In January 2023, Tablo told Rolling stones "Another Tablo X RM collaboration is in the pipeline." Fans believe that this collaboration between EPIK High host and BTS leaders will happen faster than later. But two years after the rapper initially hinted at the upcoming song, the artist is ready to share their evocative single "Stop the Rain," which will be released on May 2 at midnight ET.
"I've been holding this song for two years," Tablo told Rolling stones In an exclusive Zoom interview in Seoul. "One of the reasons is because when I was listening to this song, I realized we were both talking about something very personal. It really felt like a diary or some kind of confession entry. I just thought of me at that time, it was crazy, and we didn't really realize the song."
By the end of 2023, when Tablo is still thinking about how to work with 30-year-old RM RM, the song enlists, which is mandatory for all people with good health.
“Once he was enlisted, I couldn’t contact him for a while,” Tablo, 44, continued. "I think maybe this song should come out when he's around, or it's not at all. There are a lot of songs in my vault that I didn't release for the same reason. So I kept sticking with it." He said that after the young artist enlisted in the army, he talked to RM "a few times" but never came up with the theme of the song. “And then a few months ago, he hit me and said, 'Hyeong (Korean term for a young man speaking in his brother or close male friend) Where are the songs we recorded not long ago? Why don't you give up on it? I explained to him that I thought his lyrics were very personal and I don't know if he wanted it. He said, "What are you talking about? Let it go!'"
Tabro smiled and said, "That's why I'm totally anxious to get things together and finish the mix. That's why this song is playing now."
Tablo's intentional release of the song a month before RM exited the army forced RM to answer questions about his lyrics that were undisguised in their despair, their shared feelings - at different times in their lives - they may not have been long enough to grow up. RM's rap is in a lazy rhythm, "I'm still a kid/I'm sure I'm destined to be in 27 clubs/I'm 29 in the bathtub."
The 27 clubs refer to a group of famous musicians who died by chance at the age of 27, including Amy Winehouse, Jimi Hendrix, Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones, Kurt Cobain, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin and K-pop star Jonghyun of the Shine.
Living in Tajinyo (a year-long smear campaign carefully planned by thousands of hatred against his anti-fans) does not want RM to be disgusted by the goal of his lyrics. The personal themes they address on “Stop the Rain” include mental and physical abuse and suicidal ideation. The song is in English, except for a line at the end of the North Korean: "다시다시덫뒤에뒤에", which hints at the cycle of feeling trapped.
“If it were just my songs, only my songs, I would release this song right away,” Tablo said. "But with RM, it's a different story. I'm worried about how it will affect him. I don't want him to be hurt in any way."
Tablo is not too concerned about how listeners react to their lyrics, which shows the abuse he said of his childhood life: “Backed by shame/raising a pole sacrificed in the name of God/bloody calf/they claim it was love/sad for me.”
Before his family immigrated to Canada, Tablo attended school in South Korea when his teacher was impunity. (Physical punishment was banned before 2010.) "My sister talked about this in front of her daughter, and Haru asked if I was hit," he recalled. “My sister said, ‘Oh, your dad slapped all the time.’ So, the song was fun.
As a parent, Tablo said he has worked hard to break the cycle. Beating a child is not something he has never done before. But he sometimes finds himself speaking to his daughter in a way that reminds me of “the past few generations have passed by me.”
“I grew up somehow, sometimes saying things I hate (I heard it when I was a kid),” he said. “But my daughter was open to me and told me how she felt.” This gave him a chance to “apologize and stop.”
He said the core memory of his own childhood made it “stop rain” and that rain provided hope, renewal and cleaning that could alleviate certain despair.
"Even when people asked me what I like the most, I always said it was rainy," he said. "They would assume that it was about raining. But not. How lucky it made me. How lucky it was to get to hold an umbrella with someone, which made me even more precious, made me realize how rare and amazing days it was to see the rain bow, and I love it. I love the rain because it sounds emotional because I'm always emitting because I'm doing it all the time.
Therefore, Rain is a repetitive theme in Tablo's work with Epik High ("Rapsody of Rain", "Rain Song", "Rain Song", "Umbrella", "Rain again tomorrow"), which is not surprising. Or, he was attracted to RM's solo song "Forever Rain", and K-Pop Idol considers how heavy rain makes him a little anonymous from his gaze.
RM often praised Tablo's artistic nature and talked about how much Epik High had influenced his growth as a musician. But Tablo emphasizes not only the importance of RM and BTS, not only for the band’s music, but also for the way they break cultural and musical barriers. It is precisely because of this mutual respect that their cooperation ranges more than just guests on the track. Everyone is involved in writing what they will sing and providing ideas on how to make the song stronger. This is how they work "all day" and it's a cut of RM's 2022 solo album indigo. With “Stop the Rain,” Tablo agreed with RM’s suggestion that the song’s English flow was better than the original planned Korean.
“I’m honored by the way he treated both collaborations and he put in a lot of effort for it,” Tablo said. “He cared enough about this great song. There was another bridge that made the song longer. He said, ‘How do you think of it?’ Until he said, I’m right about it, but an example I want to tell you is that there’s a word in the song that just started saying, “I can never stop the rain.” Then RM said, “I think we should change that line. I was like, “Yo, better! ””
He added: "What I thought of is when I was young working on songs with other artists, if I think something is really the best option, then I just let it fly and keep it quiet. I think that's what you should do. But in retrospect, I should say something, and maybe I'm going to say a real collaboration, too.