Hip Hop Japan: Part III

This time around, my own band has made it into tonight's series of events! I'm currently playing drums in a J-Reggae/J-Hip-hop group with Japanese musicians Keita and Kenji on guitars and vocals and Englishman Alex on bass.

Kenji is our frontman and MC. As a rapper and musician, his songwriting, lyricism, and rhyming is just unreal. One of these days I'm going to get some video and audio up in this joint.

We did a gig tonight at The Game in Shibuya. The event was a Hip-hop showcase featuring all kinds of DJ's, MC's, and live bands like ours. Special guest in the lineup was the famous Japanese rapper, Kohei Japan. As a matter of fact, Ian Condry, the author who has made it into so many of this past month's posts, mentions Kohei Japan quite a few times in his book, Hip-Hop Japan. When I first read the book 2 years ago, I don't think it crossed my mind that I would one day be hanging out in the venues and (at least in some sense) sharing the stage with some of the acts mentioned.

A few shots:

Here's Keita singing Japanese Surfer Reggae and strumming his guitar. He learned to speak fluent English by surfing throughout the world.

Here's Kenji bustin' some rhymes. His background is part Kenyan and part Japanese. As if Barack Obama was a Japanese rapper...
And of course Kohei Japan:
I can say with confidence that my group played well and got the crowd pumped. Thanks to everyone who came out to support!