Today, we will be giving an update on the DPR collective. If you’re new, we released an episode on DPR back in September of 2022 where we gave an intro on who they are and what they do. And a lot has happened since then – so much so that we felt that an update was absolutely necessary.
Listen to the update here:
| What we said during Episode 25 | |
| Moodswings In To Order (7/29/22) – “Every song on MIITO was produced by REM, except Ballroom Extravaganza which was produced by both REM and Cream.” NOT TRUE. We’ll get into why we said this and how it was debunked during the timeline segment coming up. |
DPR: The 2023/2024 Update
Jan 12 2023
On January 12, 2023, Scott Kim – who back then went by DPR REM – tweeted the following statement. This was curious because the DPR collective had all just announced that DPR Ian and DPR Live would be playing Coachella 2023, so the back to back news came as a huge shock to Dreamers who knew him to be the brains and behind the scenes producer. He used Twitter/X a lot to communicate, so many of the fans felt pretty close to him.
Feb 22 2023
As the DPR tour came to an end, DPR Live took to Instagram to share his pride and gratitude with those who were a part of the tour, and of course, the fans. His carousel of pictures included a credits-like screen with a list of everyone within the DPR collective who was a part of the tour. Notably, DPR REM’s name was missing from the list. This is when Dreamers started to suspect there was something more to Scott’s hiatus.
Shortly after, Scott took to Twitter/X to share the following reflection:
Cryptic. Sus. Vague. He posted a few more times about life being crazy and other reflections. Moving right along.
June 13, 2023
REM changed his Instagram account handle to @iknowrem (@_iknowrem on Twitter/X)
June 20th 2023
REM posted to his Instagram. It’s his only post to date.
Aug 26 2023
REM took to Twitter/X to promise to start posting more regularly. He proved once again that all men do is lie…
October 9th 2023
DPR LIVE announced that he has established his own company “CTYL” (Coming To You Live). He clarified that he is still under the DPR label, but will be taking a break under this label and name DPR LIVE.
DPR CREAM and DPR IAN both encouraged him to take this next step, to share his story through his next full-length album under his government name, Hong Dabin.
Ian publicly supported Dabin’s decision on a livestream shortly after.
October 17th 2023
Dabin announces Til I Live is dropping the following day. This seemed like a rebirth of sorts because of his drop eight years prior Til I Die Aug 22, 2015 (DPR Live’s official debut wasn’t til 2017 with his CTYL EP).
Til I Die expressed Dabin’s desire and determination to pursue rap music until the end of his life. The beat and melody were daring, upbeat, and matched the grit of his lyrics.
October 18th 2023
Til I Live dropped on October 18th and it’s –– as expected –– in complete contrast to Til I Die. Til I Live starts with 100% melancholic piano keys followed by a beat and the lyrics “Now I can smile for my father.” When we first listened and looked into the lyrics, we immediately knew the silence on what went down with (or at least how they felt about) REM was over:
As always, you hide behind the lie called “family”
Now, where’s all our blood soaked money
Spit out the money you took, motherfucker
You pest motherfucker
Give me back my twenties, motherfucker
But for you ‘shhh’ I kept quiet
What I’ve seen is my brother’s blood
That’s word to Ian
Word to Cream, and to the rest
Our chat, as per usual, was all over this.
And then… radio silence.
Dec 22 2023
ARTIC got officially announced as a DPR member (we’ll have a section on him later so stick around to meet him!)
Jan 20 2024
Dabin held a listening party for ‘Giggles.’ He took advantage of this moment to make his feelings about REM abundantly clear.
Jan 23 2024
Dabin dropped ‘Giggles,’ his first full-length album under his name, with 13 songs.
If anyone had doubts that the lines in Til I Live were about Scott, WMP Freestyle removed all doubt. Although he starts dropping disses from Verse 1, the heat rises to a boil in Verse 2:
Telling me I should be grateful
Shut up, where my money at?
Don’t worry, the accountants will be auditing you
Soon they be lurking
Open your eyes and stay vigilant
Full of snakes in the grass
With words like “us”
And “team” you used to try and restrict and control us
But nah nah
That don’t work around here bitch
I dare you to act tough again bitch
That’s when it’s
Taser razor taser
Huh shit huh
‘Trust’ is the father of ‘loyalty’
Twisted and full of problems
Why do my brothers bleed for what you’ve done?, shit
And then on Verse 3 he called him out by name:
After having betrayed your bum secretary, your partner in crime
Your dumbass chooses to REM sleep as if everything’s fine.
A lot of “shhh” in the lyrics from Til I Live to WMP Freestyle too, which DREAMERS have pointed out was part of REM’s prior account handle on social media, aka “ShhhKim.”
Tea.
Jan 24 2024
On Wednesday, January 24th, Ian went live to gush about Dabin’s album drop. “I love this album, I really do. If you haven’t heard it already go listen to Giggles, by Hong Dabin. Not DPR Live, Hong Dabin.”
Ian literally went through every song, shared his favorite lyrics, and gave us insights into what may have been the inspiration behind songs, like Green Juice, for example. “He was actually juicing back then!”
More importantly, right after mentioning how Giggles was not only an important and meaningful moment for Dabin but for all of them –– especially Cream since he was credited for producing close to half of the songs) –– Ian addressed something super important, which is one of the things we wanted to correct from our first episode: REM had been listed as a producer on all of Ian’s MIITO full album songs, but Ian very politely but decisively said –– that’s not true. His exact words:
“As for me, there’s a couple of things I also want to clear up. A lot of people think REM produced my songs for some reason. I think it’s because in the credits somewhere it’s written as Scott producing some of my songs. And that’s not really the case. He didn’t produce any of my songs, he didn’t make any of the beats, yeah so he didn’t really produce the musical aspect of any of the songs it was actually just me and Cream helped alongside. When I see a lot of people say ‘credit should be given where credit is due…’ When I see people say that a lot of the songs that they like from DPR Ian was made by REM, I just… I don’t know where you get that from. He did not make any of my songs. At all. I told them to correct that on the credits. I have no idea why it’s written like that on the credits but that is absolutely not the case. So yeah. You know. I just found that a little bit interesting. Um…”
Jan 25 2024
At 2am on January 25th, Scott tweeted @dabin with a notes app apology:
A few hours later, he followed his notes app apology with another tweet addressing the producer credits on MIITO:
As you can tell by the engageent metrics, the man was RATIOED. And that’s where things stand at the moment.
Now as promised, let’s meet the latest addition to the official DPR gang gang: DPR Artic! Some facts about him:
- Government name: Kim Yongwoo
- November 5th Scorpio, 6 ft tall and super strong [TikTok].
- Started going by ARTIC in 2018 before joining DPR
- His music as ARTIC can be found on his Soundcloud
- Has been a part of DPR since 2019 as a producer and DJ (after the CTYL tour)
- His first performance with DPR was the Head In The Clouds music Festival 2019 in LA
- Was officially announced as a DPR member on December 22nd, 2023
- He performed at the Regime Tour Finale in SEOUL in February of 2023 with DPR CREAM.
- He will be debuting in February 2024with an EP (seven songs total: three solo songs and four features, one of them being DPR Ian).
- Note: he has produced and performed under the stage name ARTIC in gigs unrelated to DPR.
Now, another major update that we think deserves the spotlight: DPR Ian opening the door to the DID conversation in September of 2023.
First off, what’s DID?
- Previously known as Multiple Personalities Disorder, DID stands for Dissociative Identity Disorder, and it is a complex psychological condition caused by many factors, including severe trauma during early childhood.
- Ian has always been extremely open about his diagnosis with type 1 bipolar disorder, but as of his Dear Insanity drop he’s been more willing to call out his character of MITO as an alter that he switches into while he’s in manic lows.
- It seems he first talked about it during his interview with JoJo back on September 9th 2023. His exact words were: “The main story is based on a character called MITO. So MITO is the character that I switch into when I have a very manic low, because I have bipolar. So I have a tendency to switch, kinda like DID.” Mr. Insanity is the side that represents his manic highs.
- He went onto talk about how:
- He can’t control when he goes into a dip or a high
- He “wakes up” from periods of blackout and doesn’t remember what he said or did.
- He is usually a homebody and doesn’t want to be around people while in his manic episodes as he can’t control or remember his words or actions, but he admitted that all of the black and white parts of So Beautiful are him switched into MITO and he doesn’t remember any of them being shot.
- He also admitted to blacking out for most of the tour appearances “almost a quarter of the times near to the end” they performed due to the stimuli.
- He can feel his body going into the switch into his alters
- He did a livestream on September 16th where he wanted to talk about the lore behind MITO and Mr. Insanity and he went into a lot more detail about his DID, and he confessed that he hadn’t been more specific and open about it before because he was embarrassed. It was a super honest, informative, educational, and open explanation. He said he had recently come to terms with the fact that bipolar and DID go hand in hand, and he also shared his research.
- He also disclaimed the “danger” or weight of basing your artistry on your mental disorders/illnesses.
To find out our opinions on all of this as well as our first impressions on Dabin’s “Giggles” album, check out our full episode:
MIA2K: A K-Pop Podcast 
Leave a comment