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Hip-hop fan in Yokohama shows some Japanese style "bling".

Wild Style had a huge impact in Japan, which now boasts a multi-million dollar hip-hop industry.

Japanese hip hop (nip hop or j-hip hop) is said to have begun in 1983 when Charlie Ahearn's Wild Style was shown in Tokyo. The movie focused on graffiti artists but also featured some early old school MCs like Busy Bee and Double Trouble, DJs like Grandmaster Flash and breakdancers like the Rock Steady Crew.

Following the showing, street musicians began to breakdance in Yoyogi Park. Crazy A soon emerged as a prominent b-boy, and he eventually founded the Rock Steady Crew Japan, while DJ Krush has become a world-renowned DJ after arising from the Yoyogi Park scene. More DJs followed, beginning in 1985. A year later, an all hip hop club opened in Shibuya. Before this most of the nightlife was based in Shinjuku. There was some hesitation at the time that the Japanese language may be unsuitable for rapping, due to the lack of stress accents, which hampered flow, and limited number of verb endings, which made it difficult to form interesting rhymes. ^[1] A few rappers emerged, however, including Ito Seiko, Chikado Haruo, Tinnie Punx and Takagi Kan.

In the 1990s, teen-oriented J rap music appeared, and hip hop entered the Japanese mainstream. The first hit was Scha Dara Parr's "Kon'ya wa Boogie Back". The following year saw "Da.Yo.Ne." and "Maicca" by East End X Yuri go platinum.

Condry, Ian. 2006. Hip-Hop Japan: Rap and the Paths of Cultural Globalization. Durham: Duke University Press.

Manabe, Noriko. 2006. "Globalization and Japanese creativity: Adaptations of Japanese language to rap." Ethnomusicology 50(1):1-36.

• http://www.cultureuniversal.com/jhop.htm
• http://web.mit.edu/condry/www/jhh/ Ian Condry's site, with videos and historical background
• http://www.aaari.info/06-02-03%20Manabe.htm Video of lecture on Japanese rap and language
• http://www.macsem.org/pantaleonipaper.htm Paper on Japanese rap and language
• http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/3324409.stm
• http://people.umass.edu/kawahara/hiphop_prose.pdf Linguist's assessment of rhymes in Japanese rap
• Nippop Profile | Scha Dara Parr
• http://www.tigarah.net
• STARWAX Music Japanese Hip-Hop/R&B production team in Tokyo.
• http://www.e22.com Empire22 represents an army of visionary artists that have truly overcome the boundaries and confinements of ethnicity,language, and time.
• http://www.teriyakiboyz.com/index2.html

1. ^ Manabe 2006:1-36