BTS’ Suga and the raw power of Agust D: How the rapper’s alter-egos shone a light into the layered world of Min Yoongi

“Min Yoongi is dead, I killed him,” he raps in the song The Last, indicating that he had to destroy a part of himself to become who he is today — he had to rise above the apprehension and vulnerability that would hold him back in surviving in a merciless world. The Agust D of 2016 was starkly different from Suga — the seemingly reserved rapper from BTS, a blend of his stage personality and personal self — the real Min Yoongi, we see in Weverse Lives, and the numerous variety shows like Run BTS, In The Soop and Bon Voyage. Agust D says what Suga and Min Yoongi wouldn’t say — he doesn’t fear anything.

It’s not as if Suga is gentle by any means in his rapping — he channels the burning angst of the rapline, especially in the early days, as the Cyphers proved, as well as UGH! However, with Agust D, Suga gets the entire stage to himself—expressing all that he has withheld. He dives into all the contentious issues that Suga of BTS cannot do. Speaking to Time Magazine, Suga had briefly explained the difference between the two personalities, “The difference is that there is a lot more that I can openly express and that I can show a more raw side to myself (with Agust D). What’s similar is that both sing of dreams and hope.” Another similarity between Suga and Agust D is that they’re both struggling with glowing fame; it’s a constant, herculean battle, as the lyrics to Interlude: Shadow from BTS’s Map of the Soul showed.  In the song, Suga raps, “I’m afraid, flying high is terrifying, nobody told me how high it is up here…” Both Agust D and Suga are always teetering at a precipice.

Battling with the self in Daechwita

In 2020, Agust D released ‘D2’, a mixtape comprising 10 tracks, one of them being Daechwita, which raged through the charts owing to its hard messaging. The name ‘Daechwita’ refers to Korean military music that plays when royalty makes an entrance. In the song, Agust D hits out at the idea of popular K-Pop idols, who receive the title of ‘Kings’ and Queens’.  In Daechwita, Agust D plays around with two versions of himself—the King and the rebel. The ‘King’ is drunk on power and kills without mercy, is ready to behead on q  whim—he is sure that nothing can bring him down. He challenges the dissenters to fight him—and the ‘rebel’ version of Agust D does. The video opens with the King walking with a swag, looking at his township. “I got no pretensions, I kill them all,” he raps. He emphasises, he doesn’t need to flex. “I’m a king, I’m a boss,” is his refrain. 

In the video, the rebel is sentenced to death, he finds a way to strike a partnership with the executioner and then finally kills the king. In the delightful part of the track, Agust D’s voice drops into dangerous tones as the rebel stands with his hands tied, amid flames expressing his need to stay grounded. “I wanted clothes, I wanted everything now what next—-I only looked up and now want to look down and have both my feet on the ground.” 

Once again—-Agust D shows that he’s got both the king and the rebel in him. As the king, he’s got all the fame that Suga of BTS had worked so hard to achieve. As the rebel, he echoes what the common people say—-a more honest, grounded person, who wants to fight the system. This is the hint of the old Agust D we met in 2016.  With Daechwita, Agust D shows the power of fame that can consequently result in arrogance, in short, pride comes before a fall. He needs to remind himself  about who he is, and how he got to his throne— by painstaking hardship, blood sweat and tears. Agust D is worried that fame is almost corrupting him and turning him into a monster—-and so the ‘king’ part of him has to die as he struggles to ground himself. In the behind-the-scenes video, Suga explained, “Four years ago Agust D became king. Now another Agust D is confronting him.”

Stripping away the glamour 

The mixtape D-2 is also an incisive glimpse into Suga’s deepest fears and insecurities, which are triggered by external forces— taken forward by Agust D.  Ranging from mockery, angst to wistfulness, the mixtape has deeply contemplative moments—examining the journey of Agust D for the past four years. He thinks of the person that he was in 2016 and the person he is now—a fear of achieving everything that you wanted in life, which isn’t yet fulfilling. In the song Moonlight, we see a restless Agust D, questioning himself and his craft entirely— he isn’t sure that he has talent to begin with. He feels the pressure of the expectations imposed on BTS, and how his youth has somehow been lost in trying to gain this monumental success and fame. In What Do You Think, Agust D slams those, especially the media, who keep questioning the band about the legitimacy of their fame, their eventual military service, to instigating fan wars. He repeats it 15 times, and then finally hits with the punch line, “No matter what you think, I have no interest.” 

RM embraces his past self in his mixtape, J-Hope explores different sides of himself and his journey, Agust D has raging anger towards his earlier self. He has loathing for Agust D and Suga of the past—-he wants to burn away his old self in ‘Burn It’. In People, He also brings out the emotional ideas of masculinity, juxtaposed against toxic masculinity—-and the need to vulnerable. Agust D asks, “What’s wrong with living like that?” There’s a nihilistic and broken tone in 28, where a rather weary Agust D says, “The life I’d hope for, the life I wanted, just that kind of life, I don’t care how it turns out.”  Agust D gave Suga a free reign to explore all sides of himself—-with hope, the fears, residual anger and seething angst, the resignation to a life that he might or might not want. Suga cuts Agust D loose. 

Suga, Agust D are all a part of Min Yoongi—-both detailing his fears, anxieties, and constantly introspecting on his towering fame that terrifies him as well—-in different ways, but still slowly letting the fans into the deeply complex world of the rapper.