Not Just a Flex: Many Layers of Agust D’s Daechwita (August D Trilogy: Part 1)

 

I did NOT like Daechwita when I first heard it.

This feels important to admit. I was new to rap and hip-hop then, still learning how to listen without expecting melody to soften everything. It sounded loud, aggressive and just felt arrogant. So, Daechwita first landed just as noise. A flex song that was impressive for the flows, but emotionally distant. I moved on.

What made me go back to it wasn’t the song itself, but Yoongi. By then, Seesaw had already been on repeat for months and Amygdala made me felt seen. The layers in them, whether sonically or lyrically, made me rethink that Daechwita cannot just be noise. By then I knew that when Yoongi creates, there is almost always more happening than what you see on the surface.

So I went back to Daechwita.

This time, I didn’t just listen. I read. I sat with the lyrics. I paid attention to the production choices in the videos. I stopped reacting to the volume and started asking why it needed to be that loud. What was being declared and what was being defended? What was Yoongi hiding in plain sight?

And slowly, the song shifted.

What had sounded like a loud flex began to reveal itself as something far more complicated. A song about Power. Power, that doesn’t feel comfortable when wielding it. It is about identity split between survival and dominance. It is about history, class in society, and the cost of sitting on a throne you fought your way onto. Daechwita was daring me to look closer.

This post comes from that second listen. And the multiple times I put it on loop. And from realizing that Agust D often builds his work like a trapdoor. What looks like bravado is usually a warning and what sounds like confidence is often armor. And what feels confrontational to listener, is more often a conversation he is having with his own past self.

1st layer: Sound as declaration

Before Daechwita says anything, it announces itself.

The opening is not subtle. It isn’t meant to be. The traditional daechwita sample crashes in and you just cannot ignore it. Historically, daechwita was played to signal the presence of royalty. It meant that the King was passing by, and you were expected to bow down and be reverent.

Starting the song this way is a very deliberate choice made by Agust D. It is a choice that is meant to be just a clever fusion meant to sound exotic or impressive to outsiders. It is a sound rooted in hierarchy, control, and public spectacle for the natives. By placing it at the very beginning of the song, Agust D establishes his position as royalty. He says:



Who's the king, who's the boss?

You all know my name


When that traditional sound collides with modern hip-hop production it just sharpens the whole sound. This is why the song can feel abrasive on first listen, especially if you’re new to rap or unused to music that refuses to cushion itself. But that abrasiveness is the point in this song.

Flex songs usually invite admiration. But, Daechwita doesn’t wait for approval or care if you’re comfortable. The sound design itself mirrors the song’s central tension: power that must be declared loudly because it is always under threat. It is also about authority that cannot afford softness.

There’s also something deeply intentional about choosing a sound so culturally specific and refusing to translate it. The song doesn’t pause to explain itself. It doesn’t contextualize the Korean traditions infused for global palatability. It assumes its right to exist exactly as it is. That refusal matters too because Agust D never seeks validation. This is Korean history meeting Korean modernity on its own terms, not filtered for international consumption. This power (whether it’s Agust D or BTS) didn’t appear overnight and it carries the weight of history whether it wants to or not.


2nd layer: The Persona of the King

At the beginning, the king in Daechwita looks exactly like what people expect. Someone with absolute authority, wealth and power. Agust D displays  that without apology. A ruler who answers to no one. If you stop there, it’s easy to call the song a victory lap or a flex.

But the king is not relaxed. There is nothing indulgent about him. There is no pleasure or softness about the king. Instead the persona feels rigid, hyper-aware, and paranoid. This is not a man who is enjoying his dominance but a man who is constantly forced to defend it. Here, the throne reads more like a pressure point. Here authority is not freedom but a shackle. To sit at the top is to be seen, judged, and challenged constantly. Power, in Daechwita, is something you must perform flawlessly, because even the smallest crack can lead to complete collapse.

This is where the song starts betraying its own swagger. The king persona is constructed and almost theatrical. The louder the declaration of power, the more it suggests what is underneath is vulnerable to being taken away. It talks about confidence that never feels truly permanent. And then there’s the isolation. The king is shown always standing alone. Elevated, untouchable, and fundamentally cut off from his subjects. There’s no warmth in his rule and no sense of belonging. The higher he rises, the more solitary he becomes.

That’s where this persona starts to feel familiar. Because Agust D has never written power as something uncomplicated. Even at his most confident, there’s always an undercurrent of tension. The king in Daechwita is not the ultimate aspiration. It is a role assumed out of necessity. A mask worn to survive a world that is eager to strip you of everything the moment you falter.

Agust D is NOT saying, “I am king, admire me.”

This is him saying, “I am king, don’t come for me.”

Because Daechwita doesn’t just present the king and only the king. It places him opposite someone from the lower class, poorer, but someone who knows exactly what it costs to rise this high.

3rd layer: The king vs the commoner

Daechwita also gives us the king’s shadow, in the commoner (also played by Min Yoongi)

Opposite the ruler stands another figure. The version of the self that existed before the throne, before the authority, before the armor. The boy who knew hunger, struggles, instability, and the particular humiliation of wanting more when the society tells you its all beyond your reach. The commoner is not a metaphor pulled from history. It is very personal.

And so, this is where the song turns inward. The tension in Daechwita is not between ruler and enemies. It is actually between past and present selves. Between who you were when you had nothing and who you became to make sure you never return there. The king in Daechwita isn’t an oppressor because he is cruel. He is trying to suppress his own past self.

The commoner exists as a constant reminder to the king of his very humble origins, and as a result he is also a threat to the illusion of stability the throne promises. If the past self resurfaces unchecked, it destabilizes the authority of the present one. So, the king does what power has always done when it feels challenged. He silences it. Which is why the violence feels strangely intimate.

This is not an external conquest. This is self-policing. The ruthless discipline of someone who knows exactly what it costs both to rise and to fall. The king cannot afford nostalgia because remembering too much risks slipping back into vulnerability.

I got lots to lose

Shove the past into a rice chest

I'm about to dine on what I know is mine

The song doesn’t celebrate killing the past self. Instead it is meant to force us to question whether trying to bury your past gives you strength strength or if it is fear dressed up as control. The king survives by denying the commoner, but he also becomes haunted by him. This is central to how Agust D writes identity. Success does not erase one’s origin and origin isn’t always a guarantee to success. The self does not split because one version is false, but because both are true and cannot comfortably coexist.

There is no moment where the king embraces the commoner. There is no healing montage or an integration arc. There’s only dominance and suppression. That’s why the song feels tense even at its height… somewhere underneath all that swagger and spectacle, you can actually hear the cost of survival. The power on display is real, but so is the cost of that power.


4th layer: Voilence, control and fear

The violence in Daechwita is not subtle or just decorative.

Executions, blood, surveillance… Punishment carried out publicly and decisively. The king dancing on the backs of his subjects while they are kneeling and bowing to his authority. These images are not there for the sake of aesthetics, nor are they meant to glamorize the cruelty of the king. They exist because when power is threatened, it always looks to set an example. That is what order enforced through fear looks like.

The king doesn’t lash out because he enjoys cruelty. He does it because control must be visible to everyone to remain intact. The moment authority becomes quiet, it risks being questioned. So, the king stays loud, intimidating and absolute. The threat is not just for the commoners, but also for the king, because if the king ever hesitates, the entire structure could collapse.

This is why the imagery feels oppressive rather than triumphant. Fear runs underneath everything. Fear of losing his status and of being dragged back down to the gutters. Violence becomes a way to manage that fear, to externalize it, to convince both the world and oneself that the throne is stable. But fear doesn’t just magically disappear when you try dominate it, does it?

There is also something unsettling about how detached the king is from the violence. The detachment reveals how far the king has moved from humanity in order to survive power. The cost of staying on top is emotional numbness, enforced by design.

This is where the song quietly questions the fantasy of domination. If power requires so much of vigilance, so much suppression and force, then what or who exactly is it protecting? And at what point does survival turn into self-erasure? 

5th layer: Flex as a defense mechanism

By the time Daechwita reaches full swagger, it is tempting to stop thinking and just let the bravado wash over you. The delivery of the part is unflinching. This is the part most people freeze-frame and call the point. Flexing, here, comes from memory and scarcity. From knowing exactly what it is like to have nothing and deciding, consciously or not, that you will never be that vulnerable again. The confidence in the song feels aggressive because it had to be. The flex is the shield.

This is where Daechwita diverges from the idea of arrogance because it normally stems from certainty, safety and a sense of entitlement. This song assumes none of that. Every declaration of success is a documentation of Agust D’s journey from having to choose between a full meal or a bus ticket to the stage where he has achieved his fame, respect, money and status. The flex is not about looking down on others who are struggling. It is about refusing to let his struggles and hard work erased from history.

The confidence in Deachwita feels rehearsed and repetitive because it is necessary. Like armor you put on every day until you forget what it feels like to be without it. The repetition is just reinforcement and a reminder.

For Agust D, success is something he protects from being questioned constantly, from his hard work minimized, or his struggles to reach the top forgotten. The flex becomes a language of survival. It is simply his way to say, I know where I came from, how I reached this point and I refuse to let all that overlooked. That is why the confidence in Daechwita can feel intimidating because Agust D is setting boundaries with the song. He is saying not to underestimate or mistake restraint for weakness.

And yet, there’s a quiet exhaustion embedded in that posture, because always having to prove your worth, even to ghosts of the past, takes a toll. The flex works as a shield, but it does not erase or heal. It helps to explain that strength and bravado can be both empowering and imprisoning. That confidence can save you and still cost you something. That survival strategies don’t automatically retire just because circumstances change.

So when people dismiss this song as “just a flex,” they miss the tension of holding it all together. They miss the fear underneath the volume.

6th layer: Cultural reclamation

One of the most quietly radical things Daechwita does is refuse to translate itself.

The song does not pause to contextualize its deep cultural references for accessibility. The traditional sounds aren’t meant to be exotic, the visuals aren’t supposed to educate, the historical references in the lyrics are not explained. All of it is central to the song and the video.

Too often, non-Western cultural elements are treated as ‘exotic’ and borrowed textures meant to add novelty or depth. In the process, they are usually stripped of their weight. Daechwita refuses that framework entirely. By anchoring the song so firmly in Korean tradition, history and culture yet delivering it through modern hip-hop, Agust D collapses the false binary between “old” and “relevant,” “traditional” and “global.”

There’s confidence in that choice and also defiance. This is music that does not seek Western validation, even as it exists on a global stage. It doesn’t explain itself for international listeners. It doesn’t dilute its references to be easily digestible. It assumes its right to take up space exactly as it is. If you don’t understand it, that’s not a flaw in Agust D’s work. Treat it as either your invitation to listen harder or signal to give up. It all depends on who YOU are as a listener.

When you look it this way, the song’s confrontational tone makes even more sense because it is about protecting his own narrative space and refusing dilution or misinterpretation. And that’s why Daechwita had to come first in the trilogy. Before freedom could be questioned, before morality could be interrogated, they had to be claimed without apology.

Which brings us to the final turn… once power is established this forcefully, the next question becomes unavoidable: what do you do with it?

7th layer: The story that most people see

There is the most common interpretation of Daechwita that most people land on first, and it’s not wrong.

In that version, the song tells a familiar story of a commoner who rises through grit, hunger, and ambition. He claws his way to the throne, becomes king, and somewhere along the way he forgets what it meant to be powerless. All the glory and power turns his head and as a result his authority turns oppressive. The crown rots. And then, in a cyclical act of justice, another figure from the margins rises to overthrow the tyrant. The oppressed kills the oppressor to restore the balance. It is an age old story.

But then the song and the story in it stops cooperating because we do not really see the aftermath. We don’t see whether the new ruler governs differently or if the cycle continues. The story cuts itself off at the moment of violence, refusing closure to its audience. If this were a redemption narrative, the song would give us relief and we would see the commoner rise and govern with love and empathy. Instead, it leaves us with more questions.

That is our biggest clue. The king and the commoner are actually not two separate people in this narrative. They are two selves of the same person. The greed that gets “killed” is not external evil vanquished once and for all. It is a shadow that needs to be acknowledged, confronted and managed constantly. And that certainly isn’t the same as healing.

If Daechwita were truly about destroying the greedy part of the self, the song would sound lighter or softer by the end. It would sound like victory. Instead it remains tense as if it knows something the listener doesn’t want to admit yet: that killing/suppressing a part of yourself does not mean it disappears. It only means it stops speaking out loud and maybe that ambiguity is the point.

The song refuses to tell us whether the cycle breaks because maybe it doesn’t. Maybe power always carries the risk of corruption, regardless of where you started. Maybe the line between oppressed and oppressor is thinner than we would like to believe. Maybe survival strategies don’t dissolve just because circumstances change. It doesn’t offer reassurance that the “right” self will win in the end. It only shows us what happens when ambition, fear, memory, and power collide inside one person.

Which brings us back to why this song feels so unresolved, even now.
Because the question it asks isn’t who deserves the throne, it is whether anyone can sit on it without becoming someone they don’t recognize themselves.
And Daechwita refuses to answer that for us.
It just leaves the crown on the ground and walks away.

8th layer: Daechita as the opening of the trilogy

Daechwita was never meant to stand alone.

Seen in isolation it feels way too excessive. It is only about power and declaration. But placed at the beginning of the Agust D trilogy, it starts to look less like a the end point and more like a necessary first position. Before you can question power, you have to acknowledge it. Before you can interrogate freedom, you have to first admit who holds control.

This is why Daechwita comes first.

Next comes Haegum, a song that will ask uncomfortable questions about desire, restriction, addiction, and freedom. It will complicate the very authority Daechwita establishes. But that interrogation only works because the authority and the throne has already been established and claimed. You cannot critique what you pretend not to possess.