Prologue: Failure

My name is Shiba Takumi and I am an average high school student in my 2nd year. I'm a loner at school, my relationship with my family is almost non-existent and I don't see a point in making friends or a lover. That would technically mean I'm beyond even the average high school student...

If that was true. If I was one of those otakus who jerk off to light novel illustrations and watch a lot of anime, with the hidden dream of becoming a game creator or a novelist themselves. If I was one of those regular Japanese teenagers only interested in the trends of this country, never to try and understand other cultures. If I was one of those creatures living in darkness, never trying to reach out for other things... but I'm not. I can see far beyond what these fools can. I'm a Western enthusiast, after all. My scores in English are perfect, because I speak the language fluently from all the time I spent on international forums on the internet.

The point is... my dream begun a few years ago. I stumbled over this Kendrick Lamar mixtape, YHNIC, and fell in love with hip hop. I stumbled over metalcore bands like Bullet for My Valentine or Killswitch Engage, and fell in love with rock music. And when you enjoy something like I enjoy music, it's only natural to at some point say "I wanna do that myself". And that's when it hit me.

I started with rapping. Without even trying to practice a flow, I mumbled some offbeat lyrics on an old school beat and uploaded myself on YouTube... looking back at it, it makes me wanna kill myself. The video indeed got 743 views, and I still remember the 4 likes - 67 dislikes difference and all the hate comments. I didn't delete it. I said I would keep it there to remind myself where I came from when the time came that I became a star.

So I practiced, and practiced even harder. As my grades at school barely even allowed me to pass, my tracks were getting better flows, more decent lyrics... and no amount of exposure whatsoever. I tried even harder, took singing lessons to get my voice to the point it would be able to get my melodic hooks right. None of that improvement seemed to pay off, but I kept my faith. Maybe someday I'll be able to sign with a major deal, leave Japan and pursue a music career in America. That was my biggest dream, ever since I was old enough to dream about anything.

Random strangers on the internet I'd ask for opinions would always tell me that I need to stop copying other artists abroad, to find my own sound. Fellow artists in Facebook groups would tell me that I need to get better sound quality, a producer to make beats exclusively for my songs, stop using every free beat dropping on YouTube... for a junior high student with a monthly allowance of 2000 yen it seemed like people were mocking me. Like, seriously, the best I could do was use a recording app on my phone, with some cheap headphones and not even a soundproof room where I could freely record my stuff. Mix/mastering on those pc softwares sounded cheap due to the low sound quality.

In other words, my dream was 99.9% unreachable. On the other hand, as soon as I heard Lil Tracy back in 2016, I knew that the genre I wanted to do was emo trap. It mixed both of the genres I fell in love with, and the sad vibe was relatable. Of course, it wasn't as if I could suddenly be successful considering everything. But I just knew that if I kept trying, the sun will shine on my backdoor someday.

I'm still trying to find that ray of sunshine whearas my backdoor is still in the dark.

I shook off these thoughts. I was in my room, playing this rpg at my computer. It was a day after I dropped my latest release on YouTube and I made sure to share it to each of my online acquintances, so I just had to check the views on the video.

I opened the browser and accessed the studio feature. My results were as disastrous as expected. 56 views in 15 hours... I might just never get to that point.

It was frustrating, really. It's like I'm forever doomed to be in the shadows, no matter how hard I try. It's been 3 years... others get popular in just one year. Some in even less. If you're an industry plant supported by a big label, your first track can become quite popular. But that would take away your creative freedom, and make you nothing but a label slave producing whatever is trending. Colaboration with a label isn't half-bad, it's something even I crave for, but they have to believe in your vision, not enforce theirs upon you.

That's why my plan is an organic growth, as hard as that might seem.

56 views, whatever. I checked the other stats. Apparently, there's 4 likes, which wasn't bad for the number of views. Oh, and 2 comments as well. Keep up the good work and shit like that. Yeah right, keep up the good work.

I sighed tiredly. I know aiming for an international audience with deep lyrics and relevant themes is more than I can grasp, but I only put my real feelings in whatever I write. Meanwhile, some Japanese female idol is singing about corny shit like feelings of love she never experienced on some upbeat instrumental and still has a pretty large fanbase. It's all about the sex appeal nowadays and nothing about the lyrical content and the message.

And it's the same in every genre, music nowadays is like fast-food. It's either off tune singing and ask a sound engineer for pitch correction and boom, you get a banger, or have an actual voice and only sing the corny shit the market demands in order to stay relevant.

The second category is more relevant in Japan. Get some cute clothes on until you're dressed like a doll from the Western movies, dance around and sing on a scene in front of an audience of brainwashed fools who only love your face and the amount of skin you're showing, appear in swimsuits in a teens magazine and boom... success is so easy when you're a girl.

That's why I absolutely hate idols.