NORIKIYO: The Poet of Sagamihara

NORIKIYO was born on December 12, 1979, in Sagamihara, Kanagawa Prefecture. A large suburban city wedged between Tokyo and the mountains, Sagamihara carries neither the prestige of the capital nor the distinct identity of a provincial town. He spent his life turning that ordinary context into something else.

Born Ueno Kiyonori (上野きよのり), he started skating in 1994. The skate VHS tapes of the era ran tracks by De La Soul; he did not yet know the word “hip-hop,” just “rap.” An American kid at his middle school, located next to a US military base, set him straight. He moved into DJing, talked his younger brother into buying him turntables with his savings, then shifted to production on an MPC2000 before finding his place behind a microphone.

SD JUNKSTA: Building a Family

In 1999, NORIKIYO founded SD JUNKSTA with people from his neighborhood in Sagamihara. BRON-K was his younger brother’s classmate. NORIKIYO knew his face: the guy with the shaved head, always sitting outside the convenience store in a football shirt, reading manga. His reputation in the neighborhood: he knew Gin & Juice by Snoop Dogg word for word in English. NORIKIYO told him: “If you can rap, come through, and don’t forget to bring weed“. That is how it started. TKC was his own classmate. WAX was the same age as BRON-K. He met OJIBAH at a show in Shibuya. DJ ISSO came through KYN, another member, who recommended him for his scratch technique. SD JUNKSTA is not a group in the conventional sense. It is a collective whose members support each other’s solo projects while collaborating on shared releases. NORIKIYO is its natural leader: his vision is precise, his output consistent, and no one in the group questions it.

CONCRETE GREEN, EXIT, and National Recognition

The first major turning point came in 2006. NORIKIYO appeared on the compilation CONCRETE GREEN, alongside Seeda and DJ ISSO. The project is a document of Japanese underground rap: it captures a moment when the Japanese scene was looking for its own words, its own codes, and its own relationship with Japanese reality rather than relying on borrowed American frameworks. NORIKIYO holds a central role in it. His flow, precise and measured, with what the Japanese call the “weight of words,” stands apart from the lightness or aggression of many of his contemporaries. The compilation circulated through hip-hop circles and drew attention well beyond Kanagawa. Those who heard it for the first time understood they were listening to someone who had mastered not just flow and rhyme, but narrative construction and word choice.

In 2007, NORIKIYO released his first solo album: EXIT. The specialist press and underground fans received it well. A cohesive, mature work, it laid the foundation for what would become his signature: cerebral rap that never runs cold, technically demanding but always accessible, personal without being self-indulgent. Projects followed in quick succession over the years. His relationship with Hannya, the other major name of his generation in Japanese underground rap, produced memorable collaborations. The two pushed each other across projects that stand as reference points in the scene.

Melancholic Gendai (メランコリック現代): The Masterpiece

2011 was the peak year. On March 11, the Great East Japan Earthquake struck. Tsunami, Fukushima, thousands dead. NORIKIYO stopped. In an interview with RJHH in 2019, he said: “It made me appreciate things I had always taken for granted — water coming out of a tap, electricity at the flip of a switch. It felt like the Earth itself was furious at us“. That is the context in which he wrote Arigatou, Sayonara (“Thank You, Goodbye”): “Before the day comes when we have to say goodbye to this planet, we should start by saying thank you“.

A few months later, Melancholic Gendai (メランコリック現代) arrived and landed immediately. The album is recognized as one of the most important in Japanese rap. The publication ZAKAI would later include it among the 500 greatest hip-hop albums ever released in Japan. What makes it exceptional is its thematic ambition: NORIKIYO paints a portrait of contemporary Japan unlike anything else in Japanese rap. He talks about society, alienation, and the feeling of being slightly outside your own life. The production matches the lyrics: dark, cinematic beats that create a coherent sonic space throughout the album. It plays like a novel, start to finish.

When asked years later whether he considered himself one of the defining figures of Japanese rap, he answered without hesitation:

“Everyone is climbing their own mountain. If you try to scale someone else’s peak, you’ll never beat the person who was already there.”
— NORIKIYO, RJHH Interview, March 2019

The Illness, the Cultivation, the Arrest

NORIKIYO’s trajectory became complicated before the arrest. He developed myasthenia gravis (重症筋無力症), a rare condition recognized as a designated intractable disease by the Japanese government, which progressively weakens the muscles. His left eyelid dropped, his vision went unstable, and then his tongue began to weaken. For a rapper with no hobbies outside music, he told RJHH in 2019: “I go to the studio on weekdays because nobody is free to hang out, and I’m grateful for that.” It was a direct threat to everything that mattered.

The standard medications caused severe side effects. While searching for alternatives, he came across a study describing the effects of cannabis on patients with similar receptor conditions. He decided to cultivate it himself, for his own consumption. Not to sell. In August 2022, he was arrested. Police seized 18.4 kg of dried cannabis and 176 plants. Investigators attempted to charge him with trafficking. NORIKIYO maintained complete silence throughout the interrogation. After more than a year of surveillance and four months of pre-trial detention, investigators found no buyers. The trafficking charge was dropped. In June 2023, he was convicted of cultivation and simple possession and sentenced to three years in prison.

In spring 2023, while out on bail, he sat down with journalist Shiho Watanabe, one of Japan’s most respected hip-hop specialists. The interview, filmed in what appears to be a prison visitation room, is one of the few documents in which NORIKIYO speaks openly about what he went through. It was released a few weeks before his conviction. While in pre-trial detention, he had already been writing. The lyrics of Criminal Statement (犯行声明), his tenth album, were written ninety percent in complete silence, in his cell. The album dropped on June 22, 2023, the day he was incarcerated.

Behind the Walls, the Work Continues

From his cell, NORIKIYO has not stopped. In 2024, several vinyl singles were released: Kaze wo Kitte (風を切って, “Cutting Through the Wind”) with Dengaryū (田我流), and Machiawase (待ち合わせ, “Waiting”). In April 2025, he released You Know What I Mean?, a track recorded before his incarceration, along with a video. That same year, a crowdfunding campaign launched to finance a solo concert after his release. A book, Datsugoku no Susume Vol. 1 (脱獄のススメ 壱, “Recommendations for Escape, Vol. 1”), appeared under his name. His most recent Spotify release, Cookin’ Selfish (2025), confirms he remains active even from inside.

His discography, built across twenty years, remains intact in its artistic meaning. Melancholic Gendai continues to be played, cited, and passed on to new listeners who find it as relevant as the day it came out. NORIKIYO helped define what Japanese rap can be when taken seriously: a genuine means of expression, a view of a society, a portrait of an era. That legacy now belongs to the history of Japanese music.