INDEX
Active as a rapper in the underground scene since his 20s
Takano: At what age did you start your career as a rapper?
Yoshida: I started working as a rapper around 2000, when I was in my 20’s. I was in a group called 8th wonder, and I met the members at a club. At that time, I was hanging out at clubs with my foreign friends and speaking in English, so I would talk to the later members of 8th wonder in English, saying things like, “Hip-hop is great, isn’t it? Maybe it was because I was also drinking, but for some reason my Japanese was set to katakatto (haha). But when he saw me talking in Japanese with another Japanese friend, he said to me, “You were talking to me in English earlier, but you’re fluent in Japanese too!”. From there, we became friends and decided to work together.
Takano: I didn’t know there was such a way to start a project (laughs). What was the scene like back then?
Yoshida: The way we met might give the impression that we would be doing party rap, but we were not. As for the hip-hop scene at that time, in the U.S., hip-hop was becoming more and more commercial from the late 1990s. So, there were more and more people doing underground hip-hop, and new styles were being updated, because real hip-hop was pop and not commercialistic. It was a time when Japan was also taking steps together, and we went out there, so we were doing super underground, real hip-hop. It was a serious and tingling scene.
Takano: It is amazing that you were able to feel the atmosphere of that time at the scene.
