7/8/24

“He knows who I am, ain’t had to say my name.” “Stack it up like Tetris but this money ain’t a game.” Do those lyrics sound familiar? Those are the lyrics from Megan Thee Stallion’s popular and trending song, “Mamushi,” featuring Yuki Chiba. Yuki Chiba is a 34-year-old rapper from Tokyo, Japan. The song “Mamushi” is the tenth song on Megan’s newly dropped album “Megan.”

The “Hot Girls” rapper is a huge fan of anime herself and was invited to the 2024 Crunchyroll Anime Awards to present the “Anime of the Year” award to Jujutsu Kaisen Season Two. Thee Stallion has mentioned that Jujutsu Kaisen is one of the anime shows that she likes, besides Attack on Titan and My Hero Academia. Jujutsu Kaisen’s main character, Yuji Itadori, describes his ideal woman by saying that he likes “tall girls with big butts… like Jennifer Lawrence.” Megan incorporated anime into her seventh song of the album, “Otaku Hot Girl” by asking the voice actor of Yuji Itadori (Adam McArthur) to describe Yuji Itadori’s ideal woman in the beginning of “Otaku Hot Girl,” “I like tall girls with big butts… like Megan Thee Stallion.” The Yuji Itadori remix drew the “weeb” world into an excited frenzy as anime nerds excitedly tweeted about the sampling of the Jujutsu Kaisen track.

We can also see how Megan appreciates anime culture through her music videos, lyrics, and her cosplays. In 2023, Megan Thee Stallion did a cosplay of Death Kid from Soul Eater for Halloween. She channeled the look of Death Kid perfectly by wearing a black and white angular suit and pairing it with iconic black and white striped pointy nails. Hip-hop and black artists have been known to make multiple crossovers in the anime realm. As mentioned before in my first article, “America’s Most Debaucherous,” Rob Apollo made an anime reference in his song Seppuku. Seppuku is a ritual suicide practiced by disembowelment by the Japanese samurai. Other famous rappers like Kanye West and Lil Uzi Vert have also made anime references in their music.

But why is there a crossover between hip-hop and anime and why is it so influential? During the 1990s, anime became popular in the United States. According to associate professor of Japanese at the University of Rochester, William H. Bridges IV, “American distributors and broadcasters quite literally channeled anime into American homes.” Studio Ghibli also became popular and still is popular today. Studio Ghibli is full of calming, animated graphics that exercise and soothe the imagination. However, anime isn’t just about the tasteful art skill and the mindblowing visuals. Just like rap, anime combines art, politics, and the social injustices of minority peoples.

A lot of rappers either cite Dragon Ball Z, Naruto, One Piece, or My Hero Academia in their music. These types of anime are described as shonen battle anime, which means that this Japanese animated series features action-packed adventures, quests, and battles. The shonen battle anime connects to rap music because rappers often address in their music “battles” and difficulties that they experience in their own lives. Watching anime is like an escape from reality but is also a way for people to identify and find comfort in their problems. Dragon Ball Z was created in 1986 by Akira Toriyama and doesn’t seem to have anything in common with hip-hop culture at first. However, to a lot of children during that period, especially minority children, Goku became a huge influential figure as they watched his battles and how he could overcome almost anything. Dragon Ball Z and a lot of other anime shows also included elements of hip-hop sounds which further drew in minority children who later on became rappers who would include anime-inspired lyrics in their raps.

One of these songs is “The End” by Lil Uzi featuring BABYMETAL. BABYMETAL is a Japanese kawaii metal band and you can hear the elements of their genre in Lil Uzi’s song. You can also see characteristics of anime in the animated music video for “The End.”

Rappers and artists need to be able to cross the bridge into the anime realm because it allows for enhanced storytelling with the visuals of the music videos and the lyrical genius of the music. By continuing to incorporate anime-themed lyrics in her music, Megan Thee Stallion is continuing to cross that bridge and prove that hot girls love anime too.