Red Eye’s “Nothing holds me down” feat. NORIKIYO: Lyrics About a ¥90 Million Budokan Show and Life After Prison

Red Eye’s “Nothing holds me down feat. NORIKIYO” brings together two artists reckoning with what they have lost and trying to move forward. Released on September 23, 2026, the track runs 4 minutes and 49 seconds, with lyrics by Red Eye and NORIKIYO, music by SMTK and chorus vocals credited to SALU.

Red Eye, from Suminoe in Osaka, became the youngest Japanese rapper to headline Tokyo’s Nippon Budokan with his solo show “Shonen A” (少年A) on February 5, 2025. A year later, on February 17, 2026, he announced that every event he organized that year would be free to attend. The featured artist, NORIKIYO, was incarcerated on June 20, 2023, kept releasing music from behind bars, and was released on parole in June 2025.

¥90 million and ¥50 million: after naming the sums, he asks you to laugh

The hook begins with days spent scraping by, and it lingers on the small frame that made it through dangerous situations. That image gives an urgency to his insistence that none of it was wasted, as though he needs to convince himself. What he lost goes unsaid, for now.

In Red Eye’s verse, that loss becomes a sum of money. He recalls being pushed around by other people’s agendas, but also remembers the friends who had his back. He admits he hates to lose, but the opponent he faces alone is anxiety. Having voiced both his distrust of the people around him and his own vulnerability, he delivers these two lines.

90 million yen spent on Budokan

50 million yen I got scammed out of

Two sums, back to back. The Budokan show could have been framed as a point of pride. Instead, Red Eye tells us what it cost, and places the amount he says he was scammed out of right beside it. He also raps about his revenue being cut off and his releases being blocked, then turns to the free shows he began putting on afterward. He pushes people away, saying he needs neither understanding nor sympathy,, then asks the listener: could you look at me and laugh?

In his February announcement, Red Eye wrote about seeing what he believed in fall apart and finding the resolve to keep standing. He did not explain what had happened. The verse sounds as though it is filling in some of that announcement’s gaps with numbers. It does not tell the whole story, but it gives listeners a way to connect his decision to make the shows free with the losses he describes himself. HIPHOPCs covered the announcement in its weekly news roundup at the time.

• Hip-Hop News Roundup, Third Week of February 2026 | ZORN × Maki Goto at Budokan, Red Eye Makes His Events Free
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Back on the outside, he calls trials a “farce”

After the hook, NORIKIYO takes aim at the law, conventional wisdom and even the worldview he was taught at school. He also pokes fun at himself, comparing his adult self to an elementary school kid. He has no intention of falling in line with society, but he is not trying to make himself look admirable, either. From there, he turns to life after prison and his view of trials.

I’m back on the outside now

Trials are a farce

NORIKIYO says that even prison will not silence him, except during questioning. But his contempt for trials is followed by an insistence on letting go of resentment. He wants to take his time and hold on to what he cannot compromise. The verse remains defiant, but its final concern is what he wants to keep, not whom he wants to resent.

NORIKIYO is a rapper from Sagamihara, and he appears in the HIPHOPCs Rap Atlas guide to the Kanagawa scene.

• Kanagawa Rap Atlas | 17 Acts from Yokohama, Kawasaki, Sagamihara and Shonan, and the Connections Between Their Music

Red Eye raps about financial loss, and NORIKIYO speaks from the experience of incarceration. Neither names the people on the other side, but what they ask for afterward differs: Red Eye wants the listener’s laughter, while NORIKIYO wants to move beyond resentment. Even when the song returns to the same hook, the words each man delivered just before it keep their own weight.

Toward the end, the focus shifts from counting losses to finding value in the pain itself. The ¥90 million and ¥50 million remain part of the story, but the closing lines suggest that those figures cannot determine the worth of everything the two have lived through. What seemed like an ending becomes a beginning.

What stays with me is Red Eye’s request. He has just named the cost of Budokan and the money he says he was scammed out of. Rather than asking for sympathy, he asks the listener to look at him and laugh. There is an intimacy in that request that bravado alone could never produce.