Testimony 1Utamaru from RHYMESTER
(Rapper, radio personality)
I admire them because they have something I don't have, like bad taste or stylishness."
Please tell us about your encounter with NITRO MICROPHONE UNDERGROUND (NITRO).
Utamaru:As for the individual members, I have known them since before their debut. I knew DABO and SUIKEN from Channel Five (a unit formed by DABO and SUIKEN with K-Bomb and DJ HAZIME in the 1990s), and DABO and I often hung out together at clubs, so we would sometimes go out to eat together in the morning. There were times when we would go out to eat together in the morning. I knew Tora-kun (GORE-TEX) from Sanpin (camping), and MACKA-CHIN came to the recording session of YOU THE ROCK☆. I don't know where it all started, but I recognized them as young people from that area.
We met at different times, didn't we?
Utamaru:Yes, I think so. I think it was MACKA-CHIN that I became particularly close to in later years. I had a feeling from that time that he had a high affinity with my field, and I thought, "We talk well together. When I was playing songs with "I'm sorry," he would get right into it, and even hang out with teams like that without me. I think it means a lot that "NITRO's MACKA-CHIN" is doing this for us. I am very happy and also very dependable.
Although both groups were in the same Japanese hip-hop scene, they had completely different styles from RHYMESTER, and many listeners and heads may find such a connection surprising.
Utamaru:Of course, we all share a common love of hip-hop, so we were never enemies, but as a group we were opposites: RHYMESTER was a 3-piece group that believed in team play, and NITRO had 8 members, and they were all disparate. It's tough even for us, so I don't think it's comparable to how tough it is for us to keep it together (laughs). (Laughs) Perhaps HAZIME-chan and the others are good organizers. NITRO is a fun group to imagine, isn't it? I think it's fun to imagine, "Will we be able to get all the members together this time? Or, "Will we all be able to get together this time? I wonder if they've practiced well. In that sense, NITRO is in contrast to RHYMESTER. But I admire them because they have something I don't have, such as a sense of badness or stylishness, and that is what Tokyo hip-hop is all about, really.
It is true that NITRO is a group that is particularly interested in your every move.
Utamaru:After all, he is a Tokyo delinquent. There's a chicness that isn't kind. We are the legitimate successors of Pager-ism (Microphone Pager), and a more Tokyo-style purified version of it. We are a group that values universal expression and consistency that is easy to understand and that anyone can commit to, and we practice and take it seriously. I don't know how they feel about it, but we respect them. Because they are cool.
I guess the suddenness of the news of the resumption of activities was not kind either (laughs).
Utamaru:NITRO should just do what they want to do when they want to do it. We don't ask them to release a lot of songs, and we like their whimsical nature. I think it is like NITRO to do things when the biorhythms are right, without being too disciplined. We don't break off completely and ask, "What's next? Are you going to do it? You're not going to do it?" It's just enough to keep things like that going on. NITRO fans who can enjoy that are the dominatrixes (laughs). How about we just wait and see what NITRO will do to us in the future? (Laughs)
