Tokyo

Japan

Crate-dug jazz loops · dense Japanese rhyme · Shibuya import culture

Story, bloodline and 7 names

Japan got hip hop through record shops and the Shibuya import trade, and gave two things back: an obsessive DJ and crate culture, and Nujabes, whose Samurai Champloo scores introduced millions of people outside Japan to instrumental hip hop.

Bloodline · 1 stop from The Bronx

1973The Bronx
1986Tokyo

TransferDowntown Manhattan

Wild Style toured Japan in 1983 with Bambaataa and the Rock Steady Crew, and Shibuya's import record shops did the rest. Japan bought the crates before it wrote the raps.

RhymesterKing GiddraBad Hop

Roster

1990

Scha Dara Parrdeep cut

The playful crossover hit that made Japanese rap commercially real.

YT W

1993

Rhymesterdeep cut

Thirty years of the most literate Japanese rap writing.

YT W

1995

King Giddradeep cut