B-Side Guys

Twenty-nine days after its release, Devantier Rain’s “MONSTER” continues to demonstrate how vulnerability and aggression can occupy the same emotional space without canceling each other out. The Berlin-based German-Cameroonian artist’s opening statement for his forthcoming album MELATONIN operates as both confession and warning, establishing the project’s willingness to examine relationships that resist simple categorization as either healthy or destructive.

The track’s Prince-inspired framework provides crucial context for its emotional complexity. Where Minneapolis funk traditionally celebrated sexual liberation through joy, “MONSTER” explores intimacy through uncertainty and potential danger. This aesthetic choice reflects contemporary understanding that desire often involves navigation of psychological territories that previous generations either ignored or romanticized beyond recognition.

Devantier’s production approach—what he describes as building “atmosphere from the bare bones of its instrumental”—creates space for both artists to explore their respective relationships to emotional chaos without overwhelming the intimate scale of their confessions. The stripped-back arrangement recorded at celest*’s Berlin home studio maintains the “diary entry” quality that makes the collaboration feel genuinely private rather than performed.

Tamaerebi’s London-recorded contribution transforms the track’s dynamic from monologue to dialogue, introducing additional perspective on what he calls “the chaos we create for ourselves.” His verse provides crucial counterpoint to Devantier’s opening position, creating conversation rather than simple agreement. This structural choice elevates the collaboration beyond typical guest appearance toward genuine creative partnership.

The recurring “monster in my bed” refrain operates through deliberate ambiguity—unclear whether the monster represents the other person, the relationship itself, or the narrator’s own capacity for both creation and destruction of intimacy. This uncertainty prevents the track from settling into comfortable victim-aggressor dynamics, instead maintaining the productive discomfort that drives the best contemporary R&B explorations of complicated attraction.

Perhaps most effectively, “MONSTER” captures the specific exhaustion that comes from recognizing patterns while remaining unable to break them. Both artists acknowledge their situations with clear-eyed understanding while simultaneously admitting their continued participation in dynamics they know aren’t serving them. This psychological accuracy transforms what could have been simple toxicity documentation into more complex examination of how awareness doesn’t automatically create change.

The track succeeds because it refuses to provide moral clarity about relationships that exist beyond traditional frameworks of healthy and unhealthy. Through careful attention to the actual complexity of intimate chaos, Devantier Rain and Tamaerebi have created something that feels necessary rather than merely cathartic—music that acknowledges love’s capacity for both creation and destruction without demanding we choose between them.