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Re-textured Past: Maisou’s Fuuyu Kan

There has been a noticeable boom in young women crafting hip-hop over the last couple of years, but how does one go about standing out in an ever crowded field? Maisou jumps out right away on new album Fuuyu Kan by delivering near-whispered rhymes over a beat re-contextualizing Taeko Onuki’s “Tokai,” a song benefitting from the boom in older Japanese music, but one usually treated sloppily. But with help from producer T5UMUT5UMU, the song warps into something different, and becomes a good backdrop for Maisou to update the original’s meditations on city life into the 21st century. That vibe runs throughout this release, with beats seemingly sourced from older music (yeah yeah, nothing new, but maybe the way sampling has worked recently at least in online music circles has made something like this feel surprisingly fresh) that serve as proper foundations for Maisou’s own observations. Get it here, or listen below.