Music remains one of the few passages between Japan and South Korea fostering good vibes in increasingly strained times between the two. Rap, in particular, has enjoyed quite the creative exchange in the 2010s, highlighted by “It G Ma,” but flourishing lately thanks to an underground rap community on both sides open to collaboration and…
Sort of double dipping with this one, but I think it’s worth it. Every week, streaming services put a spotlight on new Japanese rappers trying to take advantage of the always-coming-never-really-arriving moment where Japanese rap finally blows up. Some are good, most of them…are not. You usually have to go a layer beyond the “Apple…
These two internet-squatting rappers have hooked up together in the past, but “Pink Dreams” finds them both showcasing their best skills while in one another’s orbits. Set over an appropriately bleary-eyed beat, Sleet Mage delivers sing-song lines jumping from J-pop t-shirt material (“I feel like a shooting star”) to more ripped-from-context shout outs to Gucci…
AM 2:22 lasts just under eight minutes, and that brief time is all you really need to get a good sense of what rapper Gokou Kuyt is all about. More concise than last year’s #teendreamtape, his latest feels like a late night dispatch, short and at times fluttery beats giving enough space for Kuyt’s monotone…
More of a Soundcloud-centric rapper round robin than a song proper, “nap” highlights four very promising artists taking their own perspective on the hazy, often-gloomy sounds of a wave coming from America. We’ve highlighted two of them before — Sleet Mage, whose Astral Body Boi tape makes our top 50 of 2017 if we redid…