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6.25.2009

The definitive history of Japanese Hip-hop

Since it's late and it's time for Japanese rap, maybe we should start with the basics. That's right, there is no other Gaijin instructor that could teach you better - lets begin with Buddah Brand - BTW DJ Masterkey, DevLArge and NIPPS started this group when NO ONE in Japan knew what was happening:



Ok, Buddha Brand was pretty unpopular, because they started it off in the early 90's and not many Japanese could understand what was going on. After that m-flo and Dragon Ash kinda pushed it a bit until crappy groups like KICK THE CAN CREW and good groups like Rip Slyme pushed it a bit:





Again, many rap groups needed some kind of support to make their music popular - then Rip Slyme suddenly got famous as hell with "Rakuen Baby," a song that played in every convenience store in Japan:



This hit like crazy in 2002, and Japan had finally been initiated into hip-hop. But J-hop was all dance, because there was and never was a ghetto to derive hate against the establishment from. KICK THE CAN CREW attempted to be different, but it was more crappy music:



What does fencing have to do with rap? WTFK! Anyway, so then Rip Slyme started dropping some crazy stuff that included interesting mixes from DJ Fujiya and good lyrics:



Again, J-hop began to expand with real talent, but even EGG-MAN and his ilk couldn't defeat Rip and their industry inspired compatriots.



Now that's pretty awesome and different from the dance inspired KTCC and RipSlyme type backbeats. In fact, MURO almost made a East Side (Tokyo Style) J-hop with his music. The hardest fact for most Americans and Japanese to understand is the abject difficulty in trying to translate the roaming and beat-driven English into the very restrictive linguistics of a verb-ending language:



This is probably the biggest hit in J-rap simply because of its original sound. SOUL SCREAMS Tokyo suddenly abandons all other sounds in J- and A-rap and becomes its own chill dance style while not being totally dance or rap. As crappy D/South rap blossoms (or rather rots) in America, Japan starts its own sound. Ironically, the sound splits into the indie Tokyo sound and the capitalistic Rip Slyme dance style, just as American rap splits in to the sellout/dirty South (boosey, h chris, 3.6 mafia) style and the real East Coast style.



Rip selling computers.



MURO selling nothing. And he seems to need O.C. (whoever he is) to do it. Anyway - it's still better than Rip until you consider some of Rip's old school sounding stuff like Nettaiya - where they'd rather dance with one another than the hot women around them:



I hope you enjoyed this informational program. NOW GO TO BED.

1 comment:

  1. For the first Rip slyme video, I noticed a huge influence from Brazilian samba, which makes me happy. It's kind of like J-sambahop hahaha. Also, I have this song on my iPod, but it's a girl singing, you know who that is and what version of the song that is?

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