The single mum on the obstacles she’s faced as a female rapper in her country and the power of healing
Japanese rapper Awich (born Akiko Urasaki) was in town last month for a performance at Music Zone @E-Max in Kowloon Bay that thrilled even Hong Kong’s very picky music lovers. The only female member of the Japanese hip-hop crew Yentown kicked off her week-long Rising Asia Tour with JP The Wavy in Hong Kong last month, before moving on to her other stops in Taipei and Shanghai.
For her Hong Kong performance, she not only picked the city’s very own Young Queenz as the opening act, she also made sure to learn a few Cantonese sentences to show her respect for the city and its culture.
“I’m a fan of Hong Kong movies,” she tells Tatler while preparing backstage a few hours before her show. “So it’s an honour to be here. [And] to be honest, I never expected people to know me or my music outside of Japan. So coming here, I just want to have fun, introduce my world to the audience, and show them I might have what they need.”
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Now, at only 36 years old, the Okinawa native has firmly established herself as one of the global leaders of the Japanese hip-hop scene—which was never something Awich planned to do.
While non-English music and musicians have enjoyed growing popularity worldwide in recent years—evident in the success of K-pop, reggaeton, Afrobeat and more—Awich had no plans to ride that wave. Until one day, a friend of hers from the music industry confronted her after listening to a body of work she was working on and said he thought it was “too chill”.
“He told me ‘Listen, you have the choice to continue your career the way it is, or to take the lead in the Japanese scene’,” she says. “And I realised: if I didn’t do it, who would?”
