, known professionally as K Dub Shine, is a Japanese rapper.

Early life

Kagami was born in the

Shibuya Shibuya ( 渋谷区 ''Shibuya-ku'') is a special ward in Tokyo, Japan. As a major commercial and finance center, it houses two of the busiest railway stations in the world, Shinjuku Station (southern half) and Shibuya Station. As of April 1 ...

ward of the city of

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

. In 10th grade K Dub Shine enrolled in an exchange program which landed him in Philadelphia. It was in Philly that he first encountered hip hop. He was immediately attracted to the way in which it addressed social inequality in the United States. It was in college that Shine began writing his own raps, first in English and later in Japanese.

Career

By the late 1990s, K Dub Shine had created his own record label and had become a big force in the Japanese underground hip hop scene. Many of his lyrics seek to depict accurately and without bias the reality of Japanese youth culture.Condry, Ian. Hip-hop Japan: Rap and the Paths of Cultural Globalization. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006.

External links

K DUB SHINE Official Site

References

Japanese rappers 1968 births Musicians from Shibuya Living people {{japan-singer-stub