Issue #95: Mofu Mohu
Discussing the new Yuka Nagase album, Aya Matsuura's summer classic, and the year in Japan's rap so far
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Perhaps Yuki Chiba released his sequel a tad too quickly. He dropped another album, Okuman Choja, only a few months after STAR, the rapper’s first LP under his post-KOHH name and the follow-up to the viral hit of “Team Tomodachi.” (Editor’s note: he released two more new albums during the production of this column. The point still stands.) While he puts up videos for songs off the new record seemingly every other week, the songs from STAR are just starting to get big burns on the app responsible for minting “Team Tomodachi” into a sensation: “Shinpin Muji T” and “Omote” continue to rack up engagement on TikTok with folks gassing themselves up through their boastful hooks.
“Bank” by Yuki Chiba
More important are those menacing beats. The not-so-secret sauce behind Chiba’s recent hits are the beats by producer Koshy. His gothic, Memphis-ian tracks pair well with the rapper’s chanted hooks and his tip-toeing flow as much as they do with outfit checks and flexing via hip-hop dance, like, say, the kind of movements inspired by Megan Thee Stallion’s “Mamushi”—another Koshy-produced mega hit. His tag—Koshy, a-tsuuu—has been popularly heard in Japan’s rap for some time, but I’ve come across his lulling yet knocking beats a whole lot lately. I already covered LANA and friends’ rap cypher “OIRAN” here, and Yurufuwa Gang’s NENE has been enjoying a small moment with “BANANA BOAT,” off of last year’s solo effort GEKIATSU. Appropriate for its title, that latter record is all done with the producer.
While Koshy locks into a gritty Three 6 Mafia mode with Chiba for the latter star’s latest, he stretches his legs more with NENE for GEKIATSU. Appropriately so: she’s far more pop and personality-driven as a rapper than the monotonous and laid-back Chiba. Koshy experiments with the drums, cooking in a few club variants like Jersey club and baile funk, but also gets silly with the loops: “Yummy” throws in one obnoxious vocal loop yet it settles as a natural choice for his collaborator.
“KITERU” by NENE
His flashiest attempt yet might be NENE’s new one, “KITERU,” that channels early Soulja Boy singles through its proudly brash swag-rap sound effects. And to use NENE’s words here, swag rap seems here right now. Blinging synth riffs and rolling snares meet marching band brass in beats backing former KANDYTOWN rapper KEIJU’s sixteens, YELLASOMA and friends’ posse cut and MIKADO’s flex against jealous haters. While the sound packs and the “Turn My Swag On” spirit of mid- to late-00s Atlanta rap has been inspiring Japan’s rap for several years now, nostalgia for the city’s mixtape circuit especially stick out these days from having a record like Playboi Carti’s I Am Music stirring up the zeitgeist.
Carrying influence from the Opium guys like Ken Carson, Siero understands that Zaytoven and 808 Mafia play as foundation for the no-fi rage coming out that circle: Blown-out bass lines bombards his remix of “Kidori Aruki” with Hezron over strings fronting the ships of early Young Chop. Perhaps the biggest Opium disciple in Japan, Young Coco goes one step further and recreates his own “evilj0rdan” with “Elevator.” (He seems keen on the new intro.) He gets somewhat of a pass considering he was an early adopter of Whole Lotta Red, the proof in his 2022 album, The Quiet Before the Storm.
The influence behind this new noise fortunately extends beyond the Opium collective. Fronted by rirugiliyangugili, CNG Squad remains the rawest when it comes up to raps over the most fucked-up beats. Some of their affiliates’ portrayal of a digital hell taps into the underworld of Chief Keef as much as Carti, like Neo Iceyyy’s Finally Rich homage as well as the brain-fried trap of wood pure luvheart. Outside of CNG, a great take on Back from the Dead comes from DAFTY RORN, whose haunted-house vibes I already praised in a previous issue.
“VIBES” by Sound’s Deli
When it comes to Japan’s rap scene, though, nostalgia in general will be always in—or the past never grows out of style, to put it more accurately. The mixtape era is just now starting to be absorbed into that collective nostalgia. An obsession for the old school won’t ever die with the boom bap continuously celebrated in the underground and mainstream. RIP SLYME perhaps has been the biggest beneficiary in this respect as the original line-up were welcomed with great cheer as the group returned this year with new music. I remain more excited by acts who put a twist to traditional styles, like Flat Line Classics’s nu-school studies of a classic era. A personal surprise from the true-school camp, though, has been producer STUTS, the MPC scientist who can also put together a hell of a pop tune.
Out of acts who flirts with the boom bap and soul samples, I often point to Sound’s Deli as a fine example of today’s hip-hop acts creating new with the influence from the old. And this time, their frequent collaborator, producer METS, has swapped trap hi-hats for club thumps; it’s a fresher update to a loop-based style than YDIZZY’s sample drill. (Though, to the latter’s credit, using that sample used in Jadakiss’s “We Gonna Make It” is a sure way to get my attention.) Take one wrong step and the marriage of hard battle raps and drum patterns culled from New York club and drill will steer an act into being a lesser Creepy Nuts these days. Yet YENTOWN avoids that pitfall in “Baguri,” a rowdy posse cut with an oddball beat that inspires even Awich to warp her voice into a stranger territory.
These modern reboots of old-school inspirations makes me miss JJJ. The rapper suddenly passed away this past April, and his music led the way in forging new styles while embracing hip-hop past. His best album, 2023’s MAKTUB, folded so much outside influence—Afrohouse, garage, UK drill—to lay over his stream-of-consciousness-like raps. He left behind one more new song, another exciting take on UK drill that can only hint at his next path. Other hip-hop acts are just starting to catch up with his ambitions. I can only imagine what his music would have sounded like that’s made in friendly competition with these acts trying to write the future of this scene.
Below is a playlist of my favorite Japanese rap songs of 2025 so far.
Heads up to my readers: I don’t know exactly when the next issue will arrive in your inbox. I am behind with production on a few columns, and Anime Expo’s coming up, which will eat up some of my writing days that I would have dedicated to the issue. I hope it will be out some day in middle of July, before I go on my vacation to Japan—yes, I am once again going off on a trip to the motherland.
But for now enjoy this issue which arrives a tad later than intended. We cover a returning artist to the Album of the Week section, a summer classic by my favorite idol of all time, and 3 singles of screamo, house and good ol’ J-pop. Happy listening!
Album of the Week
Mofu Mohu by Yuka Nagase [Kigensho]
*Recommended track: “Wonderful VHS” | Listen to it on Spotify/Bandcamp
Yuka Nagase simply wants to have it both ways, starting from her self-presentation. The singer initially didn’t disclose her appearance, her liking represented instead by a 2D character like the utaites uploading covers on YouTube. Her music, too, suggests a very online artist working behind a screen, well-connected with internet-based communities, such as the new-wave funk done with netlabel Local Visions for a joint album. Yet she eagerly performed those songs live, IRL and in the flesh, albeit with her face cleverly obscured. Her performances mark less an unmasking, or a digital artist finally stepping into the physical realm, than a firm reminder that she’s an artist operating across the two different planes — on- and offline.
Nagase continues to resist being boxed into just one definition or the other in her new album, Mofu Mohu. This time, the focus of reinvention is the sound. While her last full-length, 2023's Launchvox, solidified her image as a digital artist through electronic-pop that expressed the vastness of the web, producer Kazuya Yaguchi worried Nagase might be starting to get pigeonholed under the label of virtual artist. So naturally, for this next project, he pitched the very opposite approach: writing and recording with a live band while camped together for a week.
“Wonderful VHS” is the most pointed song built in reaction to this idea of Nagase as a URL-only presence. The use of guitars are an explicit statement on this front as with the production stressing it being a group-band effort. She might still sing in those hushed vocals that made her sound like she was whispering intimate secrets to whirring synths in the electro-pop of her past. But with a heated new-wave sound, driven by a wiry guitar riff, her band props her up into a flashy rock frontwoman. Her whimsy previously translated into fairy-tale-like storytelling in the interludes of her collaborative album with fellow bedroom-pop artist mekakushe. Here, she wields it purposefully into the basis of hypnotic word-salad hooks that evoke the lyricism of Etsuko Yakushimaru.
But Mofu Mohu is not so simple as Nagase’s straightforward dip into rock as another single, “hikari,” might suggest through its shoegaze fuzz. For all the emphasis of a live band set up shop in a rehearsal space for the recording process, much of the arrangements awe through majestic virtuosity as much as in-the-moment rawness, a jam further shaped by studio wizardry. The album’s first half captivate through its almost proggy flourishes. “Skeleton” run frantic up and down the keys and jazz-fusion guitars, and a flowery orchestral arrangement helps shoot the keyboard vamp of “We Are Sputnik” into the cosmos. While the instruments are sourced from the more traditional and analog, the tactile music feels just as hyperreal, and its technicality is no less inimitable than the DAW magic of her more internet-oriented albums.
What the deliberate reinvention reveals is the consistency in Nagase’s artistry remaining at its core, no matter what the change in scenery or window-dressing. Regardless of her instruments of choice, a “more is more” maxim animates the music in Mofu Mohu as with her past works. But it also informs her overall attitude, circling back to her insistence to not have to decide between this or that — digital or analog, retro or futuristic, fantasy or reality — when she can instead embrace it all.
Singles Club
“Eternity” by Mogry Home [self-released]
As Mogry Home channel bleak existential anxieties into fierce screamo, the band usually carves out space for a moment of emotional cleanse via hardcore breakdowns. “Eternity” offers no such easy way out from its suffocating darkness. Guitars chug and grind, the drums hammer away, though the broiling music dissipates before it can fully combust, awash in a pretty post-rock passage before it gets back its legs. “This was our life / do we have to just keep going,” goes a lyric, and “Eternity” captures that sobering mood where it dawns you gotta keep going after everything has gone down in flames.
Listen to it on Spotify/Bandcamp.
See also: “Gecko” by fawn; “Shinyi” by Recollect the Nostalgia
“Chateaubriand” by Wednesday Campanella [Warner Music Japan]
Oh, Wednesday Campanella is back. While the pop duo have not left in the slightest—they just shared an ear candy of an anime tie-in a few months ago—their output from the past year or so have been giving me diminishing returns. Kenmochi Hidefumi’s production still dazzled like a parade of fireworks, yet what I sorely missed was their goofball humor, the kind that inspires them to, say, sing an entire verse that’s just a grocery list of meats. “Fillet, sirloin / and then change the grill!” Utaha goes off in the duo’s new track like an instruction to a trendy dance move. And when the rave beat finally drops, her deli order transcends into a full-on prayer to the Chateaubriand: The mythical section! The ultimate meat! If describing what goes on in the song makes me sound like I’ve lost my mind, that’s a sure sign of a great Wednesday Campanella single.
Listen to it on Spotify.
See also: “Mirai Eigo Happiness” by Metro Mew; “RIDE” by Sawa Angstrom ft. xiangyu
“Floating in White” by Yusuke Takenouchi [XYLO]
Yusuku Takenouchi hands none other than his own production for the inaugural release of his new label XYLO. In his past drops, notably in the split EPs out via UNDULATION, he served slabs of brutal techno with harsh synths locking into strict four-on-the-floor. “Floating in White” meanwhile nuzzles up through a sweet, fuzzy synth loop over drums that softly tap away like raindrops. I catch myself reaching for Four Tet’s serene beats circa There Is Love in You to complement the hypnotic record. I’m hoping there will be more techno like this to come from Takenouchi’s new label either from him or some outside names.
XYLO 001 is out now. Listen to it on Bandcamp/Soundcloud.
See also: “Voices” by Inner Science; “Elastic” by satoshi iwashita
This Week in 2002…
This section is usually dedicated to the Oricon number ones throughout the chart’s history, but for this issue, I’ll write about a hit that did not make it to the very top.
“Yeah! Meccha Holiday” by Aya Matsuura [Zetima, 2002]
Highest position at #2 during the week of June 10, 2002 | Listen to it on YouTube/Spotify
So much happens in a span of a year. In the summer of 2001, Aya Matsuura was packing her bags to go off on a vacation with a boy. Her biggest worry? “What if there was a weird habit of mine that I wouldn’t ever notice,” the pop singer pondered in her second release, “Tropical Koishiteru.” “What if he was expecting a kiss?” The single rolled out a fantasy scenario worthy of a rom-com film, though from her adolescent anxieties, you could recognize Matsuura as a teenage girl you might’ve seen from around the way.
But by the next summer, the girl in 2002’s “Yeah! Meccha Holiday” bore hardly any resemblance to the kid who innocently stressed about how to act in front of her crush. From her speech, attitude and way of dress, she might as well have been from a different planet. At its core, her sixth single centered on activities more familiar to the common teen than her trip to the tropics from the previous year: dressing up in the trendiest clothes in hopes to win the hottest summer fling. Yet Matsuura sang about it in such outlandish language, backed by a cartoonish pop arrangement, she warped a familiar pastime into something out of our understanding as it was totally singular.
Matsuura’s on-record persona shifted for good in her previous single, “Momoiro Kataomoi.” She was branded an idol by association as she debuted under Hello! Project, the talent company which formed around Morning Musume; she initially auditioned for the latter idol group but producer Tsunku saw her better fit as a solo act. While her early singles portrayed the singer in the world of her songs as close to who she was at the time — a 15-year-old who just moved to the big city — “Momoiro Kataomoi” transformed the girl next door into a flashy character bound to the pop fantasy seen on the TV screen: the music video for the single introduced the definitive image of Aya Matsuura, the idol, that the public remembers her by to this day.
Infatuation gave somewhat of a context behind the nonsensical hooks of “Momoiro Kataomoi,” like her crush sweetened her words into fluff. For “Yeah! Meccha Holiday,” Tsunku simply has fun sticking whatever wild idea can get away with. Some of it can be chalked up as the producer adopting then-current slang into a pop scheme. There’s obviously meccha in the titular line but also the abbreviations that us Japanese folks love to indulge in: “There’s times I get a little senti,” the idol pouts, as in sentimental. And there’s the tech talk that immediately timestamps the song to the Y2K era when texting had just become a fad: “ai, yume, dot dot slash!” written out as “i@yume../!” All of it lends Matsuura to sound like she’s trying out the hip lingo used by the cooler, older girls as she goes about her great identity makeover.
Along with the quirky personality at its center, and the song’s driving narrative, “Yeah! Meccha Holiday” exaggerates its dialogue in a scale in tune to the dramatic world unfolding from a pop record. As if the oriental instrumental flairs in the arrangements didn’t already render the idol and her spoken-about feelings into a caricature. Matsuura sings as if a comic-book sound effect accompanies her every action, and in a way, they do: for those who’ve seen her in real time, the hook of “Zubatto! Summer time!” is inseparable from its choreography. Every other line gets a different vocal character like the idol is playing the story’s entire cast, including the omniscient narrator. She’s an old-timey sage preparing for the fashion wars at one moment, a googly-eyed preteen ogling at beach wear featured in a magazine spread the next.
Matsuura’s feat as an idol comes in how she brought all of these comical expressions to life. She delivered every silly hook, every goofy turn of phrase, every bizarre intonation dished out by Tsunku without breaking character while making them a part of her own vocabulary. Rather than being overshadowed by the ridiculousness, she thrived in the over-the-top concepts, carving out her identity as an idol through them. Her singles only grew more ridiculous in its depiction of everyday scenarios: it reaches its absolute peak in the 2003 post-breakup tragedy “Good Bye Natsuo,” propelled by Eurobeat playing at boss-mode speed. “Yeah! Meccha Holiday” marks the instance in which the ordinary girl stepped up into a larger-than-life idol.
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