Kamisama said:link doesn't work....
i've heard japanese rap before, this is so ridiculous. It doesn't even sound good. And japanese people being gangsta? No.. i don't think so. I accept mexicans, south americans, and others rapping, but people who don't seem to have constant crime waves, i don't like their rap. thus this reminds me, didn't japanese people act like mc hammer back in the day? i see it as copying americans.
december said:An Asian boy rapping is about as ridiculous as Vanilla Ice trying to make a come back.
rhymester* said:Japanese hiphop culture started in the 80s...and has blown up in the past few years, producing the big amount of mainsteam pop rap groups such as kick the can crew, rip slyme, heartsdales etc, and also causing some rappers to change their style to cash in on the new trend (eg zeebra). but if u dig deep there are many rappers and producers who stay true to the hiphop culture. Japan in fact has the biggest underground hiphop scene outside of the US next to France. you should not make ignorant statements if you didn't even do any research on the history of japanese hiphop culture.
Da pump is pop, why are they even mentioned here? i guess many people tend to think one verse of 'rap' = hiphop?
sure a lot of Japanese kids are misguided into thinking that bling and baggy pants are hiphop, but which country doesnt have kids like tat?
my bf has been listening to japanese hiphop for the past 10 years, perhaps i will get him to come share his views here. ^^
december said:I draw the line at Japanese rap. I took a chance listening to J-rock. I still don't care too much for J-Pop. But J-Rap? God, that is so ridiculous. It's like me seeing an Asian Santa Claus... not right.
Dik Dik Van Dik said:Judging from the post I see on this thread it's apparent that most of y'all don't know a damn thing about hiphop culture in japan.
Even those within the japanese hip hop community are lynching against this "bling bling" Dirty south mainstream ish.
The most knowledgeble poster to me seems to be rhymester as he/she is speaking mostly the truth.
Hip hop really has been around since the 80's in japan.
Most of what you see these days during the 2k millenium doesn't represent what true japanese hiphop was like or sounded.
Lot of y'all seem to be poesurs to me.
Trying to act like y'all know what hiphop is.
Don't seem to understand that rap is only one element of hiphop,and the term & subculture of "gangsta" is a whole different thing alltogether
Hell anyone who automaticaly equates the term hiphop with gangsta is someone I choose not to associate with since thier minds seem to be a lil' disuaded with the trash they see on MTV or BET.
Part-nah that ain't life on the streets. That's just glamour & glitz.
Actually there are several street gangs in japan.
Even some blood & crip sets.
Just because you never hear about it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Who the hell do some of y'all think you are?
To have the audacity to act like you know everything that goes on in the world.
As for that gangsta rap (Westcoast style rap) ish,yes japan even has some of that as well,like Ganxsta DX or Phobia of Thug,II-J.
Most of these cats actually are gang releated,and have connections with several sets from the westcoast.
Mc's like Kid frost,Warren G,Foesum have done some collabo work with these folks.
Shoot I'm betting y'all are the same types of cats that dismiss german & french hiphop based on their race & color.
(Though that's pretty damn stupid since french rappers are mostly of hatian descent. In other words they have black skin for the superficial out there who judge a person person soley on the skin color alone.)
I lived in japan for 5 years at the most,and sure I probably had the same thoughts of doubt as well,but I tell you Japan truly isn't that different from any other country in the world.
Hell there's even a dpg records japan.
Set up by Daz dillenger AKA Dat nigga daz formerly of the dogg pound.
(Releated to Snoop Dogg)
Guess what I'm trying to say is that a lot of these hip hop artist in japan actually aren't faking,but I'm mostly talking bout cats you see performing at underground lives and such.
None of that mainstream b.s. on the t.v.
There's a website on the net dedeicated to this subculture of japan.
They promote unity.
cultureuniversal.com
By the way it's run by a couple of euro folks ranging from Finland to signapore,so don't go acting like it's some azn pride bulls**t.
Japanese hiphop in it's truest form was never about that petty belligerant bling bling ish.
Hiphop & dancehall from japan are a lot bigger than what most people seem to think,but what I can I say?
People seem to only believe what their t.v.,internet or thier close circle of friends tells them.
flashjeff said:Rap! AAARRRGGGHHH!!! It's bad enough Americans not only wallow but revel in its vulgar, misogynistic and violent themes with profanities after every third word in the lyrics and inanities throughout, you'd think the Japanese would be smarter and avoid following in our footsteps. Oh, well, so much for that daydream.
Ma Cherie said:Japanese rap, that sounds very, very, frightening.
Suki-Yaki said:I don't understand why are we calling it Japanese rap. rap is rap it's got nothing to do with backgrounds.
And personally I don't like it. Neither in Japanese , nor in any other language .
Golgo_13 said:what are you talking about?
My whole point was, the so many Japanese try to imitate something from the West--including hair color--and that's too bad.
what are YOU talking about.
What do you mean 'The west', if you mean America, I agree with it. But since a lot people include european countries, I don't.
I know that the US has a significant influence on modern life. But if dutch, for example, guys begin to rap, would you say there is a kind of emulation. The only significant music-industries are the us and britain as they are the most worldwide known and have a big influence. But I think it's hypocrite to say that Asian countries are copying so-called western music. It's modern music. And there are a lot of European countries who also do music which originally came from the US or Britain, but they stink in it or aren't really good at it. Like Holland has a crappy musicindustry, don't have their own stardom, make crappy lyrics, almost no own artists. And the same old dull guy receives each year an award for best artist on a dumb award-show, where international big names don't show up. But there IS a good japanese rockscene, there is a good popscene.
Anyway, I think this is a very interesting article.
ﾂ"Fashion innovation, not emulationﾂ"
By Laura Miller, Ph.D (Loyola University, Chicago)
(Originally published in The Chicago Shimpo, Friday, January 16, 2004, p. 21)
One of the hottest entertainers in Japan right now is a mega-star with the stage name Gakuto or ﾂ"Gackt.ﾂ" A former member of a Japanese Goth band, he started his solo career in 1999. Over the years Gackt has appeared with hair dyed many shades, from silvery white to the reddish brown hue known as chapatsu (literally ﾂ"tea headﾂ"). He often wears contact lenses that change his brown eyes to blue or green. Older Japanese and people outside Japan assume that Gackt, and the thousands of young men like him, are attempting to look ﾂ"foreignﾂ" or ﾂ"white.ﾂ" But is this really a case of warped imitation, or might there be more to it? Could it be that Gackt and the others have models of appearance that originate in Japanese popular culture? My suspicion is that they are not looking to Hollywood or Madison Avenue when they change their appearance, but are drawing on Japanese fashion and media for their inspiration.
Perhaps sources for their altered looks are the characters found in Japanese comic books, anime and computer games. Indeed, fans of Gackt love to hunt for his ﾂ"lookalikesﾂ" in domestically-produced media. An instance in which Gackt explicitly modeled himself after a character was when he dressed up as a Meiji-era (1868-1911) samurai straight out of the popular series Ruroni Kenshin. At other times, Gackt himself has claimed that media characters were created after his likeness. His nickname for Squall Leonhart of the Final Fantasy VIII role-playing game is ﾂ"Gackt Number Two.ﾂ" In August 2003, the game company Taito announced that it was working on a new Sony Playstation game named Bujingai, in which the main character is patterned directly after Gackt. Gackt also worked on voice acting and motion-capture for the project.
Although all forms of fashion, from ancient to modern, entail a degree of artificiality (consider the buttressed and shellacked shimada hairstyle), the artificial styles of today's Japanese youth are often seen as nothing more than emulation of outside or foreign models. Yet we are missing something if the only interpretation we imagine is failed imitation. New fashion conventions in Japan involve melding of both native and borrowed elements to create something entirely novel. Unlike past generations, young people exuberantly combine beauty ideals from different cultures or historical periods. Japanese fashion innovations are not the emulation of any specific foreign trend, but are based on a combination or juxtaposition of items from different eras, places and cultures. This practice even has a name: mukokuseki, ﾂ"lacking nationality.ﾂ" The aim of the mukokuseki style is not to look ﾂ"Western,ﾂ" or Japanese, but rather like something that cannot be categorized. The photographer Shoichi Aoki beautifully captures this aesthetic in his photos of Japanese street fashion found in the monthly Fruits, a publication that also has some popularity among trendy American teenagers.
Bleached or colored hair is spectacularly popular in Japan. Until the late 1980s, dyed hair was still a minority fashion, but it has gradually become common among all members of Japanese society, from young people and entertainers to politicians. Almost all the members of the Japanese soccer team now have dyed their hair. In the year 2000, a poll was taken of more than two thousand male and female Japanese high school students, among whom nearly 40% had dyed their hair. Other surveys have given much higher rates. For example, a 1997 poll in the magazine Nikkei Trendy found that 65% of the men they queried had dyed their hair.
Japan's own thriving popular culture industries are most likely the primary source for recent body styles and fashions found among global Japanese youth. Hair styles are often traceable to characters found in comics, or to JPop singers and other media stars. One male celebrity who has been influential is Jiro, lead singer of Glay, one of the hottest bands. Jiro's hair has been pink, orange, green, blue, black, gold, and white. He has dyed his hair more than ten varieties of brown, and more than five shades of red. To achieve Jiro's hair, Japanese men's magazines such as Bidan or Fine Boys carry detailed styling and coloring instructions. When Japanese American adolescents dye their hair, they may not have Brad Pitt in mind, but rather celebrities such as Gackt or Jiro.
Meiji-era gentlemen were the first to begin mixing Western accouterments and clothing into their wardrobes, things like hats, umbrellas, and pocket watches. People thought they were trying to be modern, not that they had weak notions about ethnic identity. These days fashion has extended further to encompass the body itself. Youth fashion around the globe includes changes to the body, including hair modification, piercing and tattooing. I wonder why only Anglo Americans are free to do these things to the body without being accused of trying to change their ethnic identity? It seems odd that whenever Anglo Americans adopt nose piercing, dreadlocks, and so on, it is seen as proof of their own creativeness and tolerance, yet when members of other ethnic groups participate in body fashion, it is not seen as fashion, but rather as evidence of a psychological problem. To press it further, Japanese and Japanese American consumers of youth fashion are unfairly viewed as victims of American cultural imperialism, a stance which denies them the possibility of creating alternative aesthetic forms and meanings. For example, one important meaning behind experimentation with the outward appearance of the body is that it underscores a severance with the older generation. A young man with plucked eyebrows and long red hair is a powerful form of ﾂ"salaryman rejection.ﾂ" More than anything else, his dyed hair and blue contacts signify a desire to be different from the men of his father's generation.
Of course, we cannot deny the power and racism implicit in mainstream American media representation. I am of Hispanic ancestry, and grew up in Southern California where I felt oppressed by the blonde, beach-bunny beauty ideal. But I also see a different, and more complex, transnational world around me. Young people everywhere are interested in Japanese popular culture, a milieu brimming with blue, orange, white and brown-haired idols and characters, and value it for its unique and creative innovations. It is only in American media where homogenous images of black-haired and bespeckled Japanese men remain. Ironically, one way for young Japanese American men to assert ethnic identity in the U.S. is through consumption of Japanese popular culture, and by extension, through emulation of JPop stars such as Jiro and Gackt. These days, when I see a Japanese American man with dyed hair, I think to myself that he is refusing to conform to mainstream American expectations about how Asian men ought to look, and that he is in tune with the current cultural scene in Japan.