CYBER RUI Interview: “I AM NOT HUMAN?!” and Choosing Not to Have an Answer
CYBER RUI released “I AM NOT HUMAN?!” on August 19, 2026. Produced by Walter LR, the single follows July’s “Super Lucky” as the second advance track from her forthcoming 2026 concept album, PROJECT REBOOT.
A title that declares “I am not human” will inevitably be heard through the language of artificial intelligence in 2026—especially when it comes from an artist named CYBER RUI. Her own starting point, however, reaches back to questions she began asking in middle school. The song was made in 2025, and she does not present it as an answer. “I don’t have an answer to the question this song is asking,” she tells HIPHOPCs.
This exclusive interview follows that uncertainty through the song’s title, Walter LR’s production, the limits of forced positivity and the wider architecture of PROJECT REBOOT.
Translation note: This English edition translates and edits the original Japanese interview, published by the HIPHOPCs Editorial Team on August 20, 2026. The questions and CYBER RUI’s answers remain in their original order. Repetition has been lightly condensed, while the distinction between her first-person ideas, verified distribution credits and HIPHOPCs’ editorial interpretation has been preserved.
▶ Listen to CYBER RUI’s “I AM NOT HUMAN?!”
Turning “Who am I?” into a song
HIPHOPCs: The title immediately hits hard: “I AM NOT HUMAN?!” Where did those words come from?
CYBER RUI: I turned the question “Who am I?” directly into a song.
It may sound like an enormous subject. [Laughs.] Since around middle school, I have kept thinking about why I am living this life and what it means to live as a human being.
For as long as I can remember, I have also felt that I may be especially sensitive to things we cannot see. About five or six years ago, I began searching more seriously for a reason. When I encountered the scientific explanation that everything in the world is made from elementary particles, something about it made deep sense to me.
HIPHOPCs: That is a very cerebral place to begin. [Laughs.] We have seen you speak elsewhere about your interest in science and space. How did that thinking enter this particular song?
CYBER RUI: I don’t think the song is simply denying that I am human. It is more like asking: “Am I not human?! Then what am I?”
HIPHOPCs: So instead of rejecting humanity, it returns to the deeper question of what a human being is. What does the “human frame” mean to you?
CYBER RUI: To me, the human frame is consciousness housed in this body.
The body is heavy, and sometimes it is slow. Even inside it, though, we can imagine and think about things that cannot be seen.
That should be a completely free space. Yet I often notice that, without realizing it, we have been trapped inside conceptual frames.
The “intuitive current” behind her work with Walter LR
HIPHOPCs: That sensation clearly connects to the world of the track. What about its sound? Before making it, had you and Walter LR already discussed those ideas and images?
CYBER RUI: We actually made this song last year. As Walter and I talked, I felt that our ways of thinking were close in some way—or something like that.
We did not have a conversation where I said, “This is exactly what I want.” He proposed a beat he had made, and we followed an intuitive current from there.
HIPHOPCs: So it began very instinctively. Did the phrase “I AM NOT HUMAN?!” exist from the moment you heard the beat?
CYBER RUI: When I first heard it, I think the first thing I wrote down as the kind of song I wanted to make was “I AM NOT HUMAN.”
The limit hidden beneath “Super Lucky”
HIPHOPCs: On the surface, this title seems to move in a very different direction from “Super Lucky.” Are the two songs connected?
CYBER RUI: Over the past several years, life has taught me many times that the way we interpret an event changes the world we see.
At the same time, I feel that positive thinking is sometimes idealized too much.
Of course, you can think positively and decide that every event is “super lucky.” But for your whole body to feel that way, your mind and body may not be able to catch up.
I think reaching the limit of disguising my own emotions led me toward the song’s line about being exhausted by pretending to be human, even while seeming good at it.
▶ Official lyrics and credits for “I AM NOT HUMAN?!”
Why the song was necessary to PROJECT REBOOT
HIPHOPCs: If “Super Lucky” is not a simple endorsement of positivity, it is interesting to hear “I AM NOT HUMAN?!” as the next step. What place does this song hold on the new album?
CYBER RUI: I think this is the song on the album that asks most directly what my existence is.
Where does the sensation I call “me” begin, and where does it end?
Inside that cosmic chaos, learning that we can choose which channel to tune into felt essential to an album called PROJECT REBOOT.
HIPHOPCs: So “reboot” is the album’s key word. Through this project, what part of the earlier CYBER RUI feels most clearly rebooted?
CYBER RUI: Musically, the beats I am on and my own flows are clearly not the CYBER RUI I have been before.
In the creative process, I was able to work with people who may not feel exactly what I feel, but who experience something close to it. Mentally, too, I have gradually become able to let myself live more fully as I am—to accept it, even while part of me resists.
It feels as though the lines between all those separate points are finally connecting.
▶ Pre-add or pre-save CYBER RUI’s PROJECT REBOOT
For CYBER RUI, “cyber” does not mean machines
HIPHOPCs: This also makes the name CYBER RUI feel newly significant. AI and technology are rapidly moving into human creative space in 2026. How do you understand releasing a song called “I AM NOT HUMAN?!” at this moment?
CYBER RUI: I don’t have an answer to the question this song is asking.
I think we project ourselves onto everything. AI is a particularly easy place to see that.
For many people, the image of “cyber” is probably close to machines or electronics. For me, cyber goes beyond even that.
It is like air, or matter. Something that exists in such abundance that it appears not to be there. It can also be an invisible connection.
HIPHOPCs: So “cyber” does not simply mean machines or AI to you. The album also seems to resist established frames and concepts.
CYBER RUI: I have been trapped by many things myself, so I think this album strongly resists those kinds of limits.
Even after choosing the name CYBER RUI, I kept finding new things to think about in where that name came from. As long as I keep choosing to live freely, I want to carry responsibility for my own life and continue looking at concepts and events from many different angles. That has not changed for me.
It takes a lot of energy, and it is extremely chaotic. [Laughs.]
“The moment someone hears it, it is no longer me”
HIPHOPCs: If you share that chaos live, how would you like the audience to receive it?
CYBER RUI: Whatever form it takes, I want people to feel whatever they genuinely feel.
I would be very happy if it became something that helps us live through this chaotic world together. But whatever emotion a person has, if there is a moment when they catch something from the song or from the live space, then our channels have touched—even if only for an instant. I want them to feel their own kind of freedom.
HIPHOPCs: When someone reaches the end of the album, what version of CYBER RUI do you hope remains with them?
CYBER RUI: I don’t mind which version of me stays with them.
The moment I let someone other than me hear my music, I think it stops being me.
Once I let someone hear it—or even from the moment I finish making the song—I am no longer the person I was at that time. From my perspective, the same self does not exist from one day or one second to the next.
But I do believe something inside me remains unchanged. I would be happy if listeners could feel that part too.
HIPHOPCs: Finally, if you could describe this song in one line?
CYBER RUI: Channel chaos, connecting to error.
Editorial reading: change as part of the reboot
CYBER RUI says that the beats and flows on this project are no longer those of her earlier self. The available credits make that change visible without proving any larger private creative history. LYNN appears among the composers on most tracks from 2023’s ISSUES DELUXE. The official distribution credits for “Super Lucky” list DRLR as producer; “I AM NOT HUMAN?!” lists Walter LR. Different collaborators across adjacent singles make “reboot” audible as movement rather than a fixed sonic formula.
The most consequential choice in the interview is her refusal to close the question. A song carrying this title in 2026 will be read through AI whether or not that was its original cause. CYBER RUI accepts that loss of control: once another person hears the work, she says, it no longer belongs only to the self who made it. Not having an answer is therefore not an empty gesture. It gives the listener room to misread, reinterpret and reconnect the signal.
The error is neither resolved nor avoided. She connects to it.
Release information
CYBER RUI — “I AM NOT HUMAN?!”
Release date: August 19, 2026
Label: CYBER RUI
Official distribution credits
Lyricist and vocals: CYBER RUI
Composer and producer: Walter LR
Mixing engineers: Walter LR and murozo
Mastering engineer: murozo
The artist-supplied release information in the Japanese edition additionally lists recording by CYBER RUI, cover photography by Reo Shimotani, and cover editing by CYBER RUI and Reo Shimotani.
About CYBER RUI
CYBER RUI is a Tokyo artist born in 2002. Her current official distribution profile frames music as a way of reconnecting the signal between the self and the world—a connection that can fade inside an information-saturated society. PROJECT REBOOT extends that idea by asking what might happen if she stopped blocking herself from herself.
Her work moves across hip-hop, alternative and electronic forms while treating sensation, rather than geography or genre, as an origin point. The interview above should not be read as a fixed definition of the artist. Her own argument is that the system called CYBER RUI changes the moment a track is completed.
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Sources and editorial boundaries
- HIPHOPCs: original Japanese interview
- TuneCore Japan: “I AM NOT HUMAN?!” release page and official distribution credits
- TuneCore Japan: “Super Lucky” release page and credits
- TuneCore Japan: ISSUES DELUXE track list and credits
- TuneCore Japan: current CYBER RUI artist profile and catalog
- CYBER RUI: official PROJECT REBOOT pre-add and pre-save page
Editorial boundary: CYBER RUI’s statements about invisible phenomena, elementary particles, consciousness, AI, identity and emotional experience are presented as her personal worldview and creative explanation, not as scientific findings or advice. HIPHOPCs independently checked the release date and the distribution credits named above. The forthcoming album’s exact date is not asserted here because current official materials do not present it consistently. The English edition does not reproduce the photographs or cover art used in the Japanese draft; its featured image is original HIPHOPCs typography artwork containing no third-party photograph, logo, album art or artist likeness. Interview and Japanese article by the HIPHOPCs Editorial Team; English translation, contextual reporting and editing by HIPHOPCs.
