RM (musician)
Early life and education
Kim Nam-joon was born on September 12, 1994, in Sangdo-dong, Dongjak District, Seoul, South Korea, and grew up in Ilsan District, Goyang, where his family moved when he was aged four or five. He has a younger sister and is part of the Gangneung Kim clan. As a child, RM largely learned English by watching the American sitcom Friends with his mother. As a student, he actively wrote poetry and often received awards for his writing. He posted his work to an online poetry website for roughly one year, where he received moderate attention. As a result, RM expressed interest in pursuing a literary career but later decided against it. When he was twelve years old, he studied in New Zealand for four months.
Early life and education
At age 11, in fifth grade, RM became interested in hip-hop music after hearing Epik High's "Fly". Finding that the song had provided him comfort, he decided to look further into the genre. He was introduced to the music of American rapper Eminem by his school teacher, which first sparked RM's interest in lyricism. He would print out lyrics that he felt were "cool" and shared them with friends. RM began songwriting at that time, stating that his poetry became lyrics when combined with music. In 2007, as a first-year middle school student, he began rapping in local amateur hip-hop circles, creating his first self-composed recording with the program Adobe Audition (then called Cool Edit) and later participating in his first concert in 2008. RM became more active in the underground Korean hip-hop scene under the moniker Runch Randa, releasing several tracks and collaborations with other underground rappers such as Zico).
Early life and education
As a student, RM had an IQ of 148 and scored in the top 1% of the nation in the university entrance examinations) for language, math, foreign language and social studies. Because his parents had been strongly opposed to his interest in a musical career due to his academic achievements, RM initially decided to set music aside to focus on his studies. He eventually convinced his mother to allow him to be a rapper, asking her if "she wanted to have a son who was a first-place rapper, or a 5,000th-place student".
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