Japanese rap is a thing out on its own, Condry insists, thinking for itself and more often than not making its own, Japan-related comments on global affairs.
That the artists involved have worked long and hard at their music, frequently doing daytime jobs to make ends meet, and most failing in the end to get a record contract, is essential to the picture the author paints. He's also keen to point out that they frequently take on the entrepreneurial side of things themselves when there's no one else to do it for them — renting rooms, charging admission and performing, and this in addition to recording their demo tapes, and even finished CDs, in the kitchens of their own, often tiny, apartments.
One musician/entrepreneur he got to know was Umedy, working part-time as a swimming coach to support his music, but then, after his rapping brother decided to go it alone, watching his group get dropped by both its record label and management company. The idea of two rapping brothers had, it seemed, been the only angle they'd felt able to promote. Umedy now works as the manager of Miss Monday, a singer he used to perform alongside.
Other topics covered include "sampling" (the use of other people's music, less common in Japan than in the US) and race as an issue in Japanese rap lyrics. Clearly the position of Afro-Americans in US society has no close parallel in Japan. Even so, words claiming the Ainu were Japan's original inhabitants, the first emperor came from Korea, and the Japanese were really aliens on their own soil were bleeped out from the pioneering first CD by artist ECD in 1992 as being too inflammatory.
The research for this book may appear to have been done several years ago, but the photos, many by the author himself, are often only a couple of months old. The cover picture, for instance, was taken this August — not bad considering publishers' usual schedules. Either way, the book attractively combines a careful combing through of other material on the topic with a reader-friendly amiability and marked loyalty to the artists interviewed. Hip-hop Japan may technically be an academic work in Asian anthropology, but non-academics interested in the subject can approach it and be fairly certain to find plenty of material in its pages to inform and even entertain them.
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