Make Believe Mailer #108: Friends In KOHH Places
Don't Steal Family Mart Onigiri, Please
As far as ephemeral social media outrages go, the latest sweeping across Japanese X and, inevitably, mainstream outlets boasts a killer soundtrack. A graffiti artist using the handle “ADEK BTM” has been running amok in Tokyo, with a video of them tagging various spots in Shimokitazawa and stealing an onigiri from a Family Mart sparking anger online. Not helping matters was that spray paint distribution company Sprayplanet shared the clip to their official channel, spreading it further. As the story took off and outlets reported on it, they doubled down with some “lolz whoops who me?” Instagram posts.
It’s a case of post-Somali tourism unease and general influencer bad behavior…none of which I’m ultimately all that interested in. Mostly because the song they chose to play over the clip is enjoying a viral moment in Japan…and starting to creep outwards.
Yuki Chiba’s “Team Tomodachi” is a song about friendship. Don’t let the horror-movie piano crawl fool you — the bulk of it is the title chanted (translating to “team friends”) and the other lyrics hopping out deal with…feeling lonely when alone, so hey I’ll call up my friends to get food or drinks. There’s zero actual tension lurking within, as even potential geographic clashes — Tokyo vs. Osaka, a classic! — get brushed aside with Chiba pretty quickly shouting out the Kanto and Kansai region.
A very sweet message delivered with energy at a time when we could all use it — get out of the house, put down your phone, hang out with your friends, maybe dance like the guys in the video! — though the reason it’s shot to the top of viral charts in Japan is because of who Yuki Chiba is. That’s the birth name of KOHH, arguably the most prominent and important Japanese rapper of the 2010s. He retired in 2020, and sort of drifted away from sight save for some collections of rarities released in 2022, alongside a remix of a song about CBD.
Then last year…he popped up as a writer, penning essays for literary monthly Bungakukai. Back in the public eye, he released “Team Tomodachi” kind of suddenly in early February, as Chiba. As mentioned, it has become a viral hit — topping Spotify, Apple and YouTube trending charts. It has done well on TikTok (the friendship angle really helping), and even has Naomi Watanabe bopping along. Other rappers are jumping on it too.
While still relatively domestic, I’m starting to hear it more in Japan-related social media posts. There’s the graffiti clip above, but it also appeared in some Instagram Stories Megan Thee Stallion shared during her recent Tokyo trip…where she met up with Chiba. There’s also a deluge of reaction videos from non-Japanese listeners on YouTube, ranging from those declaring this “song of the year!” to just generally being floored that this is coming out of Japan despite said listener having no idea what he is saying (“team…tamaguchi?”).
It’s a fitting return to the spotlight from a rapper who helped introduce the concept of “Japanese rap” to the online world a decade ago.
It’s probably a much deeper debate requiring significant research…but generally speaking, KOHH served as a sea-change in Japanese rap because he’s one of the first artists in Japan to adopt a U.S. Southern trap style approach to the country’s hip-hop community. That’s the argument made by this Real Sound article, and while I’m sure it isn’t that simple, KOHH certainly broke through with it, especially online. Early songs such as “We Good” showcased his rapping approach, while something like “My Last Heart Break” (above) offered a unique twist via its Utada sample (and Utada-inspired video).
What made him especially stand out was timing. The history of Japanese rap can be told through the unease between authenticity and pop appropriation (see: the number of MCs and academics who will side eye a ‘90s hit1 like “DA.YO.NE.” The Aughts wrestled with this exact same time-test problem, albeit with lines blurring more courtesy of artists such as m-flo and RIP SLYME (less so with more outright J-pop creations like HALCALI and Heartsdales), plus Namie Amuro’s whole Suite Chic project.
Still, there was a pretty firm line between mainstream eyeing projects like the above and more underground acts following a more orthodox approach to rap. I think it’s telling that KOHH’s rise comes right after the success of Teriyaki Boyz, a group that irked plenty in less commercial hip-hop communities, summed up best by the artist SEEDA releasing a diss track and video that included him punching McDonald’s teriyaki burgers.
KOHH offered the idea of authenticity. He came from a rough background, raised by a single mother and struggling to get by (all this captured in an essential Vice video). This is a foundational detail to his artistry, though he wasn’t afraid to flex past hijinks (“I told my teacher to shut the fuck up / And I had sex with my girlfriend at break” on “Junji Takada”) and newfound status. He always had greater ambitions — perhaps not pop, but something like “Hikoki” clearly eyes a crossover — but he became the perfect representative for Japanese hip-hop in the 2010s, defined by a craving for “real hip-hop” (see: the plethora of freestyle rap TV shows like FREESTYLE DUNGEON) and a celebration of the domestic after American acts largely ignored the Japanese market2. When previous generation heavyweight Zeebra needed to signal he was “with it,” he called up KOHH.
The artist KOHH’s career has the most in common with is Kyary Pamyu Pamyu. Both used then-fledgling platform YouTube to find a domestic audience…and then their music was discovered globally, and became the representative style of their respective forms. Each had incredible opportunities in front of them…and kind of squandered the chance3.
People were stumbling across KOHH’s videos throughout the early 2010s, with the general reaction being “whoa, I didn’t know people in Japan went this hard!” Seeing as how hard it could be to find Japanese music at all on these platforms back then, the stuff that was available — “Junji Takada” or “PonPonPon” — would be formative for many. KOHH probably provided thousands upon thousands of people their first glimpse of Japanese rap. And that was before “It G Ma.”
That viral number deserves a much deeper dive on its own, and hopefully the fact its ten-year anniversary is less than a year away means it will come. But the most obvious legacy for many was…this is a huge segment of people’s first encounter with rap from Asia, with KOHH delivering (arguably) the best verse). I interviewed 88Rising4 founder Sean Miyashiro a few years back and he said the following:
"It's still the best Asian rap song," Miyashiro says, and he's especially emphatic about Kohh's verse near the end of it. "He went viral, man. His verse is crazy, the craziest verse. He had all the swag."
Gears were in motion before it, but “It G Ma” opened new opportunities up to KOHH. He guested on an Utada song and popped up on the extended version of Frank Ocean’s “Nikes.” He collaborated with Taka from ONE OK ROCK on a song featuring a video that played in some weird pop-up theater in Shibuya. He popped up on the remix of a Mariah Carey song included on Japanese versions of one of her albums. By final album Worst, he was working with Skrillex among others.
Despite all this, KOHH never really clicked as a true international star, and by the end of the 2010s his relevance in Japan was fading a bit too. He performed overseas, but never that much. "I'm not sure what his team structure is or whatever, but you know he certainly has the goods to be huge in America,” Miyashiro told me in that same interview, and it felt like a little bit of a dig at KOHH’s team…which might be a fair shot.
There’s plenty of reasons KOHH could have faded a bit as the years went on. Japanese rap became more robust by the end of the decade, with way more names to check out. Naturally, older acts are going to sink into the background a bit. KOHH pushed himself musically5, but didn’t really have a hit, chart or viral, in this period. There’s a very real chart to be constructed showing how his decline in popularity coincides with his sex tape leaking, which revealed he’s a cunnilingus dingus. Really though, I think it just boils down to…a new generation was ready to step up, and his dominant days were done.
But his impact was set.
A constant in covering Japanese music is people wondering “when is hip-hop really going to go mainstream?” It’s the ultimate false-start question in this world, but one that has still enticed observers for years. KOHH at one point was the promised prince who would make this happen, but it didn’t really. No appearances on Music Station, no Oricon toppers. He was big…but not a name my in-laws would know.
But really, KOHH was just the last star rapper to have to deal with something resembling a traditional mainstream in Japanese entertainment. The question “when is hip-hop really going to go mainstream” is pointless in the 2020s because it has. Cultural fragmentation means a group like Bad Hop — in many ways the authenticity successors to KOHH6 — can become a sensation and sell out Tokyo Dome for its farewell show. Rap songs go viral all the time now. Hip-hop doesn’t need to compete for mainstream space because pop culture has been changed in such a way that it is now huge.
It goes further than that. Nikkei recently shared a data-driven story about how niche Western music in Japan is. Fair. The comments online about it though…rough. A recurring take was that part of this was because rap just isn’t part of Japanese mainstream music. I totally disagree. The biggest song of the year so far is primarily rapped (over a Jersey Club beat!). YOASOBI’s “Idol” features plenty of rapped verses and a beat inspired by Southern hip-hop. Hell, STARTO groups are including honest-to-goodness stabs at rapping in their songs now. Rap is now an essential part of J-pop…just embraced in its own way.
It’s nice then, that Chiba can jump into the conversation with “Team Tomodachi.” He helped set the path for the current world of Japanese rap, albeit at a time when he would always be just underneath the mainstream radar. Here, though, he gets the chance to embrace the fractured realities of the 2020s…and reintroduce himself to another generation of listeners, who might not know how much work he put in to make this atmosphere possible.
Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
Twitter — @mbmelodies
Follow the Best Of 2024 Spotify Playlist here!
Though just for the record, this is one of my favorite songs of the decade…valid critiques, but also fun!
Save for a few like Kendrick Lamar, most rappers just…didn’t put a focus on the Japanese market. The best example being Drake, who has fans in Japan but is nowhere near the commercial or cultural force he is elsewhere.
Also, Kyary Pamyu Pamyu once tweeted about how she sand “Junji Takada” at karaoke and was shocked how dirty the lyrics were (presumably the fucking of the girlfriend at break part).
One obvious domino falling from “It G Ma” and I urge you to go down whatever path you want with it — 88Rising probably doesn’t exist if Keith Ape fails to put this song together.