On school holidays, VERBAL would often return home to Japan with one particular eventful trip home which would act as the catalyst for his music career. His friend DJ Taku had come back from a stint at college in Los Angeles with hopes of launching a musical career. Starting off slowly and organically, Taku asked VERBAL to drop a few bars on an upcoming piece he had been working on. Despite being a little out of practice, nevertheless VERBAL made an appearance. That first compilation between VERBAL and Taku ended up taking off beyond their wildest imaginations. On the advice of their boss, they formed as m-flo, bringing on-board a mutual friend of theirs known as Lisa, as a vocalist. The true extent and reach of their musical exploits were never fully understood by VERBAL as he would spend most of the year away at school in the US, however on each subsequent return visit, things would get bigger and bigger as he would see m-flo making their way to the top of the Japanese charts. While m-flo represented VERBAL’s emergence into the music scene, most recently his global fame has come at the hands of his participation in-line with the A Bathing Ape-backed TERIYAKI BOYZ (R), headed and DJ’d by none other than Bape founder NIGO (R). As VERBAL explains, the Japanese market is often looking for a much more pop-like sound to their Hip-Hop, something fully understood by the TERIYAKI BOYZ (R) going into their debut album in 2006, “Beef or Chicken”. Another issue that plagued Japanese rap had been the difficulty in utilizing American beats due to the phonetics aspect of the Japanese language and the reliance on the throat to create sounds rather than the diaphragm. “I’m sorry, I’m not trying to diss Japanese rappers but they just don’t sound good over American beats, so you have to be very careful how you ride over the beats.” While this musical intricacy was kept in mind for the first album, VERBAL feels that more so than ever they nailed it with their sophomore 2009 release, “Serious Japanese” which also marks the groups first foray into international markets.
