On the island of Okinawa, off mainland Japan, the borders between the regular neighborhoods and the U.S. army bases that cover the prefecture is a source of continual protest and consternation. But for 27-year-old native Akiko Urasaki, it’s also a fount of inspiration. “My parents used to take me to protests from when I was a little kid,” says Urasaki, on a recent visit to New York. “I’d see weapons and soldiers, but I remember one time seeing a playground and realizing there were kids there, too. How do kids live where I’d always been told was so bad? I was fascinated.”

A friend of the family started bringing her onto a nearby base, and eventually she would venture there on her own. “The start of my club life was also in these American-style clubs—hearing rap, hearing reggae, hearing R&B,” she says. “It opened doors.” Urasaki had been writing poetry since she was nine years old, but it was rap that changed her life. “I was like, oh shit, you don’t have to sing to be a performer? I loved that,” she says. By fourteen, she was rapping and recording on cassette tapes, and at seventeen was participating in rap battling. And having grown up in Okinawa, where a struggle for independence from Japan and the removal of American marine bases has been ongoing throughout her life, Urasaki instantly related to hip-hop’s political artists. “Tupac was my textbook,” she says. “It was really fascinating to learn from him. What he says in his songs and interviews, turning negativity into strength, I felt a lot of positivity about that. I was obsessed with their struggle, and I think, I saw a similarity in the Okinawan people.”

The lyrics of Urasaki’s first song made a play on the Okinawan word for “what’s up?” (“Cha-yaga?”)—an effort to make the traditional language of the island, Uchinaguchi, cool in rap. (Until recent years, speaking the language at school was cause for punishment.) In her mind, she explains, rap and the more traditional music of Okinawa weren’t all that different. “Okinawan songs are so hip-hop to me. They talk about struggle, they talk about the blues.” She attracted local attention, which led to her signing with a record label in Tokyo. But she found her music didn’t jibe with the more pop rap culture of mainland Japan. “They didn’t let me rap about politics, so I left,” she says. After a few years at a university in the States and another brief stint in Tokyo, she returned home to Okinawa.

Urasaki now raps under the name Awich and runs a branding company called Cipher City, which works to bring Okinawan products abroad. (“I market the local resources—the people, the location, the art—to the world,” she says. “I think Okinawa is so dope.”) She also works with a local clothing company,Yokang, that recycles “bleached” coral—the coral that has died and turned white due to warmer water temperatures, reportedly a result of climate change—into wedding dresses. But don’t call her an activist. “I wouldn’t call myself an activist because I’m trying to make a little money,” Urasaki says. “I’d say I’m an activist on the low.”

To give us a taste of Okinawan hip-hop, Urasaki has made a playlist, below, and picked a premiere—a song called "Asiansta" by the up-and-coming Okinawan rapper Ritto.

Stream: Ritto, "Asiansta"

Okinawan rap playlist:

The video for Ritto's "1 2 1 2":[#video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZ2wLiyReAk]