Kaneee told Rolling Stone Japan in May 2025 that he wants to perform at the Super Bowl. He had less than three years of career behind him then. It’s not posturing; it’s exactly how he operates: saying what he thinks, directly, regardless of how it lands.
Born in 2000, Kaneee grew up through a period he describes as difficult, a run of personal setbacks that led him to a simple conclusion: he would only live off what he actually loves. Rap became that thing. He started writing, with no particular foothold in the scene, and entered the Rap Star Tanjou 2023 competition with roughly six months of practice behind him. Viewers voted for him in large numbers. He didn’t win, but STUTS noticed him and brought him onto the POP YOURS 2023 stage. That night, he performed “Canvas” live, and the people who saw it understood they weren’t watching a TV show contestant.
YZERR reached out shortly after. He invited Kaneee to the studio, gave him time, and told him to keep moving. T-Pablow met him at a STUTS show at Budokan and said something similar. Kaneee told FNMNL in February 2024 that YZERR changed something in his trajectory at that moment, and that he hasn’t forgotten it.
The EP ICON came out in November 2023. Six tracks, six different zones: “Canvas,” produced by STUTS; “Demon” with ZOT on the WAVE; “Bed Room,” written while listening to SZA in a cold room in January; “Young Boy,” remixed from his competition track. Kaneee didn’t set out to prove he could do everything. He explained to FNMNL in February 2024 that he found genre labels limiting, and that he just wanted to make good music, full stop.
His creative process is radical in its simplicity: he plays the beat, he freestyles, he keeps the first good thing. He deletes versions he considers weak from the folder immediately. He doesn’t relisten to cuts. He moves on. “Demon,” the darkest track on the EP, was made that way: a beat playing, one freestyle take, a hook about signing with the devil. He explained the metaphor to FNMNL in February 2024: he wanted to break completely from a past version of himself he didn’t like. The image of a pact with the devil to reinvent yourself felt right.
One name comes up in every interview: Ray Inoue. Kaneee told Rolling Stone Japan in May 2025 that without him, he doesn’t exist in his current form. Ray handles the live DJ set, styling, management, and creative direction. He’s been there since “Young Boy”, since the very first version. When FNMNL asked in February 2024 how he handles stress and haters, Kaneee summed it up this way: a good song erases everything else, and negative criticism, at the end of the day, proves someone took the time to listen.
The debut album Remember Me? came out in June 2024. Kaneee followed it with two sold-out solo dates, LIQUIDROOM in Tokyo and Live House Anima in Osaka. “Life is Romance” took time before breaking, driven by massive organic sharing. He described it to Red Bull in March 2026 as his defining track: it’s about peace, about living exactly as he wants to. In 2025, he played POP YOURS as a solo artist, no longer as a guest. In 2026, two short projects dropped back-to-back: GENIUS in June, then Genius II in September. Six tracks, twenty minutes, a format that mirrors how he works: fast, direct, no filler.
He told Rolling Stone Japan in May 2025 that contemporary Japanese rap is starting to show up in the Billboard Japan Hot 100, and that he’s the only self-identified rapper in those charts. He didn’t say it with a smirk. It was an observation, delivered with the same straightforwardness as everything else he says.
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