While attending boarding school in Boston in the mid 1990s, Seiji Kameyama used to play hip-hop CDs that he'd brought back from Japan to his friends.
"Back then, people used to laugh about it," he recalls. "They'd be like, 'What the heck is this, Japanese hip-hop?' "
This year, the Japanese-American rapper, better known by the name Wise, might just get the last laugh. In March, Teriyaki Boyz, the group to which he belongs, will become the first Japanese hip-hop act ever to get a major-label release in the United States when their second album, "Serious Japanese," comes out on Universal Music subsidiary Star Trak Entertainment.