Review Summary: Fun, catchy, and ultimately awesome Japanese music.
The Opening has started. Birds are chirping. Nice, mellow guitar notes play in the background. You can hear a waterfall. Everything is so tranquil and perfect. A woman asks you “How many days do we have left until the end of eternity?” Their’s only one question I can ask myself at the opening of this album… What kind of hippy s
hit have I gotten myself into?
Bennie K is a female pop/hip-hop (often referred to as “J-Urban”) duo consisting of rapper Cico and vocalist Yuki. Often when Japanese groups try to sing in English, the accent often makes people cringe. Not here. Both Cico and Yuki both vocalize in English and Japanese without sounding foreign to either language. Cico, while she’s no Ice Cube, has a perfectly fine sense of flow and he raps don’t sound forced, nor does she feel the need to yell her name and phone number. Yuki has a fairly generic Japanese pop singer style, but her vocals fit the music just fine. A male vocalist with a reggae-style rap (Unfortunately I don’t have anymore information about him) appears in a few of the songs, adding some diversity.
Oh, don’t worry, the “hippy s
hit” only lasts for the opener. The rest of this album is catchy, chill, and fun. The music trades off just as much as the vocalists do. While most of the music is composed up of catchy guitar riffs, electronica keyboard sounds reminiscent of Ladytron, and simple beats, the beats will become more prominent to fir Cico’s style, showing their obvious love for American hip-hop. The second half of the album shows them becoming a little more experimental with the music.
Tabibito uses Spanish-styled guitar,
Moonchild gives off an extreme reggae vibe,
The Christmas features a hard rock guitar riff in the chorus, and Interludes 2 and 3 show the duo flirting with psychedelic.
The lyrics here are really nothing too special. The usual “let’s go dancing” and “keep on groovin’” while throwing in some love and breakup songs. Hey, it’s club music, they aren’t here to tell you the secrets of the universe, they just want you to shake your a
ss. The only real negative side to the album, if you can even call it that, is some of the cheesy beats.
A Love Story’s background clapping with a violin intro, and of course the most of the first half is just straight-up club beats. Of course that’s only a negative if you absolutely despise club music.
So basically Bennie K are just a very unique mix of Japanese pop music and American hip-hop, set with some very, very, very addicting and danceable music. If you’re looking for face-melting solos or out-of-this-world time signatures, stay the hell away. If you just want some fun, catchy music to dance with the ladies to, then welcome to your new favorite album.
