Okinawa, JAPAN Japanese rapper Awich has established herself as one of the country’s
top hip-hop artists, balancing swaggering numbers boasting lyrical flexes
with more reflective cuts. Whatever mode she operates in, Awich is
helping to change a corner of Japan’s music community often dominated
by men.
“I did a headline set at a show with a whole bunch of dude rappers. Real
macho dudes. They all went before me...but I was the headline. A
woman, as the finale, like a queen. Like a boss bitch,” Awich says. “The
audience didn’t expect that...a girl, after all these dudes?”
Awich says she had already been writing poetry from the age of nine, so
bending her art towards music wasn’t a radical leap when she first
started calling herself a rapper at 14. She continued learning both the
history and style of hip-hop thanks in large part to her home of Okinawa,
a chain of islands with a long, sometimes dark past that currently houses
some of the largest U.S. military bases in Asia. This makes f...
