Between Japan's censorship and hip-hop freedom
“What’s wrong with smoking marijuana?” This was neither a provocation nor a defensive response. Rather, it may have been “justice” for him. Kan a.k.a. GAMI. A rapper who has been at the forefront of Japanese rap since its early days, he is also well known as the first monster of Freestyle Dungeon. However, his name means more than just being an artist in the history of hip-hop. His words were an “incident” that stepped over the boundaries of freedom.
The “God of the Underground”
In the early 2000s, rap was still ridiculed as a delinquent’s hobby. Han was deeply committed to “words” while carrying the harsh reality of Kabukicho, Shinjuku. He lost his friends and even touched drugs himself, but he stuck to his belief that rap is a weapon. The label he founded, Kusari Group, was a crew connected by “words” rather than money. His style was not major-oriented, but a street philosophy that bets on the purity of self-expression. His raps always contained questions such as “Speak up in this society” and “What is freedom?”
Voices that have fought alongside the "grass"
The relationship between his music and marijuana is not just a “lifestyle.” Rather, marijuana was a part of his philosophy. It was an unusual stance in Japan at the time for a rapper who clearly endorsed marijuana use to appear in the media. His bold and public stance of saying, “I’m speaking for those who smoke,” and “This is our culture” even seemed like a kind of “cultural martyrdom.” But of course, the price was high. He was arrested twice for violating the Cannabis Control Act in 2016 and 2020. The media criticized him along with his title as a rapper, and he began to be “banned” from television programs. He continued to be active on YouTube, but after disappearing from terrestrial television, he was like a poet who had received the “punishment of expression” in modern times.
Is HIPHOP a breeding ground for "freedom" or "deviantness"?
This is where a dichotomy arises. Is hip-hop a culture that should celebrate freedom, or is it a “deviant” in public spaces? In America, Snoop Dogg and Jay-Z legally develop marijuana brands, smoke it openly, and make money openly. But in Japan, that same style is considered a “crime.” In other words, the content of expression is global, but the law is local.
And the first to fall into this gap was “the liberator of words,” KAMI a.k.a. GAMI.
Cost and Inheritance: "Han's Rap Will Not Be Erased"
But it doesn’t end there. His raps are still reaching the younger generation. The next generation, such as Namedaruma, Red Eye, and ¥ellow Bucks, naturally have acquired the style of “freely saying what they want to say.” Even the theme of marijuana is not a “crime” for them, but a “reality,” and it is integrated into the visuals and sound. In other words, the “rules that Han broke” are now becoming part of the culture.
The man among men, Kan a.k.a GAMI
He may have even thrown away his career to break the limits of words. But what he left behind was not just his arrest record. He carved the reality that “there are people who talk about freedom in earnest” into hip-hop in this country. Those words carried more weight than anyone else’s. And they still burn today.