Decoding D-2 — a saga of perceptions
With a phenomenally-produced set of songs, Agust D aims to wholly immerse listeners in his interpretations of his world.
On May 22, 2020, Min Yoongi surprised ARMYs with the release of the second mixtape of his alter ego — Agust D, titled D-2. The thirty-two-minute, ten-track-long mixtape was released four years after the first self-titled one, “Agust D”.
The release of D-2 led to a massive burst of creativity across the whole fandom — from art to technical breakdowns of the music production, the mixtape became one of the most, if not the most discussed topic throughout the fandom for the year.
As someone who has been a listener of BTS’s music for the last four years, it’s hard to ignore the miniscule details behind every track and track-list. When BTS or a member of BTS releases a set of songs, it’s never just that; there is more to what meet the eye, always.
It took me a lot of time to figure out why the songs have been made and arranged the way they have, and I’m going to try to lay it down in this post.
(I recommend you listen to the songs while reading this.)
D-2 — the breakdown
Consider the concentric rings on the inside of the bark of a metaphorical tree — that’s how the songs of the mixtape have been arranged, with the rings of the tree being his perceptions of various things.
The outermost ring is his environment, and that is where we begin.
Moonlight
The mixtape begins with Moonlight, a song which begins with a description of what has changed over the years, since Agust D’s last appearance four years ago — his success, fame, (The beginnings were humble, Daegu, yeah, from a basement in Namsandong, To a penthouse in Hannam the Hill now,) and what hasn’t — his passion, the battle in his head between the reality of his music and what he wants to create ideally.
The song also involves him questioning his worth as a producer — whether he can create music, whether he is a genius that people claim him to be, despite his string of successes over the years (..One moment I feel like I’ve easily earned what I have, And the next moment I’m compensated for the fucking hard work I’ve done..).
The crux of the song arrives in the chorus — while a lot has changed in his life, his environment, his existence, pieces of his insecurity still remain, which he calls the “moonlight” of his world.
The night is often associated with darker times of hiding and holding back, and the moonlight here can be interpreted as the imbalance of overconfidence and under-confidence that he has to deal with while he creates his art.
While the first verse describes his life over the last four years, the second verse presents an example of what a usual day of song-writing is like for him. With this verse, he shows us how the process is quite bumpy — sometimes the words come easy to him, sometimes they don’t. A lot of us people who create — be it writing, music, or art — have faced creativity blocks at some point or the other in our processes.
Yoongi, like always, tries to bring comfort to people by not sugarcoating things and giving his listeners comfort by showing them that no one’s life is actually as perfect as the glitz and glamour show it to be — everyone struggles, and everyone lives with feelings of doubt and insecurity, no matter what peak of fame they exist on.
The song ends with a lesson on changes that he further carries on with track 7, People — changes are inevitable; the only thing we can control is how we react to them.
Daechwita
Track 2, Daechwita, is the title track of the mixtape. It carries forward the imbalance of under-confidence and vanity with a traditional story-telling, full with cultural South Korean elements, including a sample of the Daechwita, music played to welcome the military in royal processions during the Joseon era.
The story revolves around two characters — an overzealous king driven insane with power, and an equally overzealous rebel who aims to overthrow him. The song’s lyrics blur the lines between the rebel and the king — both seem equally passionate and driven — and while we can ascertain the presence of two characters, the lyrics make it very hard to decide who’s saying what.
Lyrics along the lines of Shut up, yeah, mmm you calling me a pup, yeah, I was born as a tiger, at least I’m not a weak like you, are an example of the lines blurring between the characters, as one cannot definitely say who says this — the rebel or the king.
The blurring means to show that though the rebel and the king lie on two extreme sides of a spectrum, they are both quite similar in their existence. This concept of similarity is furthered from Moonlight — while Moonlight explored the similarities in his past and future, Daechwita explores the similarity between the insanity that his fame could drive him to, and the fear that his insecurities create within him.
The song comes to a conclusion between both characters — the second verse sees the rebel and the king accepting that they might have already reached the peak of their power, and now that reality clicks in, both want to draw back, because victory is already theirs (Yeah, what’s next? Here comes my reality check, there’s nowhere higher, I only looked up and now I want to look down and put my feet on the ground).
The mad king has established his rule and reached the peak of his ruling power, and the rebel has made the people join his cause and fight for what’s right. The end of the video sees a new meaning to the lyric off with his head, a line popularized by the Red Queen, but instead of the rebel dying, it’s the king who accepts defeat and presumably dies at the hands of the rebel.
The power imbalance between the vain and the under-confident comes to a strong conclusion with the next track.
What do you think?
While many mistake this song for a diss track, if the story is followed, this song brings back the balance between the two extremes highlighted in the previous songs, and shows Agust D confidently talking about his achievements, without putting himself down, or by directly putting someone else down.
The stan-twitter-famous line “Crazy that you’d think that my success has a connection to your failure”, highlights how strongly Yoongi believes in his success — he is finally majorly confident in his abilities, and he proudly takes credit for his successes, and expects more success to rightfully come to him as a result of his hard work.
Additionally, from “Shove the past into a rice chest, I’m about to dine on what I know is mine” in Daechwita, to finally coming to What do you think, Yoongi confidently accepts his past and considers it to be one of the reasons he is what he is today, “..For I’m not concerned by stray grains of rice that’ve stuck, Just like they’ve fallen off of their own accord, the whole lot of them..”.
This confidence brings him a sort of indifference that comes when you truly love and respect yourself. Ignorance truly becomes bliss when all you are concerned with is your well being and your success, the success that you have toiled day and night for.
Throughout the song, he constantly highlights this indifference with pride, since he knows that his priority is his and BTS’s existence and success. It’s a beautiful conclusion to this war between two realities, and rather than being a “diss” track, it is a beautiful and strong acceptance of the success that Min Yoongi, SUGA and Agust D have rightfully earned.
Strange (Ft. RM of BTS)
With the conclusion of this arc, Agust D moves into the inner concentric rings to put forward his interpretation of society through Strange, and to ensure that he provides the broadest perception, he brings in a feature from RM aka Kim Namjoon, who has a very different style of writing from Yoongi, though both of them often end up agreeing on matters when it is seen in songs.
While Namjoon writes from an internal point-of-view, from how thing x affects him, Yoongi always looks outside himself and provides a viewpoint external to him, present in his surroundings.
This can also be seen in Strange, where Agust D takes over the first verse to discuss how toxic capitalism has gone so far as to even capitalize the dreams we haven’t even had on our own — feeding us only two point of views — what society deems right, and what society deems to be wrong (Polarization is the ugliest flower in the world), and at the end of it all, who’s actually benefitting from society’s definition of “right”?.
Namjoon continues the song by taking the polarization concept forward — a certain number of choices are defined to us as right, and so, when we say that we have “taste”, do we really?
With the limited number of “right decisions” that society has defined, many of us don’t even step out of our comfort zone and broaden our perspective with the possibilities present. So when we follow any of these “right decisions” and stay within that ideological boundary defined by a society, how can we confidently say that we have “taste” in what we do?
With just the first line of his verse (You think you got taste? Oh babe, how do you know?), Namjoon clears up his entire stance, while the rest of the verse further elaborates on it. “..All day, fighting over those who glimmer more..” is a perfect representation of how toxic capitalism has become so heavily embedded in us, that we only see two sides to be taken, but miss out on the bigger issues that only we as a society can tackle. There are many examples one can take for this.
Consider this — two people fight on twitter over which celebrity aka their “fave” is better, not realizing that each celebrity is gaining traction from the negative or positive publicity, so any opinion at the end of the day doesn’t really affect them, does it? It only brings them social attention, and no matter who wins the argument, the celebrity will always be the clear winner.
28 (ft. NiiHWA)
Now, we move further in to deeper rings of the metaphorical tree, as we come to 28, one of the most heart-aching tracks on the mixtape. With this song, Agust D finally begins telling us his perception of himself.
28 begins with a sullen realization that no matter how strongly we want to hold on to our youth, it often slips away from us because of how fast the world is going, and we don’t even realize it.
Contrary to how fast the world is going, the song provides a slow imagery — he breathes in and out, and slowly comes to term with the fact that maybe, just maybe, he grew up, and he is no longer the person that he wanted to hold on to forever.
When it comes to youth, as Agust D recites in the second verse, we keep waiting for the change to come, we try our best to prepare ourselves for the day we would have to grow up, but one day we realize that the dream we had been having for so long is now just a memory.
The true crux of growing up, is the letting go of the dreams that we promised ourselves we would achieve, but we couldn’t.
Sometimes I would burst into tears for no reason
The life I’d hoped for, the life I’d wanted, just that kind of life
I don’t care now how it turns out anymore
The last line is significant of the maturity one gets when they “grow up”, they realize that some things just aren’t in our grasp, and we have to let them go.
When someone grows up, they leave a version of themselves behind. Most people choose to keep it alive for the memories. Some, however, like Agust D, choose to do away with it, or “burn” it, so that they can move ahead with their lives.
And so, this forms the premise of Burn it.
Burn It (Ft. Max)
With this song, Agust D explains that while he chose to do away with his past and all its emotions completely (..Let’s burn it, my past self, It would burn again to the deepest pits below, to the very last.. // Burn it burn it yeah burn it burn it, Facing you of the deepest place, Embarrassment, hatred, disgust, even rage), we don’t have to do the same.
The song essentially presents a choice — one can either leave ashes of their past self behind like he did, or burn even brighter and move ahead with determination, so that you never have to give up on your dream at all.
Moral of the story: it isn’t cowardly to give up, sometimes it just becomes necessary. Like he mentions: I hope you don’t forget that giving up decisively also counts as courage.
People
Track 7 of D-2 is a beautiful ode to the dynamism of life — how quickly everything it can change, and how quickly it can change people.
The track has Agust D talking to himself — he tells himself that people change just as life does, and you can either go with the flow and grow with the change, or you can stay static and blame the people who’ve changed for your predicaments.
Yoongi refers to people as “animals of regret”, as many times we choose to ignore the changes we’re being subjected to.
We kick and scream in the face of discomfort, we crave the things we don’t have and detest the things we do. What was once special to us, becomes ordinary.
People is a sullen acceptance of “.. and so life goes on.” hidden behind a catchy beat and gorgeous vocals. Similar to 28 in this aspect, it brings us an inevitable acceptance behind an upbeat rhythm.
Honsool
The word “Honsool” translates to “drinking alone” in Korean, and that is exactly what Agust D wants you to envision.
A tired Min Yoongi returns home after a tiring day of a strict schedule. While the rest of the day went by in a daze, when he returns home, he realizes how much time has passed. Tired, he decides to end the day with alcohol.
He expresses here, that the process of drinking alone, is the only slow thing in his entire fast-paced, busy day. With no schedule, and no worries for tomorrow, he clears his head with a drink, thus leading him to sing, “I detoxify with alcohol”.
The song, while being short and extremely descriptive, describes something that he does completely alone, thus taking us further in to the deeper rings of the metaphorical tree.
Interlude: Set me free
An interlude, by definition, is a pause between a longer piece of music. This song acts as the second innermost ring of the tree, where Agust D craves freedom.
Freedom from what? If we follow from Honsool, he might be asking from freedom from his hectic life.
If we consider Daechwita, he might want freedom from his drive and passion, that is leading him to a peak of fame he is not sure he can handle.
Most of all, he asks for freedom from any more misunderstandings he might hold about his life. Up to this point in the mixtape, he has clearly expressed his thoughts on what he feels about a multitude of things. Now, as he reaches a conclusion, he pleads that he doesn’t repeat the cycle of events that have caused him to create these songs in the first place.
Dear My Friend (Ft. Kim Jong Wan)
With the last song, we reach Agust D’s innermost perception, the perception of an emotional event that changed his life forever.
This song is Yoongi at his most vulnerable, where he recalls the story of a friend he can no longer call his friend, while drawing heartaching parallels from Spring Day, another emotional song about the loss of a beautiful friendship (Was it you who changed? Or was it me? Uh, I hate this flowing time, it’s us who changed).
His most vulnerable self lies at the very end of the mixtape, implying the direction of the whole set of songs. We started from his environment, and ended up in his very heart.
With this, the emotional journey of D-2 ends.
As you listen to the songs one by one, and trace the journey behind them, you will notice that this isn’t just some mixtape; it’s a beautiful saga of interpretations carefully woven together to show you all that Yoongi has learnt and observed in his career.
If there is something that remains unclear to you, or you would like to discuss more about any specific song, you can come talk to me on twitter.
Thank you.
