Why it's Significant that G Yamazawa is Featured in the New Valorant Skin Drop
Katie Tsuchimoto | She/Her/Hers
October 25, 2022
On October 17, 2022 the Ion Skin Reveal for the free to play, first-person shooter game, Valorant dropped. This drop is representing a new era within the game, and the promotional video illustrates why. With modern visuals, and underground hip hop artist G Yamazawa playing in the background, everything is collaborating to create this new era experience.
Skins often drop about every month, and people who play Valorant consistently are excited for new skins to arrive. When skin promotional videos are created, they rarely include lyrical music in the background.
So, for this drop to include a smaller hip hop artist is significant.
According to Dextero's player count tracker, there are 22.5 million Valorant players as of September 30th, which balances out to about 2 million active players per day.[1] Although these numbers fall short of some of the most popular video games, such as Minecraft with 140 million active users per month, it is still a very popular multiplayer game showing no signs of slowing down.[2]
G Yamazawa is an upcoming rapper and National Poetry Slam Champion, who also happens to practice Nichiren Buddhism. Even though he only has 62,543 Spotify monthly listeners, he continues to challenge and discuss perspectives of race, culture, and the human condition through mediums of music and spoken word. As a North Carolina born, Japanese American, and Buddhist, Yamazawa provides music for all varieties of people to identify with, as these themes often are portrayed in his rap verses. A song that personally resonates with me, and is one of Yamazawa’s more popular songs is “1990 (interlude)”. The background track is appealing to me as it has deep bass and a jazz intermission that changes the vibe of the song halfway through. The lyrics are also very provoking as he raps about his representation of Japanese brands and how he is from the American South, but doesn’t necessarily agree with the values that are present in that environment.
With the Ion Skin Reveal garnering over one million views in the first eight hours of dropping, there is lots of potential for G Yamazawa to attain more traffic on his music platform. Especially since Valorant is an expanding game, this opportunity could expand the career of Yamazawa to reach more ears than before.
The hip hop industry is filled with one hit wonder TikTok songs that have little to no depth. There is also an upsurge in hip hop artists who only explicitly rap about their success, which is filling the minds of impressionable young teens and creating heights for young adults to attempt to attain, just as their favorite artist did.
As the hip hop industry oversaturates with artists who rap about materialism and sex appeal, Yamazawa could serve as a breath of fresh air.
That being said, there is a larger chance of failure rather than success for Yamazawa. There is only one mainstream popular hip hop artist who identifies with the Asian race. With 9,656,679 monthly listeners on Spotify, Rich Brian has made a name for himself and proven that Asian artists can be successful in the hip hop industry. A difference between Brian and Yamazawa is their lyrical content. Brian continues to aid in the oversaturation of materialism and sex appeal, while Yamazawa continues to challenge the status quo and longing for material possession, as can be observed in the song, “Leather Seating”.
It is important to recognize that the song used in the promotional video is “Drumma Some” which has lyrical content expressing how impressive Yamazawa is at his craft. While self recognition is good, this plays into the current standards of the hip hop industry. This may imply that the producers of the skin drop may have assumed that a basic song that matches the theme of the current climate of the industry is the only kind of song that will perform well. “Drumma Some” is one of the only songs Yamazawa has created with little depth — the rest of his portfolio shows that he isn’t afraid of challenging ego, materialism, the values of the American South, and more. However, this may serve as a good introduction into the mainstream. As listeners discover more of Yamazawa’s music they will be able to explore the rest of his work and values.
As a Buddhist myself, I can only hope that more people visit G Yamazawa’s portfolio to observe the creation of music that is both inspiring and enjoyable. While this is a wonderful opportunity for Yamazawa to push his music into the mainstream, or at least into the Valorant gaming audience, only time will tell if this venture ends up being successful in catapulting him into a larger spotlight.
In gassho,
Katie Tsuchimoto
[1] Knudsen, Connor. “How Many People Play Valorant? Player Count Tracker: 2022.” Dexerto. https://www.dexerto.com/valorant/how-many-people-play-valorant-player-count-tracker-2022-1668158/.
[2] Plarium. “The 10 Most Popular Games Right Now - Plarium.” plarium.com, August 9, 2022. https://plarium.com/en/blog/popular-games-right-now/.
