Kohh

Kohh: Leave me alone

Philip Brasor on July 28, 2019

There seems to be a performative style in Japanese popular art that favors over-emoting. Yesterday, the band Kinnan Boyz demonstrated the punk aspect of this idea with an early morning show that was so over the top that the audience seemed clearly put off. I mean, the lead singer was literally foaming at the mouth by the send song.

Kohh does pretty much the same thing for Japanese hip hop. As the most formidably honest rapper in Japan, his brief is total emotional engagement. And while his musical style leans toward West Coast minimalism, he has nothing of the West Coast spirit, which is imbued more with anger than resignation, which sounds like Kohh’s default mode. “Leave Me Alone” is his most characterizing song.

Can Kohh make a difference? On the back of his T-shirt was the logo, Blood Sweat and Gears, a reference to drugs in British slang, and one that he seemed to understand fully, mentioning at one point that it’s something we should talk about. Interestingly, the video feed picked up someone in the crowd holding up a T-shirt supporting Pierre Taki, the electronica artist arrested for drug possession. Would Kohh, if he had been in the same circumstance, have apologized and bowed before authority if he were also caught with drugs?

It’s a plausible question if you consider how seriously Kohh’s music takes his engagement with being out of the loop, which in Japan is especially fraught. Musically, Kohh is getting more into R&B and even singing in the T-Pain style. From where I stood, the audience seemed ambivalent, but maybe I just wasn’t close enough. Kohh may still be too far ahead of them.

Mark Thompson on July 22, 2016

Japanese rap can be political, it can be personal and honest, and it can even be funny. What it often isn’t is caustic. The young rapper named Kohh, who seems to pattern his stylings after dark American acts like the Onyx, pretty much shot his wad as soon as he took the White Stage shortly after lunch.

Sporting a ragged shriek-sing that would not have been out of place in a Norwegian death metal band, he writhed, skipped, and threw himself around the stage while his DJ cranked out industrial strength noise. The audience, much of which seemed to know his material, found the rhythm way before we did and dipped and waved accordingly.

Though the air of menace was mostly an act, it was an act that couldn’t quite survive Kohh’s between song patter, during which he chatted amiably with the audience and commented about the weather, which was cool, breezy, cloudy, and very dry.

Proving that he understands what constitutes hip-hop in the post-millennium, he used some Auto-Tune, brought out a two-man crew to chant the phrase, “dirt boys,” and spell him for a bit with different types of flow, and did a song about drugs, which, in Japan, is bolder than doing a song that includes copious references to “bitches.” The guy has a future, even if he doesn’t have any more real estate available for tattoos. (text: Philip Brasor; photos: Mark Thompson)