"Your story is like that of a superhero. Literally, there needs to be a Marvel movie about her."
So gushed moderator Jamie Dominguez, the national director of industry relations at the Mechanical Licensing Collective, onstage at the acoustically designed National Sawdust space in Brooklyn. To a small crowd hiding out from the spring drizzle, Dominguez extolled the remarkable journey of Japanese hip-hop artist Awich. Hailing from Okinawa, Japan, Awich may just be a flesh-and-blood woman, but her sheer fortitude and tenacity are Stan Lee-scaled.
Born Akiko Urasaki — her stage name is short for "Asian wish child" — Awich was a natural fit for the GRAMMY Museum-sponsored "A New York Evening With…" interview and performance series. Introducing Awich and Dominguez, Lynne Sheridan, Vice President of Public Programming and Artist Relations for the GRAMMY Museum, called her "the queen of Japanese hip-hop" and "the living embodiment of all that makes the genre so culturally vital."
"As she reaches global stardom on the strength of her music’s emotional potency and limitless originality," Sheridan continued, "Awich now moves forward with her mission of uplifting her community while fearlessly speaking her truth." With that, Awich and Dominguez hit the ground running, with a tip of Dominguez’s hat to the timeliness of the event: "Happy AANHPI month."
They started at the beginning: Awich is from Okinawa, a small island far from the Japanese mainland. To hear Dominguez tell it, Brooklyn is actually full of Okinawans. "I figured," Awich replied, "because Okinawans are everywhere."
The importance of Okinawa’s innate mysticism and turbulent history to Awich’s art cannot be overstated. As Awich explained, Okinawa was once the Ryukyu Kingdom, colonized by China, then Japan, before becoming an American territory after World War II. Her parents grew up during the latter period, which lasted until The United States returned Okinawa to Japan in the early 1970s.
"When they gave it back," everything changed," Awich said. "We drove on the other side of the road, the currency was different. It was always chaos, but Okinawan people always found a way to live through these complex changes." Because Okinawans, she says, are a resilient, hospitable people, "We value each other as brothers and sisters."
Awich speaking at National Sawdust during her "A New York Evening With..." appearance in 2024. Photo: Rob Kim/Getty Images
Awich’s father was born on the day Japan attacked Pearl Harbor; in the post-war era, it was rough going for Awich’s family, to put it lightly. One particularly jarring story involved a U.S. military jet crashing into a schoolhouse while her mom was in attendance.
In 1986, Awich was born in an Okinawa steeped in American influence. As a teenager, she became obsessed with Tupac Shakur; listening to the hip-hop icon helped her learn English. "In Japanese, it's like there's a different, poetic, more indirect way of expressing. It's beautiful in its own way, but I felt like English is so simple, to the point and quick." Which describes the quintessentially American hip-hop idiom to a T.
"What he was saying and what he was doing, what his passion was, what his message was, his poetry book, his interviews, his speeches at the community center, his lyrics, his struggles, that's all I wanted to know," Awich says of Tupac. "And I just would study him all day, all night."
While she later learned to sing — and sing tremendously — rap proved to be her ideal creative vehicle. "I was already a poet in my own head before I met rap music, she said. "So when I [became acquainted with] rap music, I felt like, 'Oh, you don't have to sing to be a musician? I can do this!"
The story rolled on: at 19, Awich moved to the U.S., against her parents’ wishes. "They gave up because I was a stubborn young lady," the rapper said impishly. She opted to put down roots, not in the "overwhelming" New York or LA, but in Atlanta, partly to "watch the city grow."
She met her future husband on a fluke, walking to school; he convinced her to play hooky. "I sometimes hitchhiked to school, because it was just so far away," Awich said. "I was looking in his eyes; I'm like, All right, I don't think he's a serial killer. And then I got into the car and we started talking."
It was through him that Awich learned about the Five-Percent Nation, an Afro-American Nationalist movement that deeply informed hip-hop legends like the Wu-Tang Clan. "It really teaches the Black, brown and yellow to be the original people of the earth… It was really fascinating to me." One thing led to another, and they fell in love and wed.
Awich’s husband was complicated and troubled, and unfortunately, involved in the criminal world — and, as such, in and out of jail. Just as they found out Awich was pregnant, he was incarcerated. Three days before their daughter, Toyomi Jah’mira, was born, he was released.
Tragically, not long after, her husband was murdered in a street beef — the brutal culmination of violent events that included gunfire directed at their home. Of course, Awich was devastated. She turned to education as an outlet, earning a social degree in Georgia, and then two bachelor degrees at the University of Indianapolis. Then, she and Toyomi moved back to Okinawa.
"So you were a wife, a mother, and widow, all before the age of 24," Dominguez remarked. Awich answered in the affirmative.
Awich felt unmoored back in Okinawa. "It was a rollercoaster of emotion every day. One day I feel so sad and depressed, and the next day I feel like I could change the world," she related. "And the thing that kept me going was writing. I kept on writing journals, the things that I accustomed to do ever since I was a child. And I just kept on writing, writing, talking to myself."
After two years and a long talk with herself, Awich redoubled her commitment to music. And the conversation led to her creative process. Namely, writing and singing in three different languages — Okinawan, Japanese, and English. "The goal is for me to kind of just express or just catch what comes out in my mind," Awich said. "Each language has its own personality."
Awich talked about the meaning behind her latest album, The Union — "If you don’t know who you are, you won’t allow people to be who they are, and the unification of people coming together will never be achieved," she said.
She also discussed the hurdles of being an Asian woman in rap ("I always think that if I was a guy, I would've been way more famous"), and her appreciation of the Black culture that birthed her artform of choice. "I identify with the struggle," she said. "Hip-hop, the music, the culture, it represents the basic human struggle, and that's why it touches the people all around the world."
After a brief audience Q&A (mostly adulation from fans, and the revelation that she’s Team Kendrick in the Kendrick-Drake beef), Toyomi took the stage. ("Thank you for coming for my mom," the teenager sweetly, and sheepishly, offered.)
Following a projected video for Awich's song "Ashes" — about she and her daughter spreading her husband’s ashes in the sea — she then launched into a brief yet head-spinning performance of her trilingual bangers: “Queendom,” “Rasen in Okinawa,” “The Union,” and “Gila Gila.”
And with that, the globally rising star took her leave. "You’re about to take off into outer space, and it’s going to be beautiful," Dominguez said near the end. And, well — that’s what real-life superheroes do: transcend trauma, heartbreak and destruction, and take to the stars.
An "Evening With" Gossip's Beth Ditto Turns Hilarious & Rockin' With Real Power Tracks