I’ve been bamboozled.

Folks… it’s that time of the year. Of course, not only is time for yet another installment of the J-Music Exchange/Rate, but if you’ve been following this series for some time, you might have an idea as to why the ones towards the end of the year are always a bit special. Before we get into all of that though ー

The Exchange/Rate, to those of you who don’t happen to know, is the tandem album review series conducted monthly by both myself as well as my very good friend and fellow Japanese music fan Al (from Omunibasu.Substack.com). Each month we determine a theme that will act as the basis for an album that we’ll be picking out from our respective music libraries. Said album will then be what the other person will be listening to and subsequently do a review of over at his respective blog. This project has not only allowed me and Al to explore music beyond our collections, but it has also given us opportunities to find new ways to appreciate some of our personal favorite albums. It is our hope that this series is able to do the same for you and that you either find a new album to try out and/or we offer you a new take on some of＊your＊favorite albums

Normally, Al and I take turns on who decides the theme for the month, but this time around, as we’ve now yet again reached the last month of the year, it has become a bit of a tradition here at the Exchange/Rate for us to go and give to one another our Favorite Album Of 2023. After all, it’s only right that we close out this season of reviews with what we both thought were some of the best albums to come out this year, of which there are always quite a few to consider. This is something that I have to narrow down in preparation for my upcoming Roundup Awards coming to you guys at the end of the year, but I feel like I managed to land on a good one. For a sneak preview of what my Album Of The Year recipient is, go check out Al’s review over at Omunibasu!

While I have you here though, allow me to present Al’s Favorite Album Of 2023; This Too Shall Pass by Wez Atlas! Let’s run it.

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Wez Atlas is a Japanese Hip-Hop artist based in Tokyo. Originally hailing from Oita Prefecture, Wez moved to the United States at the age of 7, and would spend most of his youth out in Colorado before moving back to Japan by the time he turned 15. He would release his first EP ‘Saturday’ in 2019, which showcased the East Coast vibe and the bilingual Rap style he brought back with him.

＜Ｔｈｉｓ　Ｔｏｏ　Ｓｈａｌｌ　Ｐａｓｓ＞
(＊Spotify link to the full album)

CDJapan Affiliate Link(s):
N/A

＜T ｒａｃｋｌｉｓｔ＞

０１・Life’s A Game
０２・Damn!
０３・Dandelion
０４・Go Round
０５・Cul-de-sac
０６・It is What It Is
０７・Me Today

Ａ　ｌ　: If I’m being honest, I don’t think there have been many songs from Japan that have really connected with me on a personal level. Sure, the obvious language barrier and thus me not paying much attention to the lyrics of Japanese songs is a big reason why I have that belief, and having to run them through a machine translator doesn’t exactly sit well with me (at least, yet). It is an unfortunate circumstance, as actually being able to read what these artists are singing about would help me appreciate their work even more, but I digress. However when I discovered Wez Atlas, a Japanese-born and American-raised rapper, this past year and really dove deep into his music, it felt like I finally got the chance to experience what I just described.

Not to go into too much detail but these past few years have been pretty tough for me. On top of a taxing pandemic, I was incredibly anxious and uncertain about myself and what my future holds, and it genuinely felt difficult at times. I’ve gotten better, for the most part, but now looking back… it’s easy to say that those negative experiences did a number on my mental health. That said, I feel like Wez Atlas and his most recent album, This Too Shall Pass, evoked many of the same exact emotions I had (and sometimes still have).

Obviously Wez’s tendency to smoothly mix English and Japanese together in his bars has been a fantastic (and impressive) staple in his music, but my favorite thing about this album was his ability to present a fluid, coherent narrative about his own personal experiences and hardships. As he starts rapping about how “Life’s A Game” and the need to always have his foot on the gas when it comes to achieving his dreams, Wez’s mentality gradually starts to change throughout the album, as he begins to realize that that’s not how life really works. Him losing confidence in himself within “Damn!”, “Go Round” shows him struggling with the fact that success isn’t going to come immediately, and even “Cul-de-sac” going towards a more personal direction with him wanting to support/be around his mom more as she grows older… it all leads up to Wez ultimately understanding that life isn’t always gonna go according to plan and, as one of the featured tracks implies, “It Is What It Is”. The emphasis to not be so tense or hard on yourself and to enjoy life amidst the stress and chaos is something that, I believe, everyone needs to hear (including myself) and I think Wez genuinely did a good job expressing those sentiments. The words within these songs can definitely hit home for many people and I feel like that is a huge reason why I enjoyed This Too Shall Pass a lot.

＜Ｓｏｎｇｓ　ｏｆ　Ｉｎｔｅｒｅｓｔ＞

０１・Life’s A Game
This wouldn’t be the first time I’ve heard Wez Atlas. It was actually through one of Al’s Roundups that I came to know of his music, and what stood out to me the most then remains to me the most striking thing about him, which is his near-native speaker-like proficiency in the English language as you’ll hear for yourself as early as the opening lines of Life’s A Game here. After just a bit of of digging however it became quickly as to why that is, and as you read on the short bio for Wez that I put up for you guys at the top there, it of course has to do with the fact that he is an actual native speaker of the language, having grown up in America for most of his childhood.

One thing I found particularly interesting with regard to where Wez grew up in America is what he attributes as his primary influence in relation to his own music. In an interview with Tokyo ON Wez talks about the impact J. Cole had on his life, going so far as to say that the East Coast Hip-Hop icon’s music was what inspired him to go on his own musical journey. Why I found that worth bringing up here is that he grew up in the Midwest. Granted, ‘East vs West’ in the world of Hip-Hop is a more nuanced dispute than simply being a territorial one (and J.Cole himself is originally from the West Coast), but this too speaks of Hip-Hop’s ‘globality’ in a sense. More on this later.

０２・Damn!
Another thing that I wanted to touch on for this review are the themes used for This Too Shall Pass in terms of the lyricism of the songs found in it. Story-telling is an integral element for Rap, and as such, it’s tantamount for it to deliver a message whether serious or otherwise. East Coast Rap for example is historically known for the narratives of social injustice and impoverishment that it’s able to paint, whereas West Coast Rap is traditionally characterized by its association with gangsters and their respective gangs. Japanese Rap pioneer Ito Seiki in the mid-late 80s would write songs that criticize traditionalist Japanese views.

Speaking purely in a contextual sense, the Japanese wouldn’t know much if at all about the gang violence in the United States, and your average American in turn would be hard-pressed to be able to relate to the Japan’s history of ultra-nationalism. The PV for Damn! here depicts a stereotypical Japanese salary man slaving away at his work, and while that’s something that isn’t readily relatable to most Western listeners as well, what *is* relatable is the feeling of being stuck in a rut but still pressing forward. ‘Relatability’ in that sense, more so than just language alone, is what helps get the message across beyond the cultural contexts that otherwise prevent it.

０６・It is What It Is
If I had to name a de facto title track for This Too Shall Pass, it would be It Is What It Is here. While the aforementioned Damn! illustrates the all too common plight of the working man, the central tenet of Wez Atlas’ songs (if only for the ones found in this album) can be found in what these two otherwise similar phrases mean. “This too shall pass” is an age old adage that, in the simplest of terms, captures the fleeting nature of both human life and the many experiences we live through it. That is to say, whatever it is you’re going through, whether you’re on top of the world or down in the dumps, will, by virtue of time incessantly moving forward, naturally come to pass.

“It is what it is” is a more modernized version of that saying which essentially means pretty much the same thing; that some things just are the way they are with not much we can do but to accept that fact. The Japanese expression “shouganai” which makes an appearance in this song is commonly translated in various media as the phrase “it can’t be helped”, that virtually carries the same meaning. What’s interesting is Japan already had its own idiom for this exact observance, derived from a different part of the world. The phrase “hika rakuyou” (“the petals will fly and the leaves will fall”); a preexisting commonality in precepts as opposed to something adopted or borrowed.

０７・Me Today
In as much as how you’ll get a feel for the generation that Wez comes from just based on the kind of music he’s making tonality-wise, I do feel like the biggest indicator of his demographic and the subsequent mindset that goes into his songwriting is best reflected in Me Today. In the same interview that I previously mentioned, Wez talks about how this song in particular speaks to his stance on the “hustle” and the “grind” that goes into the day-to-day, and how in doing so people forget to take time to care of themselves first and foremost; stressing the importance of one’s own health and well-being as being something that should be a top priority.

This is a very… generational take, and the only one in the album that I can see people be a little bit divided on. Wez himself admits too that a lot of his own feelings towards this culture of work stems from how him and his generation (Gen Z) feel about the work culture that the previous generation (Boomers-Gen X) lived through. Now, I’m dating myself here, but I’m from the generation in between and while I do understand the logic of where he’s coming from here, I gotta be honest, I wasn’t able to relate like how I was able to in all the other tracks on the album prior. Not that I needed to to enjoy the album of course, but I thought I should at least say as much.

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One of the long-beliefs by critics in the world of Japanese Rap and Hip-Hop is that the Japanese language is ill-suited for Rap. We went over it in my review of chelmico’s POWER, wherein we talked about information density and how you can’t get much across with spoken Japanese given its syllabic nature relative to how many words can fit in a line of a verse. In addition, Rap, both as a genre and perhaps more importantly as a story-telling medium was designed with the English language in mind given its roots that trace back to New York City. So we go back to this question; what makes Japanese music Japanese; or in this case Japanese *Rap*, Japanese.

We first raised this question here on the blog when I got the chance to do a review of another multicultural release in Misato Ono’s something invisible (check it out here if you haven’t yet!). Expounding on my thoughts on the matter further, in my personal opinion it doesn’t have a whole lot to do with language.The thing that truly matters is sentiment, as I’ve repeatedly harped on over the course of this review. The language, and by extension the genre, are mediums through which messages can be delivered. I would like to think that, if those messages resonate with the listener, then the music has done its job. Whatever you want to label it is secondary.

Whether or not This Too Shall Pass is gonna be everyone’s album of the year is of course going to be subject for debate; some people might not be into Hip-Hop or Rap, some might not necessarily even want to hear English in their Japanese Music. That’s perfectly understandable. It is what it is, as the saying goes. That being said, what I’ve personally found to be true is that this album is one of the more important albums to be made *for* the genre, not only in the context of Japanese music, but quite possibly for Hip-Hop culture in general. This album too will also come to pass. However, I would like to believe that even so, it does what it needed to do here.

＜Ｍｙ　Ｒａｔｉｎｇ＞

５ ｏｕｔ ｏｆ ５

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１０ ｏｕｔ ｏｆ １０

One of my top genres for this year’s #SpotifyWrapped was “Japanese Teen Pop” so despite my very minor misgivings with regard to the tone and the message of Me Too, far be it from me to enjoy songs that I won’t always be able to relate to (XD) Like I said, they don’t always have to be relatable too, and there’s nothing wrong with straight up just vibing to a track; which you can 100% do so to a great amount with This Too Shall Pass here. Damn! would be my personal favorite to listen to but if you’re even remotely interested in Hip-Hop and Rap (Japanese or otherwise), you’d be hard-pressed to not find anything to like out of all the tracks in the album.

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What are your guys’ thoughts on Wez Atlas’ This Too Shall Pass? Let us know down in the comments section below. Likewise, please feel free to share with us *your* favorite album of 2023 down there as well! We’d be curious to know!

This is where I usually give a quick preview of what album Al will be doing a review on over on his end, but as I’ve done in years past, I’ll keep up the suspense and ask that you go to Omunibasu to find out for yourself what *my* favorite album of 2023 was 😛

See you there, and I hope to see all of you guys in the upcoming Roundup Awards!

Happy Listening!