Shing02/DJ Icewater Interview — Part 1: Life of an Artist
The idea of rhythm pairing well with the fighting arts is as old as cheese and wine (Ok. The two pairings might be a day or two apart). Look to Okinawan odori dance and compare it to karate forms. Look at capoeira practitioners playing the roda. Look at every Krav Maga fighting working on his next new rap music video (maybe that isn’t as much a thing…)
(From left to right) Shing02, yours truly, and DJ Icewater
Point is, rhythm + kicking butt = something special.
Because of this phenomenal formula, I reached out to a phenomenal multilingual rapper from Japan, Shing02 and set up some time to talk about life, music, creativity, samurai heritage, and much more!
Joining us on the day of the interview was a good friend of Shing02 from Los Angeles, DJ Icewater.
I’ve summed up the first half of our group chat. In it, we cover who Shing02 and DJ Icewater are, establishing connections, samurai heritage and history, advice for artists, and more.
As you read it, ponder the ways that it can cross over into the life of a martial artist.
(From left to right) Shing02, Justin Lee Ford, DJ Icewater
Mastery is a universal language. If you can keep your mind open enough to learn from those studying other disciplines, you can forever keep growing.
Enjoy!
ME: Let’s take a second for both of you guys. If you would, take a second and tell me who you are and a little about your background / what you do.
DJ ICEWATER: I’m DJ Icewater. I’m a DJ from Los Angeles. [I] Spent time in the Bay area, where I met Shingo. I did a lot of touring with a bunch of groups, like the The Pharcyde, guys from Quannum, and Living Legends. I’ve known Shingo for over twenty years and doing shows with him. [He] took me to Japan for the first time about twenty years ago.
SHING02: My name is Shing02. I’m an MC. I also make music so you can say I’m a producer as well. I work with not only DJs but other live musicians as well. I just love arranging, recording, all of the creative aspects of making a record. I also like the visual arts as well. I like to draw. That’s how I first started making friends in the Bay area, just drawing for people such as the Living Legends and all of the guys who would hang out in the Bay area.
The DJ culture was so deep as well and I just got sucked into it as a freshman in college when I moved up to UC Berkeley [University of California, Berkeley].
ME: Nice. Any story to how you two met?
SHING02: We basically met in the scene, I remember.
DJ ICEWATER: Y’know, when I first got to Berkley, I just…submerged myself in the hip hop scene there, which was unlike anything from LA, where I was coming from. It was really exciting and I met a lot of people in just my first month and Shingo was one of them.
But he was one of the ones that–Y’know, you meet a lot of people but you don’t necessarily keep in touch with all of them but he was one that we kind of kept in touch just organically. I don’t really know what led to what but I was always around doing stuff and he was always around.
SHING02: At the end of the day, it’s really about being productive too. He is very prolific in making mixes so he’s handled my mixtapes, or what you call “Mix CD’s”, over the years. Y’know, we’ve done five volumes already and he’s done various other projects.
That’s kind of a freelancing lifestyle. Like you said [prior to the interview], it’s all about being ready for the opportunity when your name is called. He and I feel that way too. And part of even coming to conventions like this [MomoCon 2019] is the same. You get the offer and then as long as you are available, you do it. That hasn’t changed since day one.
ME: What you mentioned earlier about “organic connection”, I think that’s pretty neat. There’s a lot of times people just force that connection or try to make something work when…maybe it doesn’t. The fact that you guys found that bond, I think that’s actually really awesome.
DJ ICEWATER: At the time, I was trying to connect with as many people as possible. Sometimes when you do that, you forget [about that connection]. The quantity is so great. The fact that we still connected regardless, meant that it was meant to be I guess. We were just on a similar wavelength to where we both…took advantage of the opportunity to get to know each other. *chuckles*
SHING02: On the same note though, [the] majority of the artists that we worked with and hung out with are still active in the music scene. Of course, people grow and grow into different fields and they start doing jobs even but for the most part, [they were still] recording and recording. We still have a lot of role models.
ME: Any role models you want to name?
SHING02: Del and Hieroglyphics, Saafir and Hobo Junction, Mystik Journeymen, DJ Shadow [and] DJ Qbert. All of the Bay Area pioneers.
ME: What do you feel is important to an aspiring artist or musician? An important aspect, attribute, or mentality. What ever you think would be important to them to have.
SHING02: [Something] That really pertains to really any endeavor, whether it be business or creative, being an artist or being an athlete–It’s all about having the drive, having the vision to sustain it, and also having the motivation to keep going in terms of supporting yourself, because you have to be realistic. To me, there is no right way to do it.
It’s not zero or a hundred. You can have a job and do music and also vice versa. Some people view it as a black or white thing. It’s not. And also, for me, one thing that’s most important is creativity, you do something unique. It’s not about following what everyone else is doing or what the audience is consuming.
DJ ICEWATER: *looks at Shing02* I think you had a song or a freestyle back in the day that sums up my attitude which is like “it has to be fun”. If it’s not fun, then maybe it’s not the right thing. My personal journey in this is that it went from being something fun, something that I really liked and enjoyed, to becoming a sort of business that I stopped enjoying it.
So I took a step back and now I find myself naturally going back to it. I’m trying to rediscover the joy of my youth and the fun in that. That’s where I’m at right now. It’s a tough balance especially when you’re trying to make it the business and the profession. It’s hard to balance those things but if you can, [then] find a way to balance those things.
SHING02: Like I said, there is no one correct path.
ME: Going on to Samurai Champloo, of course I have to get cliche for a bit, you rapped Battlecry. How did that gig happen?
SHING02: I was living in Oakland at the time and I just got an email from Nujabes: “Hey, would you like to do this project?”. He sent me the details. At that point, all I knew was–I knew the director, obviously, but it was just going to be a late-night animation. He just wanted me to rap about [a] B-boy and samurai mashup.
“Champloo” means–It’s like a mix, an Okinawan way of mixing ingredients and stir-frying them. Of course, I thought it was very cool but I didn’t think much beyond the fact that it was going to be aired in Japan. I never in my wildest dreams [did] think that it would be syndicated in the States or that it would become popular. In fact, he gave a happy beat that eventually was called “Horizon” on one of his albums–it’s got the happy piano beat–so I just rapped to the best of my abilities in Japanese and sent the vocals to him.
I don’t know if it was the producers or what but they were like,”can you just rap in english and make it a little bit more dark?”. So that’s when he sent me the beat for “Battlecry”. When I first heard it, I thought it was super dark and uncharacteristic of a Nujabes beat but, I was like, “Y’know what? I can work with this”. I just tried [to go with] the “story”.
I actually have a lineage of coming from a Samurai clan. On both my mother and my father’s side, I can trace it back like eight hundred years. From my own experience, I had a young friend who became swordsmith in Bizen [A city located in Okayama Prefecture, Japan]. I visited his workspace and how his master creates the steel from the riverbed and they are the only ones who do that. Everybody else gets it from the mills.
They actually harvest the iron from the riverbed and they eventually make this…blob called “tatara”. Then they hammer it down, hammer out the impurities, and go from there. He told me about the whole lifestyle. It’s like a government control thing now, anything to do with guns or swords. So you have to register with them and train for two years straight and then you have to pass the exam to be fully certified as a swordsmith. So, all of that inspiration went into the song.
ME: That’s really, really cool to hear. Alright, this [interview] is already way more than worth it.
SHING02: It’s real interesting. I mean, I can go into the details of each side of my family. There is a lot to it.
ME: Absolutely! That’d be cool.
SHING02: Well, my last name is Annen. “An” (安) is “Peace” and “Nen” (念) is “Pray”. It comes from a Shingon sect of Buddhism, a very famous mystic sect of Buddhism started by Kūkai, more than 1,200 years ago. He was a very interesting man. He trained and had a revelation.
I think he was in Shikoku [one of the four main islands of Japan], in the island, and he felt the “universal force” enter him. He had such a revelation that he went to China himself. He was not happy with the Buddhism being taught in Japan so he went to China and somehow–I’m not educated on this detail here but–he went to China, went directly to the source, and somehow they recognized him enough to bless him as almost like a saint.
SHING02: Like, I’m pretty sure that he had the means to travel and all of that. He was a powerful figure in that sense. He wasn’t like poor or anything. He already had the means to do it. But he was able to skip the bureaucracy or the “red tape” to actually go to the source, learn even more, and bring it back into Japan, and start this Shingon sect. And he was also able to work with the government and build all of these temples around Japan.
There’s always, y’know, a positive and a negative side about Religion being tied to politics because also there’s a long standing Shinto history in Japan, where they didn’t necessarily idolize any figure. Eventually they came to respect each other.
If you go to a Buddhist temple in Japan, you’ll actually see a small Shinto shrine as a form of respect. Japanese people don’t really distinguish, necessarily, between two separate religions even though they couldn’t be any more different. They respect both. They might go to a Shinto shrine for one thing, they might go to a Buddhist temple for another thing. That’s just a way of life in Japan. That’s like another mix of styles.
ME: Another “champloo”.
SHING02: *nods head* So anyway, the name “Annen” is a Shingon name and that’s why it’s actually recorded in the home of Shingon Buddhism, which is Kōyasan in Wakayama prefecture. I’ve been there a few times. It’s really beautiful. You should go. You can actually stay in one of the fifty or so temples there and they wake you at 6am and follow the chant with them. It’s awesome. It’s a beautiful place.
And it’s sooo international now too. The first time I went, the head priest had come out of the temple…He was French. I kid you not
ME: Dang!
SHING02: And he just said “bonjour!” *laughs* I was like, “What?”. But his passion led him there and he was there for decades. So that blew me away, man.
ME: That’s…That’s amazing. That idea of cohabitation of different ideals that some would say conflict but don’t necessarily have to, that’s a powerful thing. Yin/Yang, In/Yo, right?
SHING02: So…this story actually gets crazier because–my Annen family is recorded there that came from the Wada clan in Kamakura. Kamakura is a city south of Tokyo. If you go to Kamakura on the Enoden [Enoshima Electric Railway, a Japanese railway], there’s a station named “Wadazuka”. “Zuka” means…almost like a memorial. So there’s a Wada clan memorial there because the Wada clan were basically eradicated by the Hōjō, who were in power at the time in the shogunate.
They basically eliminated them. I mean, they eliminated a lot of families that way. They would just send them off to remote places or accuse them for being disloyal, they’d start wars, and do whatever they can to eliminate their rivals. The Wada family actually had a small battle with the Hōjō’s and they were overpowered and almost all of them were executed at the beach in Kamakura.
Some of them escaped persecution and became the Annen family. That’s all recorded. What’s crazy is that the same block that has the Wada memorial–Nujabes moved there before he passed. That was his home studio, right there on the same block. I didn’t really put two and two together until later because my parents didn’t even know that story until they had to go take their parents’ remains to the temple. So they kinda found out much later in their lives. When I heard that story, I was like, “Oh, I know where that is!” It’s a Wada memorial.
ME: It’s one of those organic connections, right? [Something] Made to be.
SHING02: So, yeah. That’s one of the weird connection that I have. Even my mother’s side, the Maki clan, they lost the war, were persecuted, and they fled all the way down south [to] my grandfather’s native island, called Yakushima, which is a very beautiful heritage island off the coast of Kagoshima.
They lost in a famous battle in the northern tip of Kyūshū and the western tip of Honshū in a battle called [The Battle of] Dan no Ura. A lot of things lead to me and my other DJ, SPIN MASTER A-1, performing there at the Shinto shrine Akama Jingū, where my ancestors lost.
The priest there–He knew of the entire history of the Taira clan fleeing. So much so that there was a Shinto shrine on the island of Yaku [Yakushima] that still was dedicated to the spirit of one of the generals of the Taira clan. And that person, Taira no Morihisa, he was a man who was actually caught and almost executed on the same beach in Kamakura.
But somehow, legend says, lightning struck and helped him [prevent from] getting killed but I’m guessing it could have been a more political thing that he was spared. He was shipped to the southern islands, eventually to Yakushima, but he died on the way there. So that’s why the people there received him and then created a Morihisa shrine.
ME: Dang. There’s so much history. That’s ridiculously cool!
SHING02: Yeah, it’s super crazy! Like, me, anyone, we’re able to go into the temple where you can see the holy mirror that…people aren’t really supposed to see from the outside. And they chanted our name [when we went]–it was freestyle too. So the head priest chanted our names, dedicated that it was going to be a hip-hop show, it’s rap, [using] our artist names. Yeah, that definitely gave me goosebumps just thinking about the links to my ancestry.
ME: I can imagine! Ooooh…That’s why I love doing this kind of thing. Everybody has a past, right? Everybody has a past, a present, and a future. You might be talking to a hobo on the street and you don’t know what lead to that.
SHING02: *nods head* You don’t know! You can’t judge.
ME: You might be talking to an executive or CEO of some place and you don’t know what shoes he walked in. It’s always fascinating. There is always something you can learn from somebody, whether it is a different art, a different perspective, a different ideal–religion, politic, [or] anything.
The next part of the interview covers traveling to Japan for the first time, the concept of mastery, using creativity to go beyond the basics of your craft, and more! Prepare yourself for the next piece!
