PROFILE
He made his debut in 1988 with the novel "No Life King," and in 1999 won the 15th Kodansha Essay Award for "Botanical Life" and the 35th Noma Literary Newcomer Award for "Imagination Radio" . . While writing, he has performed on stage with Akio Miyazawa, Naoto Takenaka, City Boys, and others. With Jun Miura, he has introduced a new way of appreciating Buddhist statues in their joint work "Mibutsu-ki," and produced the extremely popular event "The Slide Show," which filled the Budokan to capacity. In his musical activities, he is one of the pioneers of Japanese rap music, having made hip-hop culture widely known in Japan. Currently, he is active with Ito Seiko is the poet, Rororo (Kuchiroro), and others.
Twitter@seikoito
Chuck Brown's "Seiko Psycho" rhyme still sustains me.
. In honor of First Down, who was born in the 1980s, we asked Seiko to bring some records with an 80s theme.
Seikou: . I basically gave the hip-hop related analogs to Kuramochi (YO-KING) of the Sincerity Brothers. I only kept the ones I really wanted to keep, and the rest were MP3s of a few songs. . so what I have here today is very big for me.
I see that the first one is "TRIPLE THREAT" by Z-3 MC'S. .
Seikou: This is the sound of the time, but I had a song called "Kind of Rap" (a song that has been passed down through the generations as the birth of Japan's first real hip-hop). When I asked Jan Tomita and other great artists to participate in the project, I told them I wanted to use a rhythm like this, and this was "Triple Threat" by Z-3 MC'S. This was a record I didn't want to hand over. . this is a record I don't want to hand over. . for me, because I got the intuition that I could put Japanese on top of this sound.
Why did you give your hip-hop records to YO-KING?
Seikou: I thought that there would be someone who could make better use of it than I could. . I myself am not a trackmaker, but rather a "wordsmith" who decides what to put on top of the track. . And since the time when I gave it away was when I was away from hip-hop and in the world of classical arts, I thought I would let it go. Rather, I kept most of my reggae records, because in the 70s and 80s, hip-hop was the music that Jamaican Cool Herc created by connecting two records, and the Jamaican influence was tremendous. In that sense, I think that dub music derived from reggae is also a symbol of that time.
So you didn't want to give up your reggae and dub records.
Seikou: Yes . For example, this second one, Lee Perry's "Megaton Dub," is a famous album. What kind of music is dub? Engineers mix data from people's music, but it is characterized by its bold methods, such as making the drums disappear, the bass growl, and the guitar sound something that the guitarist did not intend it to sound like. Club music was insanely influenced by dub, and when a 12-inch record came out, a dub version of the track was always included. I think hip-hop and dub are the most amazing methods of music born at the end of the 20th century.
What do you mean by that?
Seikou: . Hip-hop is something that DJs create, isn't it? The great thing about hip-hop is that it is created by quoting other people's music without playing the music, right? . Dub is the engineer's messy mix of the sound of the band playing. In other words, both are the engineer's music. This is a huge thing, and it's a sense that it's cooler and cooler not to play instruments. I was into hip-hop at the time, and I thought the music that I was playing with all my soul was somehow old-fashioned. Instead, I fell in love with hip-hop and dub music, and I thought it was super cool because it fit perfectly with the so-called postmodern idea that it was possible to make something interesting with quotations.
What is the third one?
Seikou: . a 12" called "BUSTIN' LOOSE" by Chuck Brown & the Soul Searchers. I once stood on the same stage with Chuck and had him rhyme "seiko, saiko, saiko" with me, and those words still sustain me at times. Chuck was the most important figure in the go-go sound, which is classified as funk, and I wanted to form a go-go band before I die. I like that kind of music that seems to go on and on for 30 or 40 minutes. Jan Tomita once said, "A groove is only as good as the length of the groove," and I think he was right.
