggs for followers to find, the references invite different resonances. When RM delivers the road, “However you gotta know my life is out of affection,” he echoes the tough judgments he has obtained as an idol, additionally depicted in “Out of Love” from Proper Place, Fallacious Individual. When the textual content ‘love’ is preceded by a crossed out ‘blood, sw,’ there’s an apparent name again to BTS’ “Blood Sweat and Tears,” but additionally dire warnings about fame in Epik Excessive’s “Misplaced One”: “Even after they roll out the pink carpet for you, don’t neglect / That it has turned pink absorbing your blood and sweat.”
Whereas the track’s verses concentrate on Tablo and RM’s lives, the superbly rendered MV facilities on a boy who appears to play varied roles all through the video. In a nonetheless drawn from an Epik Excessive stay, the MV begins with the kid in his bed room, surrounded by many visible references to Epik Excessive, from album covers to their notorious “Park Kyu Bong” lightstick. The colour switches to black and white together with the intro’s beat drop and key change. The boy initially looks like a stand-in for Tablo throughout his verse about his childhood (Tablo described him as his “inside youngster”). As he opens a closet door and falls backwards into seemingly limitless darkness, the boy dramatizes the sentiments of isolation and despair. Throughout some moments, wings begin to develop, however rapidly disintegrate within the rain.
The position of the boy first begins to shift after Tablo’s verse, when the track turns into extra of a dialog between Tablo and RM’s singing voices. Within the pre-chorus, RM sings compassionately by way of trills in his decrease register, ending with, “I do know what it really feel like.” He could also be talking to Tablo — or to the boy. Carrying headphones all through the video, he’s maybe a listener of Tablo and RM’s music. Or maybe he’s each artist and listener, reflecting how we will determine with artists’ private tales and discover consolation in shared experiences.
The result of the boy’s story stays ambiguous. The closing shot consists of an Icarus determine on a enjoying card, recalling Tablo’s opening line, “I’m all in with a shedding hand.” Finally, “Cease the Rain” takes a sensible method to dealing with struggling, acknowledging that one “can’t run away from the ache.” Nonetheless, Tablo and RM categorical that they’re “tryna cease the rain,” if not for themselves, then for others. Ache is inevitable, however their attempting makes all of the distinction. By displaying empathy and laying naked their darkest ideas, Tablo and RM permit others to really feel much less alone in theirs.
(YouTube. Weverse Journal. Rolling Stone. Instagram [1][2]. Lyrics by way of Genius [1][2]. Photographs by way of Ours Co.).
