Make Believe Melodies For April 1, 2024
Getting angry about culture writing
Just over a week ago, Nikkei Asia shared a culture story titled “In Japan, even Taylor Swift can't make it to the top of the music charts.” The main argument writer Mai Ishitsubo makes is that Western pop artists aren’t as popular as they once were in Japan, nudged out by K-pop and overshadowed by domestic acts. At its core, this is totally correct, and if anything staggeringly late to the discourse party, albeit on point when looked at from a distance.
It’s only when you dig into the details does it reveal itself to be a kind of maddening example of the worst kind of writing about music in modern times. It’s overly slavish to the idea of charts, ignoring how radically markers of success have changed in the internet age in favor of “I only look at Billboard.” One of the only examples of a successful Western artist in Japan is The Beatles…like, at least go with Mariah Carey to be within 30 years of relevancy. There’s an obligatory mention of CD sales, though it comes after a paragraph where the author focuses on how young Japanese only follow social media trends instead of caring about nationality despite the whole K-pop thing and honestly ??? is happening here. The story says part of Korean pop’s charm is the use of English which…huh?
The whole piece is an embarrassment, though I’m willing to extend sympathy that this is probably the case of a writer way out of their depth having to condense the topic into something geared towards a general crowd, which has been killing all music journalism over the last decade. Still…I can’t get over the most egregious argument here, which is one reason Western music isn’t as strong commercially is because rap — central to American sounds1 — struggles in Japan.
I can forgive having to wrestle with music when it isn’t your primary beat. I can’t give a pass when it’s clear you didn’t even take the five minutes needed to listen to popular J-pop today.
“Bling-Bang-Bang-Born” has become 2024’s biggest J-pop hit and dominates the Billboard Japan Hot 100 behind not just rapping, but a Jersey Club beat, as American a sound as it comes. Last year’s inescapable “Idol” literally starts with rapping over a Southern trap-inspired beat. Artists like Ado and Vaundy frequently deploy hip-hop delivery.
But those aren’t real rap artists, right? OK, but even more authentic-feeling hip-hop is thriving on a large scale that one living in Japan would have to be either actively avoiding…or truly not paying attention to see. Bad Hop played Tokyo Dome, and it’s arguably the second-biggest show in that biggie-sized venue behind only Taylor Swift. Awich appears on TV shows like Music Station constantly. Festivals like Pop Yours have become calendar staples. Are you not “Team Tomodachi???” The streaming viral charts are always full of Japanese rappers…sometimes straight up diss tracks!
Rap has been present in the Japanese music ecosystem since the 1980s, turned trendy by the arrival of the film Wild Style and eventually serving as a pop texture in the decade’s sound. The ‘90s saw more pop-rap hybrids butt up against more authentic interpretations, generating friction between the two sides that would linger into the 21st century. Yet today — and in a much more fragmented musical ecosystem — rap is just a commonly accepted style that countless artists in Japan play with, and I’d argue Japanese rappers are more visible in the mainstream since the Aughts, largely because the charts aren’t the be-all-end-all of music discussion.
Rap is all over modern Japanese music, from marquee releases to burgeoning movements to more familiar presentations of the genre. This week in the round-up, a look at some examples of just how prevalent it is, and the many ways it mutates.
4s4ki, Hanagata, RhymeTube And OHTORA — “Don’t Look Back”
It’s oft-repeated but a truth of the internet age — genre boundaries have loosened drastically, and it isn’t surprising to see something like rap mixed up with all kinds of other sonic ideas that, ten years ago, would have been something only really bubbling up in niche corners. Sasakrect knows this better than most labels — over its 20 year history, it has put the spotlight on more straight-ahead MCs like Dotama while also making room for whisper-rap pioneer Izumi Makura, who blended hip-hop delivery with a softer sound.
To celebrate two decades, Sasakrect puts together a posse-cut of current artists under its umbrella, one leaning into rap but also not purely being a straight-ahead display of the style. 4s4ki — probably the clearest example how porous sound distinctions has become — offers a hook, while the other three provide rapped verses, sometimes clearly and other times drenched in feedback. It’s a nervy anniversary memento, and one highlighting how unpredictable rap can sound today. Listen above.
iyan D1KE — iyan D1KE
AssToro — Self-Assertive
Where everything gets particularly blurry is the world of “hyperpop,” or whatever term has become the go-to tag for this very-online whirl of sounds, with rap and especially rapping central to it. This corner of Japanese music has been inching closer to the mainstream over the last few months — “you are my curse” particularly being hip-hop-based in its approach — and the latest creator to enjoy a viral moment is SoundCloud staple iyan D1KE, albeit for one of the least rap-influenced songs they have put together. Yet it enjoys a boost alongside their eponymous debut album, which largely highlights how these cohort bend hip-hop to fit their needs, from cuddly fair about going to Yokohama Chinatown to flexier moments. Listen above.
AssToro, meanwhile, has long been someone I associate more as a behind-the-MacBook presence in this strain of Japanese music, with many of their solo releases feeling under cooked. Self-Assertive offers a jump forward with some of AssToro’s best vocal performances yet (the fidgeting “Cure” in particular being a highlight of their manipulated delivery) alongside a collection showing the full sonic range of this space, featuring fragmented hip-hop (“Repeater” featuring lazydoll) and pop-punk experiments (the title track). Listen above.
Yojiro Noda Featuring kZm — “EVERGREEN”
Yojiro Noda of RADWIMPS has long championed rap, whether in questionable ways (his band’s early-era tendency to turn towards nu-metal) or via more thoughtful approaches (spotlighting rappers like Awich and MIYACHI on its songs). Here he is operating in the latter mode, linking up with rapper kZm for an interpretation on the blown-out rap sounds favored by young creators, one which shows these two worlds aren’t that far apart. Listen above.
Number_i — “FUJI”
But you don’t even have to look far afield from the real J-pop-y of the J-pop to find a heavy rap influence. Male pop groups have always flirted with rap, even if in a very cheesy way, but in recent years the double whammy of global trends and K-pop’s emphasis on hip-hop elements has made the style even more present among fledgling units. Really, I should be highlighting a STARTO group like Snow Man or SixTONES as the best example of this, but Number_i — consisting of former members of King & Prince, and serving as the flagship act for fledgling agency TOBE — represents it just as well, with a little more freshness. The group’s first release GOAT highlights the fusion of modern rap within the J-pop boy band mold in a few significant spots, ranging from the very K-pop-male-barrage2 of the title track to “FUJI,” a more bleacher-stomping interpretation that also weaves in electric guitar3. Here’s one of the most prominent new groups in the country…happily pushing rap to the forefront. Listen above.
Hoshimachi Suisei — “Bibbidaba”
There’s a fucking rap breakdown in this VTuber song, oh my god why do we let people who don’t actually follow music write about music????? This is why our industry is dying, you idiots! Listen above.
(anyway, there’s a smarter point to be made about how rap has long intersected with online communities, whether it be Nico Nico Douga during its prime, netlabels or even Vocaloid, which often features very rap-like delivery. Virtual YouTubers simply carry that tradition on…divisive a figure as she is, Mori Calliope stands as the evolution of this heritage for the modern age. You also have things like Hypnosis Mic, which are intricate mixed-media projects attracting thousands of fans centered around post-apocalyptic battle rap. It has a new album out too!
Anna Takeuchi — DRAMAS
Ultimately, there’s no reason to overdue it…rap is just something artists of all types get giddy at playing with.
One of my favorite J-pop albums of the decade so far is Anna Takeuchi’s TICKETS. Besides being a pretty blissful set of tunes delivering never-pausing positivity, it strikes me as a representation of the excitement of creative possibility. As Takeuchi told me shortly after its release, she embraced the mindset of K-pop in creating pop spiked with rap interludes, while also opening herself up to more experimentation via electro-pop and funk. It’s the sound of artistic freedom discovered, of saying “screw it” to boundaries and just going for it.
Follow-up DRAMAS carries the same energy, albeit a little more comfortable in this approach than the eyes-now-open wonder of TICKETS. Rap features in almost every song here, matching up with easy-breezy pop melodies via Takeuchi’s delivery, but also more pronounced in the production (“Chili Chili Chillax,” which doubles as an example of the more confounding trend of slightly outdated slang being embraced by Japanese pop artists this year). The thrill remains, getting at just why hip-hop spills into every corner of Japanese music today. Listen above.
DJ RYOW Featuring Guca Owl, LANA and ¥ellow Bucks — “Ready To Fight”
Let’s also simply underline that…the “authentic” side of Japanese rap remains as busy and visible as ever. Here’s a group cut featuring some established and rising names in this world. A decade ago, we’d be wondering if one of them would be the mainstream “crossover” everyone expected to emerge. Today, it’s a silly question — this scene is super popular, and its influence is undeniable. Listen above.
Oricon Trail For The Week Of March 18, 2024 To March 24, 2024
Back in the day, the Oricon Music Charts were the go-to path to music stardom in Japan. Acts of all sorts traversed these lands, trying to sell as many CDs as possible in order to land a good ranking on a chart choosing to only count physical sales, even as the Internet came to be and the number of versions offered for sale got ridiculous. Today, with the country finally in on digital, these roads are more barren and only looked at by the most fanatic of supporters needing something to celebrate. Yet every week, a new song sells enough plastic to take the top spot. So let’s take a trip down…the Oricon Trail.
ZEROBASEONE — “Yurayura - Unemi No Hana -” (302,315 Copies Sold)
The twist to everything above…the main point is right! K-pop has shoved Western pop out of the limelight, and here’s a reminder of how that probably isn’t changing anytime soon. This is ZEROBASEONE’s Japanese debut — a concept that I’m still surprised has weight, to the point NewJeans, a group already among the most popular in the country, has one coming — behind a pretty darn good song, dashing ahead but playing around with tempo to up the emotions of it all. Listen above.
News And Views
The BBC reports that two more abusers operated at the agency formerly known as Johnny & Associates. That’s the obvious headline, continuing to underline an entertainment company that turned a blind eye to sexual assault for decades. Yet I think it’s pretty significant how this latest breaking news emerged — Mobeen Azhar, behind last year’s Predator: The Secret Scandal Of J-pop4, shared this development, but it comes with quotes from Noriyuki Higashiyama, the head of SMILE-UP, the company tasked with helping and paying victims of Johnny Kitagawa. There’s even a photo of the two of them.
That’s a major shift since a little over a year ago when the agency did everything in its power to avoid comment on the BBC’s investigations into its history, before really having to face it after former talent spoke up to Japanese media. Yet here we are in 2024, with one of the prominent faces associated with the J-pop powerhouse talking with Azhar about more transgressions (and sounding like…they are proactively looking into it).
There’s certainly still some areas where you’d want a little more updates or transparency…I think the payments to victims is still ongoing…but this is a pretty big development for the company, willing to talk with the media about something they once did everything in its power to avoid. The BBC just released a new follow-up documentary titled The Shadow of a Predator5, which also includes an interview with Higashiyama, which you can watch below.To celebrate the 20th anniversary of roll-up-everything game Katamari Damacy, Bandai Namco shared the soundtrack on streaming services. Revel in its Shibuya-kei goodness and get an insight in to how high-school Patrick functioned by listening to “LONELY ROLLING STAR.”
Honda Hitomi and Yabuki Nako to debut in new Pledis group????
Feel it is sorta telling that IVE announcing a Tokyo Dome show in September is throwing people today, who can’t tell if it is an April Fool’s joke or not. Then again…K-pop really IS that big right now.
On that note…NewJeans’ newest song “Bubble Gum” will serve as the theme song to a news program in Japan.
Right as I was boarding a Shonan-Shinjuku line train bound for…Shinjuku last Friday, I came across a tweet that made me double take. Beyoncé would be doing a pop-up album signing and fan meet in support of the just-released COWBOY CARTER at Shibuya Tower Records. While part of me immediately thought “get off the train, run towards the record store,” details soon made it clear that would be dumb…one would have had to arrive at like 10 or 11 am to buy a physical copy of the album, and hope to be one of the first 150 people to do so to get a ticket to meet the pop superstar. That window had already closed…I’d just have to live vicariously through the people who managed it.
This promotional stunt is fascinating — and ties to the point above! — because it finds an American act embracing very J-pop approaches to fandom activation. To quote a wise newsletter writer…everything is AKB. Beyoncé is savvy enough to know how the pop landscape has changed, and how she has to adjust to the needs of specific markets…including a very smart awareness to actually physically be in Japan, rather than relying on streaming to do the heavy lifting for her. Maybe it is early promo for a tour stop? Or maybe it is just her being attuned to Japan being the second-largest music market in the world. Whatever it is, it’s sharp thinking, and got a lot of attention a “conventional” 21st-century album roll-out would have missed.People worry about AI ruining art…but I say, as long as there are sickos willing to stitch together current-eventy takes on popular songs like this, the human spirit will triumph.
Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
Twitter — @mbmelodies
Though again to underline how doomed this writer was from the start…one of the biggest conversations of 2023 was how few rap songs did well on those ever-precious Billboard charts, so really what does anyone even know.
(derogatory)
I mean all this said, the best song on the EP is a afternoon funk song called “Midnight City,” which is playing with fire obviously.
Credit where credit is due, and a mea culpa: he actually followed up on the story, which is something I wasn’t confident he would do. Shut me up!
very cynical note that I hope I’m wrong about in the next week: so like, there’s no real attention being paid to this in Japan right now. Nothing like the build up to the first documentary, which did attract a lot of attention from netizens in Japan at least. But I’m not picking up on that now, which is maybe somewhat surprising after a year where reckoning with Johnny Kitagawa was one of the biggest stories period. Perhaps part of it is that the story has been told — Kitagawa’s crimes came to light, and the country saw the company he founded face them head on — but there’s part of me that also worries that it’s because the sizzle is off this one. I mean…Higashiyama is just talking to the BBC now. For Japanese media at least, the ~ secrecy ~ of it all was part of the draw, and now that this element of the scandal is gone…maybe they just don’t care?