DALU Interview: Leaving “Young” Behind, Carrying TYV and Solo Work

Translation and verification note: This English edition was translated and edited from HIPHOPCs’ Japanese interview published on July 6, 2026. The conversation was recorded before the June 30 release of “STAR LORD” and the July 1 music-video date discussed in the transcript. The question order and DALU’s first-person meaning are preserved, while repeated conversational fillers have been tightened for clarity. Family history, private conversations and accounts of internal group conflict remain the speakers’ recollections; they are not presented as independently verified facts.

After finishing work one night, HIPHOPCs director YTG Sam received a call from DALU. The artist said there were things he wanted to talk about and asked Sam to listen. Days later, they sat down to trace a route that began with rock guitar, passed through a difficult year in the United States and Odaiba cyphers, and eventually led from Normcore Boyz to Tokyo Young Vision.

The public image is easy to recognize: an open, humorous performer with a sharp ear for melody. This interview brings a quieter side into view. DALU speaks about family separation, the mental strain of living abroad without English, the pause in Normcore Boyz, why he removed “Young” from his name, and the different emotional jobs that his solo work and TYV perform.

The verified catalog gives that story a frame. Normcore Boyz released Normcore No More in 2018; Young Dalu released KINGDXM HEARTS in 2022; the artist name changed to DALU in May 2023; and Unbirth followed that June. In 2026, Tokyo Young Vision released EDOTENSEI and brought its one-man show to Zepp DiverCity in Odaiba. The interview then turns to CEO KAZU’s “STAR LORD,” featuring FTL SHINKI and DALU, and to a solo album that DALU said was finished but still had no release date.

Interview: YTG Sam / HIPHOPCs

From Whitney Houston and Japanese rock to a first guitar

YTG Sam: First, please introduce yourself.

DALU: I rap in a crew called Tokyo Young Vision. I’m DALU.

Sam: I want readers to understand what kind of rapper you are. What was your first connection to music?

DALU: My mother is Filipino, so I think music from outside Japan played at home more often than Japanese music. I heard a lot of Whitney Houston and Michael Jackson. My father listened to artists such as Hikaru Utada. Those were the kinds of songs that were always playing in the car.

Sam: That makes sense—your mother liked Black music and R&B. Can I brag about one thing? I once had drinks with Hikaru Utada.

DALU: That is wild. Please put that in the article.

Sam: I only met her through my connection with Yuki Chiba. Before one of Chiba’s shows, we happened to be in the same place and shared a drink for a short time. She was very kind. Sorry—that was a serious flex.

DALU: No, that is incredible. I’m jealous.

Attribution note: The encounter above is Sam’s personal recollection and is not independently verified. For background on the artist formerly known as KOHH, see HIPHOPCs’ English Yuki Chiba profile.

A short-lived band, then a difficult year in the United States

Sam: When did you begin making music yourself?

DALU: Around the winter of my second year of junior high school. A close friend said he wanted to start a band with me.

I was not good at school and was looking for something that could become my strength. I already loved music—ELLEGARDEN, ONE OK ROCK and other rock bands—even though I did not know that much about it. When my friend invited me, I asked my father for an electric guitar. He bought me one for Christmas for about ¥30,000. I liked singing too, so I played guitar and sang in the band.

Sam: So a band came before rap.

DALU: Honestly, it lasted only about two months. Everyone else moved into entrance-exam mode. I was struggling academically and did not think I could get into a Tokyo metropolitan high school.

I still wanted to make music. After the band ended, I was frustrated and did not know what to do. My mother contacted me and asked whether I was serious about studying. She was living in the United States and working as a nurse. She told me that if I really wanted to study, I could come there. I did not enter high school in Japan. About a month after finishing junior high, I went to the United States.

Sam: What was life there like?

DALU: It was seriously hard. I could not speak English, and everything was unfamiliar. The language barrier and homesickness put me under a lot of mental pressure. I was overwhelmed. I lived there for about a year, and I only began to feel used to it shortly before returning to Japan.

Sam: What did you encounter musically? The culture must have felt different from Japan.

DALU: Today it is normal for Japanese high-school students to listen to hip-hop, but it did not feel that way then. In the local community in America, everybody listened to hip-hop and sang along. I knew almost nothing about it.

What was interesting was that some people wanted to learn Japanese while I was there to learn English. We connected through that exchange. If somebody asked me to show them Japanese music, I shared the rock bands I had liked in junior high. They taught me hip-hop in return. One track was Cali Swag District’s “Teach Me How to Dougie.” I was not from that song’s generation, but I played it constantly.

I did not understand the lyrics, but I blasted it beside my mother. She would react like, “You are listening to something intense.” She loves music, though, so even when it was heavy, she listened with me.

Health-language note: “Mental pressure” and “overwhelmed” translate DALU’s own description of homesickness and the language barrier. HIPHOPCs is not making a medical diagnosis.

Odaiba, economic distance and a divided family

Sam: After you came back, how did you enter Japanese hip-hop?

DALU: Older people from my neighborhood had already gone deep into it. Rappers from Kawasaki and Tokyo were becoming more visible, and Japanese rap was beginning to spread. Some of those older friends were around the same age as the members of BAD HOP, so that movement was close to us.

My background also made the music feel familiar. I was born in Odaiba, but that does not mean I grew up wealthy. I lived in an area with many Filipino residents, and there were visible differences in income among the people around me, including my own family. Friends lived in metropolitan public housing. Odaiba is small, but it still feels divided into blocks.

The place where I lived had what I would call a slightly ghetto atmosphere. That was one reason hip-hop hit me so directly. My family had also become separated.

Sam: What do you mean by that?

DALU: I have two brothers. I was with my father, while my younger and older brothers were living in the Philippines. My mother was in the United States. This is the first time I have talked about that publicly.

My younger brother went to the Philippines before we could really communicate, and we grew up apart. He does not speak Japanese; he speaks a Philippine language and English. During the year I lived in America, he also came to stay with our mother. That was when we finally lived together. It felt as if it had taken about fifteen years. He was family, but there was also an awkward distance. I carried many feelings from that experience.

When I returned to Japan and heard hip-hop, I think those experiences were why I felt, “This is the music that fits me best.”

Scope note: DALU is describing his own neighborhood, family and perception. His words should not be read as a general characterization of Odaiba’s Filipino community or public-housing residents.

Nightly cyphers and the Japanese rappers who opened the door

Sam: When did you start rapping?

DALU: Shortly before I turned sixteen, after returning from America.

A lot of older friends and people my age were not working or studying, and everybody had too much time. We met at night, listened to hip-hop and began freestyling. It did not cost much: a speaker and type beats on YouTube were enough. Two or three older friends, me and one younger friend kept freestyling outside an older friend’s home.

Those friends introduced me to more Japanese rap. YOUNG HASTLE was one of my first entry points. I also listened to JAZEE MINOR and KOHH—now Yuki Chiba—including “Fuck Swag.” KOHH’s fashion was different from everybody else’s. To me, he felt like a Japanese equivalent of Kanye West in the sense that he was an outlier. GOKU GREEN, now DEXUS OGAWA, was another early influence. For some reason, I also felt a little of the Oji area in his music.

Sam: That feeling makes sense to me. GOKU recorded with us at a studio in Oji, so there may be something in that connection.

DALU: I took pieces from all those artists and began around sixteen.

Opinion boundary: DALU’s comparison between KOHH and Kanye West is his own artistic analogy, not a claim of direct influence or equivalence.

Normcore Boyz, a home studio and “Call I”

Sam: When did you first record?

DALU: There was a person in Odaiba named TAKE who had been a DJ and now makes video. I think I was around nineteen when I first recorded in the small studio at his home.

Normcore Boyz already existed in some form while the group was taking shape, but for a while we only cyphered. One member said he did not want to stop at cyphers—if we were rappers, he wanted to make songs. TAKE’s studio was about two minutes from my home, so we began recording there.

I was extremely nervous and honestly terrible. I stood in front of the microphone and thought, “What am I supposed to do?” But one member had unbelievable instincts. That was OSAMI. He was so good that I wondered whether I had any talent at all.

The first track we recorded was “Call I.” We later re-recorded it, of course, but the response was strong. I was happy that our first recording connected, but OSAMI had made the hook, so I also felt frustrated.

Sam: Then Normcore Boyz released the first EP, Normcore No More, in 2018 and performed at Summer Sonic that year. That is an extraordinary jump.

DALU: We had played shows and made unreleased songs, so there was work behind it. Then the Summer Sonic audition opportunity arrived. We went into it determined to prove ourselves, kept delivering, and got through. I remember Aimyon playing two slots after us.

Catalog check: TuneCore’s official Normcore No More page identifies “Call I” as the opening track and lists Young Dalu and OSAMI. DALU’s official TuneCore profile records the 2018 EP and the group’s Summer Sonic audition appearance. The precise running-order memory about Aimyon remains DALU’s recollection. Watch the official “Call I” video.

Why Normcore Boyz paused—and why Tokyo Young Vision followed

Sam: Normcore Boyz stayed active from 2018 into 2021, releasing projects along the way. Why did the group pause in 2021?

DALU: We did many things together across those three years. Put simply, conflict began between members. After one member left, the remaining members and close friends kept searching for a way forward. We still made songs and videos, but there was a period when the work did not grow the way we hoped. We decided to pause.

Sam: Tokyo Young Vision began operating that same year. How did that transition happen?

DALU: Today TYV functions as a label, but at the time it felt more like a circle of close friends. All of Normcore Boyz were already part of that circle, so the move was natural in one sense.

After Normcore Boyz paused, I thought about whether to work only as an individual or continue with a team. I decided I wanted to keep trying as part of a team. It began in a fairly undefined way.

Attribution and date note: The reason for the pause is DALU’s account of an internal dispute; HIPHOPCs is not assigning fault to any member. DALU’s official TuneCore profile records that Normcore Boyz paused at the end of March 2021 and that he then joined Tokyo Young Vision as a solo artist. In May 2026, Normcore Boyz appeared at TYV’s Zepp show, but this later reunion does not erase the pause described in the interview.

A first solo album—and the decision to leave “Young” behind

Sam: Your solo work became more prominent in 2022, when you released your first solo album, KINGDXM HEARTS.

DALU: Yes. KINGDXM HEARTS—and we are back to Hikaru Utada. Kingdom Hearts was the first game anyone bought for me. I love it so much that I have a tattoo connected to it. It is a major part of my roots, so I took the album title from that world.

Sam: What did it feel like to finish your first solo album?

DALU: I was happy, but I also felt how much energy it had consumed. My manager, a few hometown friends and I moved the project forward. We did not have enough people or much know-how, so handling everything from production to distribution was difficult.

People whose work I admired listened. AK-69 suddenly messaged me to say he liked one of the tracks. I had made it for listeners, of course, but it also reached other artists. That made me happy.

Sam: Then in 2023 you suddenly changed the name Young Dalu to DALU. Was it as simple as, “I am not young anymore”?

DALU: That was part of it. “Young” also sounds specifically like a rapper’s name. At the time, I wanted to take in more elements and make music in a wider sense. Removing it expressed the decision to become more fully an artist.

I released Unbirth around that change. That title also comes from the Kingdom Hearts world. I love the concept, and I gathered many different artists around it. It is a record with a strong rock element. FOUX was involved, as was DAIDAI from Paledusk. AK-69 also appears under his Kalassy Nikoff name.

I felt surrounded by brilliant producers while making it.

Catalog check: TuneCore’s official KINGDXM HEARTS page dates the 13-track album to January 2022. Its Unbirth page dates the 15-track album to June 7, 2023 and provides track-level credits. DALU’s official artist profile dates the name change from Young Dalu to DALU to May 17, 2023. AK-69’s private message is DALU’s recollection.

DALU’s role inside Tokyo Young Vision

Sam: While releasing solo projects, you also work in Tokyo Young Vision. What role do you think you have in that group?

DALU: I think about that every day. My answer right now is that I want to be an icon. I do not think I am overwhelmingly better than everybody at one particular thing, but I feel that I connect the team with different opportunities. I want to be an entrance into the team.

Sam: Do you feel rivalry inside the crew?

DALU: Absolutely. We are very aware of one another, and there is real competition. But that awareness raises the level of the team.

Sam: What kind of team is TYV?

DALU: The music, energy and culture we make are not built around pretending to be more dangerous than we are. That gives us room to make peaceful work that can bring people happiness. Because we are not trying to force a “gang” image, we can communicate love-and-peace energy. We came from ordinary places, and our music emphasizes that.

Sam: That comes through. Some people present themselves as delinquents when that is not their background. TYV makes it clear that this is not what the group is claiming.

DALU: I am glad you feel that. Thank you.

Sam: TYV recently held its June 6 one-man show at Zepp DiverCity. What did that show mean to you?

DALU: We had not often been able to perform in our own hometown area. The number of people we now had to draw was much larger, so we approached it with real tension. When we brought it together, I felt that our music had finally begun to exist as a culture.

The audience listened, sang and moved differently from the crowd at our first one-man show. I felt that we connected emotionally and that people gave themselves fully to it.

Event check: ABEMA’s official program page records Tokyo Young Vision ONEMAN LIVE “EDOTENSEI” at Zepp DiverCity on June 6, 2026 and identifies Odaiba as the crew’s home area. DALU’s description of the atmosphere and the show’s success is his firsthand assessment. For the broader geography around that claim, read HIPHOPCs’ Tokyo Rap Atlas.

How CEO KAZU, FTL SHINKI and DALU built “STAR LORD”

Sam: Your next move is “STAR LORD,” produced by KAZU, the manager of MADAM WOO TOKYO. It is scheduled for June 30 and also features FTL SHINKI. I have heard that the response is already strong, even though it is not out yet.

DALU: People around us have shared the audio, so it almost feels as if the track has leaked. It was actually completed about a year ago. The earliest demo made us wonder whether the direction was going to work. KAZU, SHINKI and I met, exchanged ideas on LINE and kept reshaping it through discussion.

Sam: How did KAZU first approach you?

DALU: I often went to MADAM WOO and spent time with KAZU there. One night he told me that the tracks he had produced before were energetic but often very hard. He wanted something with more atmosphere.

TYV had been making many masculine-sounding records, and I wanted to try something sensual that women might enjoy. It felt like a project I had to do.

Sam: Where did the name “STAR LORD” come from?

DALU: KAZU led the title, atmosphere and overall world of the track. Star-Lord is a character from a film he loves—Guardians of the Galaxy. He explained it passionately, although I had not watched it.

I paid particular attention to the melody and lyrics. The idea was that both the road I have already taken and the road ahead can shine according to what I make of them.

Sam: Was this your first time working with FTL SHINKI?

DALU: Yes. He is from western Tokyo. His work is still raw, but that rawness lets his sincerity come through. His lyrics are direct and easy to receive. The rough edges are part of what hits. KAZU was paying attention to him, and I had gone to watch his shows too.

Sam: What did you do for the music video?

DALU: We took over MADAM WOO for the shoot. Many videos filmed there focus on the venue’s adult-entertainment side. I proposed that this one should feel like a block party instead.

We gathered dancers, floor staff and their friends, moved the DJ booth toward the VIP area and had everybody surround it. I wanted the people who work there to be dressed as party participants rather than treated as spectacle. I thought that reversal would remain in people’s memory. We wanted to film them genuinely enjoying the room rather than simply doing their jobs.

Sam: The audio is scheduled for June 30, the video for July 1, and a release party at NEVER BROKE for August 10. You are also in the middle of a TYV tour. How important is live performance to you?

DALU: I may not look serious all the time, but I put my life into performing. More of my personality comes out onstage, and the audience feels it directly. I rap because I want to perform live. I keep building experience, and ultimately I try to make songs for the stage.

Release check, August 19, 2026: TuneCore’s official release page confirms “STAR LORD (feat. FTL SHINKI & DALU)” under CEO KAZU, with a June 30 release date and credits for DALU and FTL SHINKI as lyricists, CEO KAZU as composer and producer, and JIGG as mixing engineer. The official music video is also live. The year-long development, private circulation of the demo and creative decisions inside MADAM WOO remain DALU’s account. This edition does not claim attendance or commercial results for the planned August 10 party.

Why TYV and solo DALU need different energies

Sam: At the time of this interview, your last solo album was released in 2023.

DALU: Yes. TYV also released an album called EDOTENSEI earlier this year.

Sam: How do you plan to move forward when you have both the crew and the solo artist?

DALU: I want to continue both at the same time. The concepts are different, the energies are different, and the range of things I can make is different.

TYV often makes songs that are forceful, masculine or built like a festival. In my solo work, I am more likely to turn inward and expose myself. They are completely different. I do not want to divide my effort and give each side only half. I am trying to organize my life so that I can commit fully to everything.

I have actually finished another solo album. It brings together reggae artists and people whose musical character is very different from mine. The music is in a state where it could be released, but there is still no date. I want people to look forward to it.

Sam: To close, what do you want to tell established fans and people meeting you for the first time?

DALU: Until now, I have mostly shown the joking side of myself. Today I talked properly about my family, how I began rapping and what hip-hop means to me.

From here, I want people to know not only the artist I present but also the person behind it. If they listen after understanding that humanity, I think they can connect with the music more deeply. I will keep making strong songs, so please continue to support me.

Date correction and release boundary: The official TuneCore record dates EDOTENSEI to February 18, 2026, not January as the original conversation suggested. Its official release page identifies it as Tokyo Young Vision’s second full-length album. As of August 19, 2026, HIPHOPCs found no official release page or date for the completed solo album DALU described; it therefore remains an announced-in-interview, unreleased project rather than a scheduled album.

After the interview: one artist, not two separate selves

DALU entered the conversation through a familiar public surface: bright, funny and ready to perform. The interview did not replace that person with a hidden “real” version. It showed how the outward performer and the inward writer occupy the same career.

That is why his distinction between TYV and solo work matters. One side can turn ordinary origins into a collective festival; the other can hold family distance, loneliness and doubt. Removing “Young” was not simply an age marker. In DALU’s account, it gave him a name wide enough for both energies.

The strongest forward-looking statement is also the least certain: another solo album exists, he says, but has no date. Until an official release appears, the responsible reading is not to turn that statement into a promise. It is to hear it as a record of where DALU stood in this conversation—carrying a crew, rebuilding a solo language and making songs with the stage in mind.

Verified sources and further reading

• TuneCore Japan: official DALU artist profile — Odaiba origin, Normcore Boyz history, 2021 pause, solo debut and May 2023 name change.
• TuneCore Japan: Normcore No More — official EP track list and “Call I” credits.
• TuneCore Japan: KINGDXM HEARTS — official 2022 album page and credits.
• TuneCore Japan: Unbirth — official 2023 album page, credits and label record.
• TuneCore Japan: EDOTENSEI — official 2026 Tokyo Young Vision album page and credits.
• ABEMA: Tokyo Young Vision “EDOTENSEI” at Zepp DiverCity — official program record for the June 6 show.
• TuneCore Japan: “STAR LORD” — official release date and track-level credits.
• Tokyo Rap Atlas — HIPHOPCs’ English guide to the city’s multiple rap centers.
• Nyture and Kazuki Ito interview — another HIPHOPCs conversation about local crews and creative infrastructure in Tokyo.
• Yuta Kato / PIZZA LOVE interview — an English interview about persona, pressure and returning to rap.
• More HIPHOPCs exclusive interviews in English.

Interview: YTG Sam / HIPHOPCs
English translation, verification and editorial framing: HIPHOPCs editorial team
Japanese-edition photographs: not reproduced because attachment-level English reuse rights were not recorded
English-edition artwork: original typography-only design by HIPHOPCs; no artist photograph, venue logo, album artwork or other third-party visual material is used