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Novel Core – Welcome to My Brain interview series, #1
Background: Stream Web began an interview series with Novel Core, "Welcome to My Brain" since July, 2024.
In this first installment of the series, he shares his childhood, background, and musical influences growing up.
Enjoy!
Vol. 1, 2024.07.16
Original interview link: https://strmweb.jp/archives/13511/
Core has been into music since he was in elementary school. Core mama was in a band when she was a student, so since he was little, he was listening to hard rock music like Bon Jovi and Led Zeppelin. When his mama takes him to karaoke, they would also sing songs by bands like Rebecca and BOØWY – the second boom of bands around the 80s, which also had a great influence on Core’s music.
In Core’s generation, Shuji and Akira’s “Seishun Amigo” was very popular (this is also his mother’s influence). He also enjoyed music from different generations: Sada Masashi-san, Tamaki Kouji, Okuda Tamio (including when he was in Unicorn). He was drawn to singers who poured their emotions into their performances. Sada-san has a soulfulness to his voice, the quality of his voice too, it just naturally stirs your emotions. Same for Tamaki-san, it’s like his voice is his instrument. Core also loves Tamaki-san for his lyrics, especially the song “Denen”. After joining BMSG and his major debut, he was having a rough time mentally, Core had “Denen” as his LINE BGM. Core later learned that when Tamaki-san wrote “Denen” Anzen Chitai and Tamaki himself was also going through various things. “Denen” was a song depicting the scenery he saw when he was in a psychiatric ward. Core thinks that’s what makes a song so compelling, the background story behind it.
Core has always cared a lot about the background behind a song and it’s why he’s usually very drawn to songs that reveal these sort of background stories to them.
When Core was in junior high, he became interested in vocaloid singers because of his sister. The first CD he bought was a vocaloid singer called “Gurutamin”. He found vocaloid and Utaite singers’ often sing using words he’s never heard of, or they would include a lot of idioms. The melodies they had were all very fresh and new to him at the time too. He also listened to Yonezu Kenshi a lot when he was still under the name P-Hachi.
Although he didn’t think about singing at this time of his life, he was the conductor for the school choir competition in his first year of junior high. This experience made him want to pursue a career in music. He worked harder than everyone else during music class in school too.
He volunteered to be a conductor because he wanted to stand out (LMAO). In school sports festivals, usually the jocks, rowdy kids get noticed but in a choir those types of people aren’t the center of attention. So he volunteered thinking he would stand out. Since Core is naturally the type of person with a strong need for self-expression, he just kept going with it in his second year too. It was fun seeing what he wanted to express actually turn into sound / music and come back to him.
Core listened to classical music in his two years as a conductor. He actually recorded the Vienna New Year’s Concert and watched it many times. He went to see concerts performed by various orchestras too. He didn’t focus too much on the background of classics itself, and just listened to the performances.
A conductor that had a great influence on him is Sado Yutaka. Core loves how Sado-san pours himself completely into conducting, so much so that he is drenched in sweat. In 2011, Sado-san conducted the “SUNTORY Presents Beethoven's 9th with a Cast of 10,000”, Core was very moved by his performance. Sado-san also collaborated with Sada-san on “Untitled Concert”, Core was able to watch the video of their performance and thought they were really cool.
There are songs in Core’s discography that are a reflection of his background in classical music and conducting, such as “THANKS ALL MY TEARS” and “Jenga”. Part of it comes from wanting to reflect the music he listened to and experienced back then. Core has this dream of performing live with a full orchestra someday, so he is gradually creating songs now that he can eventually showcase when he reaches that stage.
Kpop has been sampling classical music in their songs in the past couple of years. Core wants to make those kind of songs too.
Koa listens to a lot of music, he doesn’t really lean particular to one genre, since he believes listening to everything helps build your foundations and it’s easier once you are an artist and thinking about how to approach your artistry / sound.
Koa does want to learn to play musical instruments. He had a period of time where he was learning drums, and he remembers telling his mom he wanted to play the piano “no matter what” and so his mom took him for a trial lesson. (He got bored and went home right after 😂😭) He is a complete beginner at guitar, he got himself a black Takamine electric-acoustic guitar just like Bon Jovi, but was very discouraged trying to play the F chord 😂😭
Core wanted to be a conductor and hoped to study in a music college for that but family finances were tight so he gave up on the thought. But, he still wanted to do something related to music. Once he was in high school he would be on YouTube watching a lot of music-related videos, the algorithm would recommend him someone’s hip hop track. He found it interesting that you could sample drums from one track to make into something new and he went down the rabbit hole.
While Core found hip hop music fascinating, he also wanted to understand the culture. He is the type to dig and research about the history and culture once he likes the music. The first hip hop artist he listened to was Kendrick Lamar. Core was singing about things happening within a few meters radius but he knows there were social issues happening then too. Core had a lot of messages he wanted to convey to society so he wanted to be like Kendrick. Following that, he wanted to learn about the origins of hip-hop, so he listened back to the era of block parties in the 1970s and watched things like the newly released NWA biopic Straight Outta Compton (2015). Like Kendrick, listening to the work of conscious rappers like Logic and J. Cole made him realize hip-hop is a socially conscious genre where powerful messages take center stage in music —and that's what drew Koa in.
Core listened to hip hop from overseas at first, then gradually listened to Japanese hip hop. He listened to J-rappers like ZEEBRA and RHYMESTER, found it cool and wanted to try it himself. Around that time Core started dabbling into rap, it was the era of freestyle and MC battles, and he thought these two were something he could start with, so he started by rapping in his room facing the wall.
Since Core listened to music from a variety of genres, he had a vague idea of “This is the kind of rap I want to do”. Looking back now, he thinks he was terrible, lol. But he enjoyed rapping right from the moment he started.
Core was really crazy about rap overseas, so for a period of time he was really into flows that only worked well in English – so much so that he would soften his Japanese pronunciation to sound more English-like. Ultimately, he did develop a style of rap where Japanese sounds beautiful. He was really inspired by the rap from ZEEBRA’s era where the lyrics really sink in, it made him think, “This style is what makes Japanese rap cool” so as he developed his rap style, he was quite conscious about it.
Core used a ton of translation sites like a maniac. Once he understood what the lyrics meant, the more fun it became for him. He would dig and search more about the incident or feud mentioned, or the name of the artist that was dropped... Finding the name of an artist leads you to another artist so he started listening to all kinds of artists. Before he knew it, he was listening to nothing but hiphop.
Kendrick Lamar’s music and lyrics were a huge influence on Core’s own rap and message in his music. Here Core talks about how Kendrick has tremendous respect for Martin Luther King Jr.. Core too also became a big fan of Dr. King when he was in his first or second year of junior high school. Core read about him in books, learned about his speeches and what he was trying to do, and read up on the history, so he found himself relating to many of the lyrics [by Kendrick].
The biggest influence Kendrick had on Core though, was how powerful it felt to hear him sing about surprisingly relatable, everyday things. It wasn't about some grand, world-changing tension; by singing about incidents happening right around them, it made you think about why those things happen in the first place—like how poverty is at the root of it – that's where the awareness of the problem lies. He found that approach incredibly beautiful, and it's been a huge inspiration for Core’s own music.
Core also listens to hiphop from the 80s and 90s.
About six months into when Core started rapping, he met ZEEBRA and joined his agency. Once he was in ZEEBRA’s agency, he went back to listen to the discog of other, older artists under ZEEBRA’s agency. When Core was signed with a label, ZEEBRA told Core he wanted Core to be like Nas, so listen to Nas.
Koa thinks ZEEBRA told Core to do this because Nas’s approach to rap is different from mainstream gangster rap, so Core thought that’s what ZEEBRA wanted his artists under his agency to aim for. ZEEBRA strongly believed his artists shouldn’t simply just walk the path that is laid out for them, they should overlay the path with their own, unique journeys. Reinterpret properly, align it with the times, make music while keeping the future generations in mind. ZEEBRA often told his artists, “Be a teacher, not a king,” and “Make Nas your role model.”
Core started listening to rap by artists that came after ZEEBRA and RHYMESTER a lot later. Core got into J-hiphop in quite an unconventional way. He was really into books at the time so he would be very absorbed by artists who wrote literary lyrics. He was listening intensively to artists like THE BLUE HERB and Shing02 thinking, “Woahh, these lyrics are amazing!” or “This can be a novel as it is…” He also listened to a ton of ZORN during his ZONE THE DARKNESS era.
Koa has always been into the heavier stuff. Compared to other countries, Japan has a lot of affluent areas, and issues like poverty are less prevalent. Koa thought that compared to how things are overseas, it felt like things were really well-organized in Japan. But even then, Core thought there were plenty of deep, dark undercurrents. Just because you're born into a wealthy family doesn't mean you're happy, right? Back then, Koa was drawn to artists who sang about that darkness.
So compared to his peers or contemporaries, Koa was drawn to artists of the past. The seniors around Core who took care of him were all people who supported Japanese hip-hop during its inception. Meeting ZEEBRA early on, and being taken under the wing by everyone in NITRO MICROPHONE UNDERGROUND and KAMINARI-KAZOKU. back then, Core felt like he learned hip-hop from them. So naturally, he ended up listening to that side of it.
Koa never thought about trying for a hiphop crew, he did think they were super cool, lol. Seeing people who stayed in the scene even as they got older, he could feel the history even in a one-liner. Watching that made Koa remember back then that he wanted to become that kind of artist with real weight.
Core liked the hiphop crew, Wu-Tang Clan. Though he got into crews more gradually, and with Wu-Tang, he was definitely a latecomer. Same with N.W.A. Koa got into them through movies and books, dug around, and thought, “Oh, I see, there was that era,” and started listening from there.
Out of Japanese freestyle rappers, Core likes ChinzaDOPENESS (鎮座DOPENESS) and TPLS (Chipuruso). Basically, even during freestyle sessions, Koa liked people who did rapping with musicality. Koa would grumble things like, “How the hell did that word come out?” or “Why did that approach come out for that beat?” He used to hunt down and watch videos like the one of ChinzaDOPENESS doing a circle cypher with DARTHREIDER and others on a hill in Ebisu. Talking about it made him nostalgic! Compared to intense rap battles, Core was drawn more to rap that had a certain style of music to them. Though the freestyle that was popular wasn’t like that when Koa started.
In the hiphop / rap scene back then, if something fit the music too perfectly, it was considered a gimmick. It's weird, but there was this atmosphere where if you just picked on one line, even if it wasn't rap, the crowd would go wild. So Koa realized early on that even if you were rapping seriously, you couldn't win. There was a period of time where Core intentionally adapted his style to match the popular MC battle format. It wasn’t his true intention but back then getting his name out there came first.
When hiphop started incorporating strong rock elements, especially emo rock, Koa has been listening to it religiously since Lil Peep and Post Malone emerged (realtime if he could). Emo rap, cloud rap, everything. It felt fresh to Koa that songs entering the hiphop charts were lyrics relentlessly addressing mental health. Old-school hip-hop had this aesthetic of not really showing that side. It was the moment lyrics going completely against that started trending as hiphop in the mainstream. Koa felt a sense of déjà vu, “That's rock music, right?” He realized that the colors of rock were starting to mix with the colors of hiphop, and he felt hopeful. He thinks it was a good trend.
All of this has had an influence on Core’s own music. Being able to sing about real-life struggles, expose his vulnerabilities, and confront negativity without pretense over a hiphop beat, Lil Peep and others from that era played a huge role in that. Back then, Novel Core was desperately trying to look cool, and was stretched beyond his limits. But after Lil Peep, it was the moment Koa shifted gears and decided to just be honest with himself.
Hope you enjoyed!
Please note I translate these for free and I'm not a professional, so they may not be 100% accurate.
Retranslations or sharing of the summaries is fine! For retranslations, please notify me beforehand and credit once posted!
Translations do take time to complete, so if you like my translations you can consider tipping me on Ko-Fi!
In this first installment of the series, he shares his childhood, background, and musical influences growing up.
Enjoy!
Vol. 1, 2024.07.16
Original interview link: https://strmweb.jp/archives/13511/
Core’s music influences
Core has been into music since he was in elementary school. Core mama was in a band when she was a student, so since he was little, he was listening to hard rock music like Bon Jovi and Led Zeppelin. When his mama takes him to karaoke, they would also sing songs by bands like Rebecca and BOØWY – the second boom of bands around the 80s, which also had a great influence on Core’s music.
In Core’s generation, Shuji and Akira’s “Seishun Amigo” was very popular (this is also his mother’s influence). He also enjoyed music from different generations: Sada Masashi-san, Tamaki Kouji, Okuda Tamio (including when he was in Unicorn). He was drawn to singers who poured their emotions into their performances. Sada-san has a soulfulness to his voice, the quality of his voice too, it just naturally stirs your emotions. Same for Tamaki-san, it’s like his voice is his instrument. Core also loves Tamaki-san for his lyrics, especially the song “Denen”. After joining BMSG and his major debut, he was having a rough time mentally, Core had “Denen” as his LINE BGM. Core later learned that when Tamaki-san wrote “Denen” Anzen Chitai and Tamaki himself was also going through various things. “Denen” was a song depicting the scenery he saw when he was in a psychiatric ward. Core thinks that’s what makes a song so compelling, the background story behind it.
Core has always cared a lot about the background behind a song and it’s why he’s usually very drawn to songs that reveal these sort of background stories to them.
When Core was in junior high, he became interested in vocaloid singers because of his sister. The first CD he bought was a vocaloid singer called “Gurutamin”. He found vocaloid and Utaite singers’ often sing using words he’s never heard of, or they would include a lot of idioms. The melodies they had were all very fresh and new to him at the time too. He also listened to Yonezu Kenshi a lot when he was still under the name P-Hachi.
Although he didn’t think about singing at this time of his life, he was the conductor for the school choir competition in his first year of junior high. This experience made him want to pursue a career in music. He worked harder than everyone else during music class in school too.
He volunteered to be a conductor because he wanted to stand out (LMAO). In school sports festivals, usually the jocks, rowdy kids get noticed but in a choir those types of people aren’t the center of attention. So he volunteered thinking he would stand out. Since Core is naturally the type of person with a strong need for self-expression, he just kept going with it in his second year too. It was fun seeing what he wanted to express actually turn into sound / music and come back to him.
Core listened to classical music in his two years as a conductor. He actually recorded the Vienna New Year’s Concert and watched it many times. He went to see concerts performed by various orchestras too. He didn’t focus too much on the background of classics itself, and just listened to the performances.
A conductor that had a great influence on him is Sado Yutaka. Core loves how Sado-san pours himself completely into conducting, so much so that he is drenched in sweat. In 2011, Sado-san conducted the “SUNTORY Presents Beethoven's 9th with a Cast of 10,000”, Core was very moved by his performance. Sado-san also collaborated with Sada-san on “Untitled Concert”, Core was able to watch the video of their performance and thought they were really cool.
There are songs in Core’s discography that are a reflection of his background in classical music and conducting, such as “THANKS ALL MY TEARS” and “Jenga”. Part of it comes from wanting to reflect the music he listened to and experienced back then. Core has this dream of performing live with a full orchestra someday, so he is gradually creating songs now that he can eventually showcase when he reaches that stage.
Kpop has been sampling classical music in their songs in the past couple of years. Core wants to make those kind of songs too.
Koa listens to a lot of music, he doesn’t really lean particular to one genre, since he believes listening to everything helps build your foundations and it’s easier once you are an artist and thinking about how to approach your artistry / sound.
Koa does want to learn to play musical instruments. He had a period of time where he was learning drums, and he remembers telling his mom he wanted to play the piano “no matter what” and so his mom took him for a trial lesson. (He got bored and went home right after 😂😭) He is a complete beginner at guitar, he got himself a black Takamine electric-acoustic guitar just like Bon Jovi, but was very discouraged trying to play the F chord 😂😭
Core’s encounter with hip hop
Core wanted to be a conductor and hoped to study in a music college for that but family finances were tight so he gave up on the thought. But, he still wanted to do something related to music. Once he was in high school he would be on YouTube watching a lot of music-related videos, the algorithm would recommend him someone’s hip hop track. He found it interesting that you could sample drums from one track to make into something new and he went down the rabbit hole.
While Core found hip hop music fascinating, he also wanted to understand the culture. He is the type to dig and research about the history and culture once he likes the music. The first hip hop artist he listened to was Kendrick Lamar. Core was singing about things happening within a few meters radius but he knows there were social issues happening then too. Core had a lot of messages he wanted to convey to society so he wanted to be like Kendrick. Following that, he wanted to learn about the origins of hip-hop, so he listened back to the era of block parties in the 1970s and watched things like the newly released NWA biopic Straight Outta Compton (2015). Like Kendrick, listening to the work of conscious rappers like Logic and J. Cole made him realize hip-hop is a socially conscious genre where powerful messages take center stage in music —and that's what drew Koa in.
Core’s journey in rapping
Core listened to hip hop from overseas at first, then gradually listened to Japanese hip hop. He listened to J-rappers like ZEEBRA and RHYMESTER, found it cool and wanted to try it himself. Around that time Core started dabbling into rap, it was the era of freestyle and MC battles, and he thought these two were something he could start with, so he started by rapping in his room facing the wall.
Since Core listened to music from a variety of genres, he had a vague idea of “This is the kind of rap I want to do”. Looking back now, he thinks he was terrible, lol. But he enjoyed rapping right from the moment he started.
Core was really crazy about rap overseas, so for a period of time he was really into flows that only worked well in English – so much so that he would soften his Japanese pronunciation to sound more English-like. Ultimately, he did develop a style of rap where Japanese sounds beautiful. He was really inspired by the rap from ZEEBRA’s era where the lyrics really sink in, it made him think, “This style is what makes Japanese rap cool” so as he developed his rap style, he was quite conscious about it.
[Q: Did Core try to understand the lyrics from rap overseas?]
Core used a ton of translation sites like a maniac. Once he understood what the lyrics meant, the more fun it became for him. He would dig and search more about the incident or feud mentioned, or the name of the artist that was dropped... Finding the name of an artist leads you to another artist so he started listening to all kinds of artists. Before he knew it, he was listening to nothing but hiphop.
Kendrick Lamar’s music and lyrics were a huge influence on Core’s own rap and message in his music. Here Core talks about how Kendrick has tremendous respect for Martin Luther King Jr.. Core too also became a big fan of Dr. King when he was in his first or second year of junior high school. Core read about him in books, learned about his speeches and what he was trying to do, and read up on the history, so he found himself relating to many of the lyrics [by Kendrick].
The biggest influence Kendrick had on Core though, was how powerful it felt to hear him sing about surprisingly relatable, everyday things. It wasn't about some grand, world-changing tension; by singing about incidents happening right around them, it made you think about why those things happen in the first place—like how poverty is at the root of it – that's where the awareness of the problem lies. He found that approach incredibly beautiful, and it's been a huge inspiration for Core’s own music.
Core also listens to hiphop from the 80s and 90s.
About six months into when Core started rapping, he met ZEEBRA and joined his agency. Once he was in ZEEBRA’s agency, he went back to listen to the discog of other, older artists under ZEEBRA’s agency. When Core was signed with a label, ZEEBRA told Core he wanted Core to be like Nas, so listen to Nas.
Koa thinks ZEEBRA told Core to do this because Nas’s approach to rap is different from mainstream gangster rap, so Core thought that’s what ZEEBRA wanted his artists under his agency to aim for. ZEEBRA strongly believed his artists shouldn’t simply just walk the path that is laid out for them, they should overlay the path with their own, unique journeys. Reinterpret properly, align it with the times, make music while keeping the future generations in mind. ZEEBRA often told his artists, “Be a teacher, not a king,” and “Make Nas your role model.”
Core started listening to rap by artists that came after ZEEBRA and RHYMESTER a lot later. Core got into J-hiphop in quite an unconventional way. He was really into books at the time so he would be very absorbed by artists who wrote literary lyrics. He was listening intensively to artists like THE BLUE HERB and Shing02 thinking, “Woahh, these lyrics are amazing!” or “This can be a novel as it is…” He also listened to a ton of ZORN during his ZONE THE DARKNESS era.
[Interviewer: You seem to like dark, heavy hiphop]
Koa has always been into the heavier stuff. Compared to other countries, Japan has a lot of affluent areas, and issues like poverty are less prevalent. Koa thought that compared to how things are overseas, it felt like things were really well-organized in Japan. But even then, Core thought there were plenty of deep, dark undercurrents. Just because you're born into a wealthy family doesn't mean you're happy, right? Back then, Koa was drawn to artists who sang about that darkness.
So compared to his peers or contemporaries, Koa was drawn to artists of the past. The seniors around Core who took care of him were all people who supported Japanese hip-hop during its inception. Meeting ZEEBRA early on, and being taken under the wing by everyone in NITRO MICROPHONE UNDERGROUND and KAMINARI-KAZOKU. back then, Core felt like he learned hip-hop from them. So naturally, he ended up listening to that side of it.
Koa never thought about trying for a hiphop crew, he did think they were super cool, lol. Seeing people who stayed in the scene even as they got older, he could feel the history even in a one-liner. Watching that made Koa remember back then that he wanted to become that kind of artist with real weight.
Core liked the hiphop crew, Wu-Tang Clan. Though he got into crews more gradually, and with Wu-Tang, he was definitely a latecomer. Same with N.W.A. Koa got into them through movies and books, dug around, and thought, “Oh, I see, there was that era,” and started listening from there.
Out of Japanese freestyle rappers, Core likes ChinzaDOPENESS (鎮座DOPENESS) and TPLS (Chipuruso). Basically, even during freestyle sessions, Koa liked people who did rapping with musicality. Koa would grumble things like, “How the hell did that word come out?” or “Why did that approach come out for that beat?” He used to hunt down and watch videos like the one of ChinzaDOPENESS doing a circle cypher with DARTHREIDER and others on a hill in Ebisu. Talking about it made him nostalgic! Compared to intense rap battles, Core was drawn more to rap that had a certain style of music to them. Though the freestyle that was popular wasn’t like that when Koa started.
In the hiphop / rap scene back then, if something fit the music too perfectly, it was considered a gimmick. It's weird, but there was this atmosphere where if you just picked on one line, even if it wasn't rap, the crowd would go wild. So Koa realized early on that even if you were rapping seriously, you couldn't win. There was a period of time where Core intentionally adapted his style to match the popular MC battle format. It wasn’t his true intention but back then getting his name out there came first.
[In previous interviews, Koa mentioned Lil Peep and Post Malone being artists who influenced him]
When hiphop started incorporating strong rock elements, especially emo rock, Koa has been listening to it religiously since Lil Peep and Post Malone emerged (realtime if he could). Emo rap, cloud rap, everything. It felt fresh to Koa that songs entering the hiphop charts were lyrics relentlessly addressing mental health. Old-school hip-hop had this aesthetic of not really showing that side. It was the moment lyrics going completely against that started trending as hiphop in the mainstream. Koa felt a sense of déjà vu, “That's rock music, right?” He realized that the colors of rock were starting to mix with the colors of hiphop, and he felt hopeful. He thinks it was a good trend.
All of this has had an influence on Core’s own music. Being able to sing about real-life struggles, expose his vulnerabilities, and confront negativity without pretense over a hiphop beat, Lil Peep and others from that era played a huge role in that. Back then, Novel Core was desperately trying to look cool, and was stretched beyond his limits. But after Lil Peep, it was the moment Koa shifted gears and decided to just be honest with himself.
Hope you enjoyed!
Please note I translate these for free and I'm not a professional, so they may not be 100% accurate.
Retranslations or sharing of the summaries is fine! For retranslations, please notify me beforehand and credit once posted!
Translations do take time to complete, so if you like my translations you can consider tipping me on Ko-Fi!