Billboard Japan released its 2025 year-end charts earlier this month, and on the Global Japan Songs Excl. Japan list ranking songs from Japan being listened to in more than 200 countries and regions, Creepy Nuts’ “Otonoke” finishes at No. 1 after hitting the same position on the mid-year roundup. The duo becomes the first act ever to top this chart for two consecutive years. “Otonoke” also leads six countries on the year-end Japan Songs tallies that list songs by each country and region: Germany, France, the U.K., South Africa, the U.S., and Brazil.
In 2025, the pair notched nine wins at MUSIC AWARDS JAPAN 2025 and embarked on their first overseas tour with headlining shows in Asia, marking an even bigger year both at home and abroad. Catching rapper R-Shitei and DJ Matsunaga right after the end of their trek, this Billboard Japan interview explores how getting closer to fans overseas shifted their mindset in some ways and left other parts unchanged.
“Otonoke” finished at No. 1 on the 2025 year-end Global Japan Songs Excl. Japan chart. It’s the first time any act has taken the top spot on this list twice in a row, and you also swept the top two slots [“Bling-Bang-Bang-Born” is at No. 2]. Congratulations! How do you feel?
R-Shitei: Really happy.
DJ Matsunaga: “Otonoke” came out last year, right?
It was in October last year, 2024.
DJ Matsunaga: I’m grateful. I honestly didn’t think we’d end up on this kind of chart again this year… so we actually took the top spot. Does it feel real to you?
R-Shitei: Honestly, it still doesn’t really register for me that we’re No. 1, but friends who travel overseas tell me things. I have a rapper friend who’s always going abroad, and when he uses “I rap in Japan” as a way to start conversations, he’ll ask, “Do you know these guys?” and most people seem to know us.
DJ Matsunaga: What?!
R-Shitei: He’ll be in places like South Africa or Spain and say, “This is my friend’s song. Do you know it?” And people will be like, “Yeah, yeah, we do!”
DJ Matsunaga: Seriously? Holy crap, that’s amazing. It feels like it’s happening to someone else. [Laughs]
R-Shitei: [Laughs]
By the way, you mentioned South Africa just now, and we actually have a list for that country on our Japan Songs country and territorial charts. You’re No. 1 in South Africa by a landslide.
DJ Matsunaga: That’s amazing. [Looking at the data] Oh, you’re right. France, the U.K., South Africa, the U.S. …and Brazil?
R-Shitei: For real?
DJ Matsunaga: Wow… seeing it broken down by country makes it feel a lot more tangible.
This year, you held your first overseas headlining tour, the Creepy Nuts ASIA TOUR 2025, across five cities. With the tour behind you, how did it feel? And did performing outside of Japan make you aware of anything new?
R-Shitei: Seeing how the songs that appear on the charts land with people, how deeply they’ve taken root, came through much more vividly on the Asia tour. But since it was a headlining tour, the crowd reacted like crazy to all the other tracks as well. Of course, that’s because they came to see us specifically [unlike at a festival]… but even on top of that, “Otonoke” and “Bling-Bang-Bang-Born” really stood out in how strongly people responded.
DJ Matsunaga: And it made us happy that local fans actually came out to the shows.
R-Shitei: We were so happy!
In last year’s year-end chart-topper interview, you said that since you’d only played in events and festivals outside of Japan at that point, you thought that headlining your own shows abroad would show you things you couldn’t see before. So did you feel any differences this time between festivals and headliners overseas?
R-Shitei: Even with songs that weren’t people’s entry point to us, like album tracks and such, there were moments when I felt, “Wow, they’ve really listened to these.” It varied a lot by location, but for example, in Seoul, I felt like the crowd sang even more than they do at shows in Japan. They learned the Japanese properly and sang along, and there were parts that aren’t the hook, where I’d be like, “Wait, you can sing that section?” that they sang back at us. That was really fun. And I got the sense that people who came specifically to see our shows may have picked up a bit of Japanese through our music.
Japanese rap — especially your style, R-Shitei relies heavily on expressions that only work because they’re in Japanese, so I’ve wondered how that reaches listeners who don’t understand the language. You touched on how the Japanese surprisingly got through to some extent, but were there any other discoveries on the language side, or moments when you felt a barrier?
R-Shitei: You know how artists who play in a lot of different countries will often do all their communication in English as a common language? I can’t do that, so I go into those shows fully accepting that communication won’t be smooth — and embracing that limitation is actually what made it exciting. I’d learn a few local greetings, try speaking in Japanese or in the tiny bit of simple English I know, then say the same thing in the local language. Repeating that, checking in with the crowd like, “Is this word right? Does it mean what I think it means?” Doing our shows while confirming things like that was really enjoyable.
The whole Asia tour felt like we were building a shared language together with the audience, moment by moment. How do you say this emotion, this feeling of excitement, this word, in the local language? Sometimes the fans would even shout things back and teach us, and by the end of the shows, there was often this sense of unity you can’t get anywhere else.
On the Global Japan Songs Excl. Japan chart, Creepy Nuts became the first act ever to sweep the top three positions (“Mirage,” “Otonoke,” and “Bling-Bang-Bang-Born”) on the weekly tally released July 17. At this point, it’s clearly not just that anime tie-in tracks happen to be popular overseas — it feels like there’s a real increase in Creepy Nuts fans outside Japan. After touring Asia, did you feel that in any tangible way?
R-Shitei: I mean, I hope that more people are becoming fans of us as artists, and doing a headlining tour definitely made me feel, “Oh, so this is how many fans we actually have in this country.” Also, when people shout out older tracks — not just the three songs on this chart — it strikes me like, “Oh, you like that one,” and that makes me really happy. It made me think I’d love to create more spaces like this. We toured Asia this time around, but it made me think how great it’d be to do the same in countries we haven’t toured yet.
Of the songs that drew reactions from the audience, which one caught you by surprise, R-Shitei?
R-Shitei: “Joendanyusho” (Best Supporting Actor Award) for one. The day before our Hong Kong show, we did a local interview, and the interviewer said, “Creepy Nuts are pretty popular for ‘Joendanyusho’…” and I was like, “Huh?” I thought, “No way — overseas right now, people know us for ‘Otonoke’ and ‘Bling-Bang-Bang-Born.’” So I wondered if they were just saying that out of politeness. But then at the show the next day, the crowd started calling for an encore. We normally don’t do encores, so we just went out with no plan and asked, “Is there anything you want to hear?” And a lot of people shouted, “Joendanyusho!” That moment was like, “Oh, so it was true!” That really surprised me. Some people were even naming older tracks — like “Kamisama.”
DJ Matsunaga: Lately I’ve really felt that more people overseas are listening to us, so I’d assumed they’d be into the songs that came after “Bling-Bang-Bang-Born.” But tracks from when we’d barely started out — songs from our first release (Tarinai Futari) or the second EP (Joendanyusho) — had also taken hold in a big way too. It felt kind of surreal. I guess everyone’s going back through our catalog.
R-Shitei: Even the songs from right before we started charting globally… “Nobishiro,” for example, got an insane reaction.
DJ Matsunaga: That’s the one! The crowd really went for “Nobishiro.”
R-Shitei: Yeah. We honestly felt “Nobishiro” was very much a domestic-facing track — both in its sound and who it resonates with. So at overseas festivals we’d actually taken it out of the set list. But when we played it on our headlining tour, the crowd went wild. We were like, “You all like this one?” It took us by surprise.
DJ Matsunaga: It was really different — totally different from events where we’re invited to perform.
R-Shitei: Completely different.
Fans overseas are listening closely and turning out for the shows. It really feels like your fanbase is growing.
R-Shitei: It meant a lot to us.
DJ Matsunaga: We’re truly grateful.
You’re also set to play Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in April 2026. How do you see Coachella, personally?
DJ Matsunaga: Honestly, it’s something I’ve only perceived with the same level of clarity as, like, people walking down the street.
R-Shitei: Same. I always assumed it had nothing to do with us.
DJ Matsunaga: Right? It was just about being aware that it’s one of the biggest festivals in the world, one of the most prestigious overseas. I’d never thought about Coachella as something connected to my own life, so… I really can’t picture what it’s going to look like.
R-Shitei: I can’t picture it either. When I heard Awich was playing there in 2024, I was like, “Whoa, that’s huge!” That was the first time the word Coachella even entered the range of things I actively think about. I knew about it, but it felt like something unrelated to me. So, of course I’m happy (we get to perform) and thinking about how to do it, but… Oh man, it’ll be time before we know it.
DJ Matsunaga: April, right? It’s coming up fast.
R-Shitei: Yeah, really soon. Same with the Asia tour and other festivals — I’ll just have to communicate in my own way. Not just English, I want to be able to connect more with people everywhere.
But even without speaking English, there are artists who succeed globally while using their own language — like Bad Bunny, who basically speaks only Spanish in his songs and interviews.
DJ Matsunaga: Really? That’s amazing — to break through that far while using your native language.
R-Shitei: Incredible.
Related to that, there are also opinions lately that K-pop has been losing some of its identity, with many lyrics now mostly in English and even the sound shifting. In contrast, it seems to me that tracks leaning fully into a distinctly Japanese sound and language are beginning to stand out more internationally.
DJ Matsunaga: I completely get that. Because there are sonic qualities you can only get when the words are in Japanese, a lot of people react strongly to that. When you look at YouTube comments, you can see it — music that pairs a sonically familiar feel for listeners overseas with the unfamiliarity of Japanese lyrics creates this balance that hits them as fresh. You can actually see how that freshness and catchiness make the music feel accessible over there.
That makes sense. And R, you in particular write most of your lyrics in Japanese.
R-Shitei: Yeah.
DJ Matsunaga: Packing words tightly in Japanese really works in a good way, I think.
And Matsunaga, it’s your sound that really bridges that with the global audience.
DJ Matsunaga: Yeah, so if my sound became too narrowly Japan-centric, it could end up feeling like the sort of typical domestic music.
R-Shitei: Oh, right.
DJ Matsunaga: Bringing Japanese as-is to listeners overseas — preserving the quality of the language — really depends on the sound acting as a hub, so I’ve got to keep taking in new ideas and refining what I do. That’s the role of the production. And R-Shitei’s flow probably functions in the same way.
R-Shitei: Yeah.
DJ Matsunaga: What defines us most is the language. That’s the biggest thing for us.
–This interview by Maiko Murata first appeared on Billboard Japan