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<html><body><div><p><em>Ignored the value of my body and soul</em></p><p><em>Getting laughed at like 'B----, you a h--'</em></p><p><em>Wanted to go beyond the fence so bad</em></p><p><em>Hate it here bad but Okinawa is my home</em></p><p><em>-- Awich, "Queendom"</em></p><p>TOKYO -- Once a kingdom, then taken over by Japan, handed over to the U.S. after the war, and returned back to Tokyo, Okinawa's identity has been shaped for centuries by the tensions between its native roots and foreign powers. For Awich, the contradictions of her homeland are the pulse of her gritty, fiercely authentic brand of hip-hop. And now the islands are her Queendom.</p><p>"Okinawa's in everything I do, all the songs that I do, even in the melodies, and the cadence is just what shaped me as a human, and what gave me the guidance to live by," the artist says in a video call from her home in Tokyo. "We call it <em>chamburu</em> culture ... like mixing. ... [T]hat's the concept of Okinawan culture.</p><p>"A lot of [Okinawan] people in reality today are unconsciously trying to tear each other down, just because we don't have anything," she adds. "If you're trying to excel at something, they'll, you know, make fun of you. And for that part, I hated it. I hate that we are trying to pull from each other, pull each other down. And so I had to get away from Okinawa."</p><p>On an island with a heavy U.S. military presence, Awich (given name Akiko Urasaki) was influenced from a young age by American rap artists such as Tupac Shakur and began penning lyrics. She started to perform when she was 14 and had a record deal when she left high school. Still, she was determined to flee Okinawa.</p><p>"I had to deal with a record label, but I didn't want to listen to anybody, because I was just a rebellious young child rapper, so I didn't listen to anybody, and went to America," the 38-year-old says.</p>        
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                        Awich performs with Japanese group Atarashii Gakko! at the Coachella music festival in Indio, California, in April 2024.



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<p>The next chapter of Awich's life was more than formative. She went to Atlanta at age 19 to study, and while there she released her debut album "Asian Wish Child" (Awich is an abbreviation of this title that is a literal translation of the Japanese characters for Akiko). She also met the man who would become her husband.</p><p>"I fell in love with this guy, and we got married, we had a daughter. I still had a contract with the record label in Japan, but when I told them the news that I'm pregnant. ... I was 20 years old at the time, they were trying to push me as a young female rapper who got this skill, the looks, but if she's pregnant, there's no future."</p><p>Tragedy struck. Her "bad boy" husband worked the streets and was repeatedly in and out of jail. When her daughter Toyomi was just 3, he was murdered at gunpoint.</p><p>"After that I moved to Okinawa with my daughter to my parents' house, and I was just grieving and kind of like depressed for a while," she says. "But I kept on writing the whole time. I was still writing lyrics, still writing poetry, trying to rap it out, or just even diaries. I just kept on writing."</p>        
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                        Awich and her daughter, Toyomi, attend an event in New York in May 2024.



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<p>She mixed with members of YENTOWN, a Japanese collective of DJs and rappers, leading her to meet producer/DJ Chaki Zulu, the founder of the group.</p><p>"He was like, let's go to the studio. We started working on a couple of songs, and after a while he put together a budget for me to work on an album. They welcomed me to YENTOWN (as the only female artist). ... They did all of that for me to break into the Japanese hip-hop scene. So that's how I came back to doing music."</p><p>It was a long decade between the release of her debut and her comeback album, "8." She eventually landed a deal with Universal Music Japan, under which she released "KUJAKU" (2020) and "Queendom" (2022).</p><div class="embed-container">
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<p>Fast-forward to 2025, and the release of two singles and a new (as yet untitled) album set to drop in July. The first of those records was "Asian State of Mind" -- a collaboration with rappers from four other Asian nations: Jay Park (South Korea), KR$NA (India), Masiwei (China) and VannDa (Cambodia).</p><p>In the track, Awich asks all the artists "<em>What you do it for?</em>"</p><p>"[Among the rappers] we always talked about [how] when you grow up in Asia or the Eastern part of the world it is like coexisting with nature, caring for your friends and family, and the base [of that] is compassion," she says. "[The hook] is asking for our purpose, like, what is it that we do music for? What do we rap for? So I wanted to use this track to [examine] the 'Asian state of mind' like this."</p>        
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                        For the 2025 single "Asian State of Mind," Awich collaborated with rappers from four other Asian nations: Jay Park from South Korea, KR$NA from India, Masiwei from China and VannDa from Cambodia.




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<p>Patrick St. Michel, a Tokyo-based music writer, says Awich is one of the most influential Japanese hip-hop artists of the 21st century, and has done a lot to help elevate and inspire a younger generation of Japanese rappers, especially female artists such as LANA and MaRI.</p><p>Her success comes from "her ability to merge the sounds of American hip-hop with her own Okinawan background, and do so in a way that is respectable to both sides," St. Michel adds. "Owing to her experiences and her own perspective, Awich approaches it from a very thoughtful place, while still being open to seeing how she can imprint her own personality onto it.</p><p>"Coupled with her straightforward nature -- open and eager to rap about sexuality, discrimination and politics, while also capable of creating a great party record -- I think she stands out in both spaces."</p><p>Awich is now heading for a bigger global stage, as the legendary RZA (of Wu-Tang Clan fame) has produced her album coming out in July. The first track to be released is "Butcher Shop" -- a song derived from a beat that RZA gave a name to.</p>        
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                        Wu-Tang Clan founder RZA, right, produced Awich’s upcoming album, due in July, marking a major step in her global rise. 




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<p>"I started to imagine what a butcher shop is -- it's where we chop up, we put the meat on the chopping block, and refine it," Awich says. "It's kind of like the intersection of, you know, the culture, the history, the languages, the survival, the street codes, the scenes and devices, all of that is like at the butcher shop, and we chop it up and we serve it as raw as we can."</p><p><em>Come down to the Butcher Shop</em></p><p><em>We gon eat tonight</em></p><p><em>Come down to the Butcher Shop</em></p><p><em>It's do or die</em></p><p><em>Come down to the Butcher Shop</em></p><p><em>What's yours is mine</em></p><p><em>-- Awich (feat. Ferg), "Butcher Shop"</em></p><p>Awich says the song is like the crossroads of her own life. "My life is an intersection of cultures, languages and histories, and the good and bad, and I learned to embrace it, embrace all of it," she says. "I feel like the basis of who I am comes from Okinawa, and Okinawa is all about the chamburu culture, you know, you mix it up, whatever you have in the fridge. You put it in the pot and stir it -- that's how I was taught: how you survive, how you eat."</p><div class="embed-container">
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<p>As for the new album, the concept, she says, "is like the intersection or the mixture of the yin and the yang, the darkness and the light, the good and the bad, the joy and the grief. That duality, and also me coming from Okinawa, which is the birthplace of karate -- the place where we learn how to defend ourselves without any weapons.</p><p>"For RZA to be involved in this is very significant for me, because he knew about Okinawa, because he was interested in martial arts and kung fu movies all his life," Awich adds. "So for him to hook me up, or lift me up out of that island and put me on a global platform is an honor."</p><p>So what's next? "Musically, of course, like, global domination," she jokes before saying, "Global recognition without compromising who I am, as who I want to be known. I don't have to be like anything other than who I am.</p><p>"I want all the kids in Okinawa to be proud of this. Like, wow. We know people like it. People know about Okinawa and you can own our stories and you can connect wherever you go. You could connect with people around the world. Yeah, and say proudly you are from Okinawa."</p><p><em>ONE, with my brain I make a whole lotta Money</em></p><p><em>TWO, with my voice I bring forth my Power</em></p><p><em>THREE, with my body I accept all the Respect</em></p><p><em>FOR the Freedom. This is my Queendom</em></p><p><em>The Far East Queen Pain is No more</em></p><p><em>Can't stop me, Touched by No one</em></p><p><em>I've run through the rocky road</em></p><p><em>To stand on this stage</em></p><p>-- Awich, "Queendom"</p>
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