Five years ago, Masayuki Yoshimoto found himself rapping at a gig in a Vancouver basement. Few of the crowd had ever heard of MC Sibitt, as he likes to be known, and even fewer could understand anything he was saying, but they seemed to appreciate it all the same. Afterward, one question kept coming up: "That's a beautiful-sounding language. What is it?"
Adventurous overseas listeners who stumble across Sibitt's latest project might find themselves wondering the same thing. Triune Gods are a bilingual, intercontinental indie-rap supergroup, assuming that "supergroup" isn't too grandiose a term for a unit whose members fall far short of celebrity status. Their debut album, "Seven Days Six Nights," pitches the rapper's Japanese verses against the rhymes of American MC Bleubird, with Canadian producer Scott Da Ros supplying the beats and assorted sonic weirdness.
The trio first met when Bleubird was touring Japan in 2008, but he and Da Ros were already fans of Sibitt's work, having been introduced to it by their Japanese label, Granma Music. "There was a period where American hip-hop was getting stale for me, and I felt like Japanese musicians were really pushing the envelope and doing something different," says Bleubird. "Sibitt was my favorite by far."