SPOTLIGHT: Confidence in Contradictions: Yoshi T.'s Constant Search for Truthful Sound
“I LIKE TO JUST START IT” — Yoshi T. said unabashedly, reclining against the outdoor benches after opening at Baby’s All Right for Kassa Overall on Thursday night.
I had asked Yoshi how he was feeling for his performance. In the dim lighting of the concert hall before he stepped on stage, he replied, “I only really know when I get up there.” Afterward, he stated simply, “I felt good. A little rocky in the beginning.
“At first, I couldn’t see anybody. Like, the lights were arranged in a way I couldn’t see the crowd, like a blind eye. But I like not seeing anyone’s reactions. I like to just start it, and suddenly see what people are feeling.”
This process of performing is similar to how Yoshi creates his music — he just goes after it, churning out bars of lyrical gold after the beat has already been crafted to gourmet perfection.
He had opened the show with a goofy but tender confidence, knowing fully well that this show was like an at-home game: he was bound to win. Nearly everyone standing in the front was a friend of his from school or work, including those on stage with him. Jack Redsecker on the keys, and Elijah, his producer, playing the tracks.
Born in LA to Japanese immigrants, when Yoshi’s parents were younger, his mom was a painter and his dad aspired to be an actor. Yoshi’s family moved to the US with the intention of opening a film studio; his maternal grandfather was a director of TV shows in Japan. They knew the business, but the studio ultimately failed in LA. They moved to New York to start again when Yoshi was 8 years old.
This move had a two-fold effect on Yoshi: it taught him of the hard work necessary to make it in the industry and indoctrinated him into the culture of New York City.
When asked how the New York music scene manifests in his work, he responded curtly, “I think it’s everything in my music. It’s super compact — I’m not doing five-minute songs — everything is two and a half [or] three minutes. Just fast-paced. Like, ‘Get it done, get the fuck out.’”
Yoshi attended Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts in Manhattan, often referred to simply as LaGuardia. It is one of NYC’s specialized public high schools that requires an application and audition to enter, but it is the only one dedicated to teaching visual and performing arts. The institution boasts the success of their alumni such as Nicki Minaj, Jennifer Aniston, Timothée Chalamet, and Al Pacino, among others. It was where Yoshi met his long-time collaborator, Cisco Swank, who also came to perform their song “No Funny.”
“No Funny” is exactly about a no-nonsense, New Yorker approach to creating music. The track incorporates elements of jazz — a blatant staple of New York’s historically significant music scene — into components of soul, gospel, and rap. It’s a testament to how far both artists have come from their high school days, and an anthem about the act of discipline, of purposeful tenacity and perseverance, something Yoshi is all too familiar with.
The singer-songwriter has faced his share of obstacles and hardships in becoming the musician he is today. At LaGuardia, he was a classical clarinet major. He continued his focus on classical jazz at SUNY Purchase alongside Elijah, who was making beats. However, the classical track was not the right tune for him. It was his friendship with Elijah that sparked an urgent epiphany in him, as he realized he needed to switch over to production.
“It was a very emotional talk with my mom,” he shared, reflecting on when he broke the news to his parents that this was a change he needed to make for himself. “I was there [at SUNY Purchase] for classical. [My mom] was like, ‘Oh my god, you put so much work and effort into [classical]. Are you sure you want to do this?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah.’ Their main concern was: Is it going to be sustainable?”
The success of Yoshi’s single “MCQUEEN,” released last spring, proved that he had all the tools necessary to build a career. The perfect mix between hip-hop, R&B, and funk, it encapsulates a wide variety of unique musical influences. The song is musically stacked with a cornucopia of instruments and production elements, which makes sense upon learning who’s Yoshi’s playlists: Michael Jackson, Mac Miller, Yumi Arai, Tyler, The Creator, Foo Fighters, Anderson .Paak, and Stevie Wonder.
Oddly enough, Yoshi hopes that if these artists were to ever listen to his music, they wouldn’t see a reflection of their own work. “I’m hugely inspired by all — there’s so many distinct artists that I love,” he said. “But I hope they feel like my music has nothing to do with them. Like, ‘Oh, this is cool — different. It’s like the saying the best artists steal from everything.”
The “heist,” combined with his own creative liberty, results in something new, something Yoshi hopes he can call his own.
Nonetheless, Yoshi still feels like he is searching for his own sound and voice. Even “MCQUEEN” was not perfected overnight. Instead, it required Yoshi to return to lyrics months later, with a newfound understanding of how to record the vocals.
“I remember Elijah sent me the beat,” he said. “When I first made it in 2020 — the first summer of COVID — I came up with it [lyrics] really fast. But then we left it because I still didn’t know how my voice was going to be used, like the way of expressing myself. Then while we were starting to make the [SANDBOX] EP, we [were] like, ‘Yo, this was really good, but let’s redo it.’”
Yoshi’s SANDBOX was not his first EP. Prior to this release, he had the eight-track EP Kumo Mono. But it's no longer available for streaming on Spotify or Apple Music. “I got rid of all this stuff [from pre-2021] because I think it was mindless,” he explained. “They all helped in the long run, but I don’t think I had my sound when I was making it.”
Yoshi compares his early work and his attitude toward music production to Filthy Frank, a character of Joji’s absurd and often parodical-content on YouTube. “It started as a joke — everything was just for fun,” he said.
But this was what gave him the confidence to make music at all :“Then, hearing myself on tape, I realized, ‘Oh, this is pretty cool. I can do this.’”
He proclaims that the silliness of his lyrics and music is what ties his discography together, because his comedy is what makes his music authentic. “I want my body of work to be representative of me,” he described. “When you listen to it as a whole, [I want you] to recognize me. I want my work to encapsulate who I am.”
Yoshi’s major change from classical to production in college proved to be a critical point in his evolution as an artist. “I had the vocabulary and the sonics to finally create what I wanted,” he said.
Knowing the technical side enabled him to better articulate himself, to convert his thoughts into sound.
SANDBOX marked the turning point, when Yoshi truly began to grasp the unique essence that defined his music.
“It was the first thing where I was really proud of it and thought it was really good the way it was put together,” he divulged. “But each song could stand on its own.”
The base of Yoshi’s work is hip-hop, which is then built up with soulful melodies, additional instrumental production, and the magic of his collaboration with Elijah. With so many musical influences exerting their power over Yoshi’s work, it’s easy to get lost in the sauce. It’s like trying to listen to a cacophony in a cave — is the second chair violin playing right now? Or is that the third?
Photographer and friend of Yoshi’s, Marco Kiko Chan, is adamant that Yoshi’s sound has been coming through whether he is cognizant of it or not. “I think you’re right — there is a silliness in your lyric writing,” Kiko said. “And at the beginning of tracks, there’s a ‘Ye-ea-uh’ — that’s how you know it’s you.”
During Yoshi’s show in Brooklyn, he demonstrated his comfort on stage and with his friends, cracking jokes with his bandmates.
As the set went on, Yoshi rapped two unreleased songs, both of which proudly reference his ethnic background. As a lyricist, he is beginning to dive deeper into his heritage, with hopes of creating a community of Japanese American musicians.
“I’ve been writing a lot more about my identity,” he said. “It’s not because I’m like, ‘I want to connect with Asian Americans.’ It just happened,” which is akin to his relationship with Buddhism. When Yoshi looks back at his childhood, he’s shocked to see that so many of the morals he grew up with have become the building blocks of his life today.
Raised by Buddhist parents, his connection to religion shapes his artistic journey subconsciously, contributing to the fascinating contradiction he lives everyday of being uber confident while still searching for himself. Yoshi is undeterred by obstacles of pride and impatience; instead, instilled in him is a deep desire for learning.
“I continue to want self-improvement,” he shared. “Not in a way of like, ‘I’m super insecure.’ It’s more like, ‘I want to be better and to look back and feel like I’ve grown a lot.’ The only way you can accomplish steady progress is by taking a step every day, which requires discipline, humility, and courage.”
It’s arguable that Yoshi’s confidence stems from his ability to embrace impermanence, and thus the present moment, like Buddhism encourages. He is unafraid to be subject to change, and this non-attachment is what gives him the power to fully immerse himself in his performances and improve.
His willingness to question, learn, and evolve makes him strong as an artist, as it allows him to push boundaries, experiment with different styles, and create authentic and meaningful art. He embraces challenges and setbacks as opportunities for growth, exemplifying discipline, humility, and courage in his artistic journey. Yoshi’s life philosophy, informed by his upbringing in New York, is to curtail any kind of unnecessary nonsense while knowing that life is full of it, and then respond to such chaos with a laugh.
His approach of “just start it” and the desire to be in the dark before performing seems to be a rumination and result of his overall spontaneous approach to identifying and distilling his style. For anyone else, it would be hard to stay calm when you’re still finding your sound, but Yoshi appears nonchalant and stress-free in his journey. He puts full trust in the process and in himself as a growing musician. We can only expect his next releases to expand his sound ever further than SANDBOX.
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