[46 images][news/links][14 vids] 비 Yourself Open Thread 11/1 — 1/31/2021. BackToTheBasic overload!

There has been a huge influx of new Rain fans, and Rain has mentioned working on new music. Now is a great time to go all the way back and get folks up to speed on his albums, from 1998 to 2020!

The eighth installment of my Rain Career Music special series celebrates when Rain dropped his next Korean offering, mini album Back To The Basic, in April 2010. There was also a Japanese edition (in Japanese), and a Chinese/Taiwanese edition. We had just gone live on January 21, so Cloud USA was only 3 months old, babes in the woods during our first Rain music comeback! An exciting and tiring time indeed, as his comeback trail was KILLER, he did not and does not play! (Want proof? Go here to our old Rain on the Horizon History Page and check out April and May 2020. Whew! We were tired and overwhelmed, and poor Rain was so exhausted that he collapsed with the flu at a TV taping and scared us all half to death. Never fear, though — he rallied back strong! Pardon the mess on our homepages — we’re in the process of moving our site to a new host.) ^@@^

The album’s imagery took people by surprise. It was super-sexy (as expected), yet so different that some folks just didn’t get it. The story is, as Rain said in an interview, that while in Europe, the épicène beauty of its ancient statues and sculptures had fascinated him so much, he wanted to do his own interpretation. And indeed, if his album images were marble or plaster statues, they would absolutely resemble that art, IMHO!

And about those long eyelashes…

In another interview, Rain said they represented his vulnerability in the “Love Song” music video. I can vouch that that is true! As a fiction writer, I created a hardened, top-dog warrior king character once, and I gave him long eyelashes, knowing that female readers would take one look at them and sense he was hiding how vulnerable his heart was. Rain got it right! *applause, applause*

Rain had always been a multitasking monster from the start, but 2010 was record-setting, y’all. In addition to releasing this album, he filmed several SK Telesys phone campaigns, filmed TV drama The Fugitive: Plan B on location in no less than 7 countries across Asia, held a multi-city ZEPP concert tour across Japan, headlined the Intensity concert in the Philippines, covered Hanyru Pia, Cosmo Men, and several other magazines, attended the MTV Movie Awards in Los Angeles and won the first Biggest Badass Star statuette (for Ninja Assassin), came in 4th on Time Magazine‘s 100 Most Influential People for 2010, and that’s just the tip of it, I’m stopping here (again, check out our Rain on the Horizon History Page linked above, from January to December 2010. It would take a post as long as my arm to notate everything, good lord!).

SCROLL DOWN ↓ this post to see MORE album art and my compilation of songs, MVs, fan cams, and TV appearances (credited as tagged). Please enjoy!

— Stephe, Co-founder & Rain historian ^@@^

» You can visit the previous Open Thread HERE and re-visit Rain’s previous album Rainism. By the way — have you 10th Cloud sisters left a message for Rain on his officially sanctioned fan club on Naver today?

ANNOUNCEMENT: We noticed many pictures on our homepages weren’t loading anymore… As it turns out, our web host has moved to a new platform and we need to do the same (follow them). Co-founder Terri is working hard behind the scenes to rebuild our site and move it to the new web location. Please don’t worry — our blog is not affected and our new site will be up and running smoothly soon. PLEASE PARDON OUR MESS OVER THERE! 🙂