Thanks to a mix of language barriers and cultural stereotypes, most 'heads think Japanese hip-hop is derivative, silly, or downright racist. But the emerging Japanese underground is pumping out excellent, innovative tracks that deserve to be heard around the world. Japan The Beats highlights the best of these releases and tells the stories behind them. Click here to access the archive.
DJs and producers from outside of America have had better luck than rappers in getting international recognition. DJ Cam is more successful than MC Solaar, and DJ Vadim is better known than... whoever the rappers are in Russia. Music is, after all, the so-called "universal language," while rap is designed to tax the listening skills of even native speakers. This is as true in Japan as anywhere. DJ Honda managed to become a regular collaborator with American rappers, and DJ Krush is easily the most successful Japanese hip-hop artist of all time, his top-tier global reputation cemented through collaborations with everyone from The Roots to Company Flow.
DJ Baku is following in those footsteps. He's the most successful indie DJ in Japan today, co-founded the Pop Group label with his partner Hiroki, and now stands on the verge of international exposure. The best sign of his impending success is that he's pushing hip-hop in new directions, whether high-speed amalgams of psychedelia and jungle or slower headtrips. As a DJ, Baku works at the edge of panic, throwing on the highest-BPM records with the most noise he can get away with. Baku, Hiroki and I sat down to talk during a break from the recording of an upcoming collaborative project.
Baku's a friendly, generous, guy -- he's also funny when I ask him about his history with hip-hop. “I started going to rock concerts, but there was too much going on. I couldn't figure out whether to pay attention to the bass, the guitar, the singer, what. But when I started seeing hip-hop DJs, it was just bass, and beats. Really simple.” He laughs. “I guess I do hip-hop because I'm not very smart.” He started DJing for equally inglorious reasons. MC Hammer was huge in Japan, and “in the background of the video, there was a DJ. He wasn't controlling the sound or anything, he was just there for decoration. But I thought it was cool.” Hammer's music didn't make much of an impression -- probably a plus -- but then came Juice, the Tupac Shakur-starring movie that featured a DJ, which genuinely turned Baku on to hip-hop music and culture.
What happened next is sort of a compressed version of the history of hip-hop in Japan. “When I was a teenager, I loved black music. The people I hung out with... liked black people, everyone had dreadlocks and everything. But eventually I started to think, like, I'm Japanese, I don't speak English. I'm a DJ, and I want to go to other countries, but if I'm just playing Nas and other New York stuff, no one's going to care. So I started to think about how to put more of myself in it.”
The impulse to break away from his NY-worshipping peers led him to integrate punk and psychedelic sounds. “I really like fast melodies. I'll take a [complicated] melody and double it – takatakatakataka! – and put a beat under it.” The best example of this is the hyperactive “Akbah Attack,” an anthemic, guitar-driven track that sounds like nothing else in the hip-hop world. In a similar assertion of individuality, he's committed to promoting Japanese talent. Now he's in the midst of recording a collection of collaborations with Japanese MCs called “The Twelve Japs.” It features artists like Boss The MC from Tha Blue Herb, MC Kan from MSC, Killer Bong, and INI from Mic Jack Productions.
He's part of a strong domestic scene, but Baku is also going international. He's remixed artists like The Bug, and his latest album Dharma Dance includes “Void it Out,” a collaboration with anticon. fringe rapper Dose One. He's also got an upcoming album planned with the equally dark and weird Dälek, a split that'll include one collaborative track. “We're not sure exactly when it'll come out, but it should be within a few months,” Hiroki tells me. Baku gets the chance to DJ outside of Japan about once a year right now, but that seems set to increase.
The Dälek split is almost guaranteed to be released on Pop Group, the label Baku and Hiroki run together. Pop Group's diverse lineup includes the fierce dubstep MC Rumi (think M.I.A. or Warrior Queen), producers Goth-Trad and Skyfish, metalheads/math-rockers Black Ganion, and the morose Danish band Blue Foundation. Getting a label off the ground is never easy, especially one so obviously personal and unique, and album sales in Japan have been declining for over a decade -- just like everywhere else. But DVDs are still strong sellers, and Pop Group's startup capital came thanks to Kaikoo, a 2005 collection of videos and performances by MSC and other friends of Baku.
Problems go deeper than money, though. Hiroki explains to me that, compared to what he's seen elsewhere, Japan's infrastructure for indie labels is lacking. “In Europe, if you have two labels, two promotion companies, and two distribution companies, you can get everyone to work together as a team. In Japan, there's not that kind of support... If those two labels make two albums, they have to do everything themselves.”
One of the things that drew me to Baku is that, though he mostly makes instrumentals, he's clearly got a social conscience. The video for “Akbah Attack,” for example, shows a puppet at the repetitive task of stamping one piece of meaningless paper after another, before finally going seemingly nuts. “Since I'm not an MC, it's really hard to convey meaning with sounds. So, I put a lot into the artwork, the videos, doing interviews like this. And little by little people will begin to associate my music with those sorts of ideas.” He's also careful about the rappers he works with. “I don't want to work with anyone who doesn't have real content – if it's always just ‘Yeah, yeah, Say hooooo!'... I think that sort of thing is fine, if other people do it. But it's not for me. I want to do something different.”
Note: I've gotten a couple of questions about where to get the music discussed in Japan The Beats. DJ Baku's {Dharma Dance is available through Hear Japan. In other cases, your best bet is to go through Amazon Japan, where you can find basically all the music I mention. You might also try lobbying Hear Japan to carry more hip--hop.}
Materials for review in Japan The Beats can be mailed to:David Morris
164-0012Nakano-Ken
Honcho 3-8-2
Or in America to:
David Morris
4614 Ridge North RoadFort Worth, Texas 76126
