I came across Shingo Suzuki, like many others, through the Japanese iTunes Store that I’ve recently come to use quite a lot. It’s a great way of discovering new music, the top Japanese music is easily available and Genius gives you great recommendations. I try to keep my library varied and I’ve been in need of some good jazzy Japanese hip-hop for a while and I have a few others that I will be writing about later on.
Shingo Suzuki is a Japanese bassist and producer whose quality tracks are made with his unique beat making style. Sampling his own instrumental playing cought attention of artists such as Moka Only (Canada). Blu (USA), 20syl of Hocus Pocus (France) and DJ Greem of Hocus Pocus. With the appearances of these internationally known names, Shingo’s first album ”The ABSTRACT TRUTH” became a hit not only in Japan but also the European scene. The album hit the top 10 in Japanese stores, in Portugal and France as well as on the hip-hop album chart of the iTunes Music Store. Yahoo! and MySpace Japan critique that “The ABSTRACT TRUTH” is the biggest surprise in the Japanese music scene of the year 2008. Also, Shingo is the leader of Ovall, a spiritual jazz/hip-hop band based in Tokyo. The band approaches hip-hop with a fusion of live instrumentals and sampling that takes listeners to the world of “Absolute Mixture Music” as Shingo Suzuki calls the style. Click to Read More and Listen to Songs
Little background info do I have about this amazing Japanese rapper, but what I do know is that COMA-CHI is one of Japan’s best female rappers (if not the best of them all). She has an old school but unique style which is probably best seen in my favorite song, Michibata (Roadside). Unfortunately like with most artists that get signed, also COMA-CHI has become more of a mainstream artist. But even though many songs have a mainstream feeling to them, there are a few gems in there.
Being mainstream is of course not always a bad thing, in this case it just shows that COMA-CHI is not just a good rapper, but a damn good singer as well. Personally I prefer the old school and jazzy songs when it comes to hip-hop/rap though.
Oh and I don’t think you’ll find a cooler Japanese girl out there, I challenge you to prove me wrong!
Michibata
NAME TAG
perfect angel
I strongly recommend giving her album RED NAKED (iTunes, YesAsia) a try, as well as DAY BEFORE BLUE (iTunes) which has a completely different sound.
And last but not least, if you understand Japanese, or rely on machine translations, you can follow COMA-CHI on Twitter!
I’ve been a fan of Epik High for maybe 1.5-2 years now and they continue delivering good stuff all the time, well, for the most part. This is their music video for Wannabe which is in their newest album called [e]. I didn’t read anything about the video before watching it so I was quite surprised and just thought “wow, this is a whole lot like The Host”, and as it turns out, it’s a parody of it! So it’s definitely a plus if you’ve seen the movie before you watch the music video^^
I came across Shingo Suzuki, like many others, through the Japanese iTunes Store that I’ve recently come to use quite a lot. It’s a great way of discovering new music, the top Japanese music is easily available and Genius gives you great recommendations. I try to keep my library varied and I’ve been in need of some good jazzy Japanese hip-hop for a while and I have a few others that I will be writing about later on.
