We're Still Friends - Interview with Otomodatchi

Photo by Shinsuke Yasui

Otomodatchi, meaning "Friends" in Japanese, is the collaborative project of Japanese singer Amiide and American rapper Jyodan, who emerged from Tokyo's multicultural music community in 2022. Reformed from the ashes of their former supergroup CIRRRCLE, Otomodatchi continue to bring their representative combination of sharp rhymes, social commentary, emotional singing, and dope beats. Fresh from the release of their second EP “Hold On”, Royce Leong connects with Otomodatchi across three time zones to find out about their long road here and the bright future ahead.

<Artist journey>

How did you guys first meet (like before CIRRRCLE even)?

Jyodan: Around 2015 and 2016, I was in a group called Lokyo, and Ami was in a different group called Ayen, and we spent about a year and half with our respective groups. That’s how we got in the same scene, we were doing a lot of shows and performing together. I was recording myself in a home studio, I was still in college, and one of the members of my group Lokyo named Onetwenty introduced me to Ami. I was thinking “Hmm, she’s Japanese, she speaks and sings in English, I think I can push her”. That was my kind of goal, that was the start. We immediately got to recording a cover song of The Internet, we didn’t even finish recording the song, we shot the video the next day on an iPhone. We went back, finished the song and then released it.

I just kept trying to do sessions to hear her as a singer, to hear her ingredients and vocal quality. We just kept sticking around.

Amiide: I met A.G.O at an Anderson .Paak show, Jyodan was there too. We like the same kind of music. I went to A.G.O’s home studio and made a song right there. Then I thought, “Hey let’s put Jyodan’s rapping on it”, and that was the start of CIRRRCLE. It’s called “Morning Calling”, and it’s on the very first CIRRRCLE EP “Cycle”.

Regarding your music and flow, who do you draw inspiration from?

Amiide: For me, I really like Kehlani and The Internet’s Syd.

Jyodan: When we first met, I was listening to a lot of Chance the Rapper, acid rap, SuperDuperKyle. At that time I think SuperDuperKyle lived with Kehlani in Skid Row, or near her. So it felt like I was on the other side of the apartment, Ami was listening to Kehlani, and I was listening to SuperDuperKyle. His album “Smyle”, I’m still listening to it. I had it on in the car recently and I remember why I liked it so much. 

Amiide: I remember watching Kehlani’s music video in Jyodan’s old apartment. The one with Chance the Rapper.

Jyodan: That’s like the best Kehlani song.

How do you pitch ideas for songs to one another?

Amiide: Usually we make songs when we’re in the same place, where we start the project. I’ll bring some beats, and I’ll ask Jyodan which ones he likes. He picks some then he comes up with the chorus. And that’s gonna be the idea.

Jyodan: We both learned to produce, but we don’t tell each other how to learn, and we don’t give each other deadlines. It gave us time to breathe, to learn, experiment, and try new things. I like to hold on to the idea that it's like being a movie star or an actor. Whatever she gives me, I have to use my ears first and then use my emotions next to decide “Hey is this my role, is this my character, I’m just cutting the demo, should someone else be on it?”

We have a certain look to our sound, and we always try to make things believable and fantastic, but not ungraspable or unachievable. Someone always has to give, sometimes I’ve had assignments like “You gotta do this”. But that’s the challenge, again like being an actor, I can challenge myself, can I do this? Can I pull this off? Do I hear it? I don’t overthink what she was making, that’s the music, that’s what I hear, that’s what I got.

It’s interesting that you mention personas, like acting, does that mean that when you sing these songs you’re someone else?

Jyodan; Sometimes, even when I was in CIRRRCLE, I used to ask on Instagram, “Hey what are your stories, you guys tell me something”, because two minds are better than one and you can multiply that idea. I think there’s much better stories than Ami’s and mine. No offense to anyone, everyone has their own stories, but what I write is probably more real than it is fantasy.

We’ve written about CIRRRCLE before and at that time we honestly predicted huge things for you. How did COVID impact you?

Amiide: Honestly, CIRRRCLE was my everything, and I got depressed after that for like two and half years. I finally feel ok nowadays, for about a year now. It was really hard.

COVID shut down all your activity?

Amiide: Yeah, Jyodan was trying to move to Japan, because we wanted to move forward with the group. We were working with a label, SIRUP’s label, but then because of COVID the visa situation didn’t work out. So Jyodan couldn’t come, and we couldn’t be in one place.

Jyodan: I try to tell people who have never heard our music that we’re more of a live act than we are a recording act. That’s how I felt about CIRRRCLE, if you get a chance to see any pictures of her and I, regardless of what we’re thinking at the time, the pictures are much stronger proof of what I’m trying to say. You can’t listen to us on phones either, you need a lot of bass. A lot of people listen to us on phones, but it’s their loss.

Then after COVID you both did some solo stuff. What brought you back together?

Amiide: In December 2022, I was in Tokyo, and Jyodan came to Tokyo as well. I received an offer to perform at BAIA, it was for a Jagermeister event, and I invited Jyodan to perform with me. It was really fun. Everytime we perform together, I just always have fun. Even when we were in CIRRRCLE, as a trio we had our little problems, but when we perform live, everything goes away. That happened again at BAIA, and I thought, “Let’s just do it again.” Everyone around me tells me they miss CIRRRCLE, and my Dad said to me you should keep making music with Jyodan, so I thought “Okay”.

Jyodan: My parents say the same thing, anywhere Ami is in the world, you just gotta try get to her. I’ve met her parents, she’s met mine. There’s a lot of things to do in the world, but all we want to do is make music and perform. It might not be appreciated fully now, but I have hopes that we can still be around when it is.

Your musical connection seems tight as always, it transcends physical distance. What do you attribute that synergy to?

Jyodan: I think it’s simple, we keep updating our contracts as friends. Whereas I think a lot of people don’t. We keep talking to each other, and communicating, not all of it is easy. The stuff we talk about now is 10x harder, but it’s better on a personal level. I make a lot of mistakes against my better judgment, I think I’m doing the right thing but I slow down a lot of stuff. But she understands that I have a good mindset. I try to have a good heart about how I do things, so she can go to sleep and not wake up and find everything’s ruined. I don’t have to do that for her either, her credit is good, in all these major cities now, what else would you want?

Amiide: I think the reason we sound good together is because we’re friends first and music collaborators second.

Jyodan: We try not to let money or numbers that we don’t like make us act strange around each other. We really try to go together, if we can’t go together we go one at a time, if we have to switch the order. I think that’s how some people fail, they just don’t have any friends. I think as an older artist, as someone past the age of 25, some of the older people don’t have any friends, and some of the younger artists don’t have the knowledge, they lack the study or focus to learn the technical stuff. We have an okay balance of both, we’re not the greatest at anything, but we appreciate the art, the hard work, the science, the math. I love all the technical stuff. And she’s doing it in English, which many people very much overlook. That’s not her first language. That’s what makes all this impressive to me. It’s probably an understatement, but she’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. She’s doing it in my language, playing this game. Nobody chose easy. And still we understand, nothing’s changed in 10 years, there’s no misunderstanding about what we’re doing.

Is that kind of where the name Otomodatchi comes from?

Jyodan: 100%. But we always come up with the name at the last minute.

Amiide: For example with CIRRRCLE, Jyodan said “We’re not really a group, we’re not a band, but we’re all in the same circle”. And I thought, “Oh, CIRCLE!”. The triple R thing, you know Ryuichi Sakamoto’s agency was called commmons with 3 Ms, and I thought I’m just gonna copy that, because I wanna be global like him. And then Otomodatchi, the reason I added the “t” is because people know Tamagotchi.

Jyodan: Let me tell you about the name, for those who don’t know Japanese. I fought her on the name twice, after we released music. I said “Yo, this name is hard for some people”. And Ami sent me a clip from BBC Radio One, they played our music, and the DJ said our name perfectly. And I realized “Okay, people can say this” and I’ve been quiet ever since.

What are some of the challenges involved in working across continents?

Jyodan: Hotels

Amiide: A lot of tickets.

Jyodan: Yeah, money. That’s the biggest thing. We have to be in the same room to create, we gotta feel it.

You don’t make music in your own rooms, and pass parts back and forth over the internet?

Amiide: We do that too, we can record separately, but it’s just easier to come up with scratch demos when we’re in the same room.

Jyodan: Like you nodding your head right now listening to us, it’s a lot easier to see that in the same room, when a couple of other people are doing the same thing.

Amiide: And we can make 5 to 10 songs in a couple of days. We can then refine them afterwards.

Jyodan: We just keep trying to make songs. Something I heard lately is that it’s ok to make bad music. It helps you make good music. I gotta practice all the muscles.

You mentioned that you both know how to produce, and you make demos, but on the songs it usually mentions a producer like Chocoholic, Zuma., or HMLT. Are they the main producer in that case?

Jyodan: It changes.

Amiide: Usually we can get beats from Chocoholic or Zuma. really easily, because we’re like real friends. HMLT, I’ve met him once, and we always wanted to work together. He made us a lot of demo beats so we can pick. He makes awesome beats. We don’t have go-to producers, we just work with friends.

Would you ever consider going back to a single producer, or do you find that this suits your decentralized state?

Amiide: It honestly doesn’t matter who produces the beats as long as they’re good.

Jyodan: I don’t think there’s a better or worse pattern, it’s just different. It’s a learning curve, it keeps going.

Amiide: A.G.O is an amazing producer, he’s still going.

Jyodan: Yeah he’s still popping. I think we’re all going to see each other again eventually at the same show, just like we talked about 10 years back from now, and it’ll be interesting to see who’s gonna do what they said they would do.

Has it been challenging to rebuild your fanbase as Otomodatchi? 

Amiide: Definitely yes.

Did you find that people who liked you as CIRRRCLE move on or did they stick with you?

Amiide: I don’t think people know we exist. We weren’t allowed to do solo projects when we were CIRRRCLE. So everything stopped. We didn’t have any portfolio for ourselves.

Jyodan: That made stuff challenging. We used to all live in the same city, A.G.O would go to work, Ami would go to work, I’d go to work, we’d see people at the same work. It felt more magnetic, our little Tokyo bubble. But now we’re all spread out, so people aren’t looking for us unless they were on a vacation to London or LA.

Amiide: I feel that we gained a lot of fans through live shows when we were CIRRRCLE.

Jyodan: Yeah that was everything, we would see people again and again, some people would travel quite far to see us.

Amiide: Also the Spotify algorithm keeps changing. And it's a different time. Back in the day it was easier. There are more artists now than before. We were kind of a pioneer of being an independent artist online. It was easier, I won’t say it was easy. But now there are more who sing in English as well, a lot of artists are trying to be global. There’s definitely more competition. And I really think Spotify became a bit difficult. It’s just how I feel. 

Although you’re based in LA and London, do you still consider Tokyo as your center of activity?

Amiide: Right now, yes.

Jyodan: I do.

Amiide: We’ve been talking a lot about moving back here. If we get a good management/label, we will consider it.

Jyodan: When we say good we mean sustainable. Anything that means we can’t keep doing music, or makes us want to quit doing music, we won’t accept. Personally I want to go back to Japan, I want to get out of LA. I want to do many shows and meet people again.

Amiide: For me it’d be awesome if I can do half of the time in the UK and half in Japan. But we’ll know when the time comes.

What do you miss about Japan, if anything?

Amiide: I miss my friends.

Jyodan: I just miss my friends. That’s like my family.

What about Japanese food or culture?

Amiide: I miss combini beer. Convenience store beer is the best.

Jyodan: I miss Family Mart, 7-11, Donki, walking around random neighborhoods in the middle of the night, riding my bicycle around, skating through the koban, I miss Gindaco…Osaka. I still call Japan my home. But I’m trying to stop saying that, to let that idea go and for once be at where I’m at. I haven’t done that since I left, I haven’t accepted that I’m fully here now, still. I miss pretty much everything. I miss the cicadas even.

Really? Cicadas? I miss the bird noises in Australia when I wake up in the morning.

Jyodan: Cicadas in summer are my bird noises.

Photos by Shinsuke Yasui

You came back recently to perform in Japan again. How did it feel?

Amiide: It was nice.

Jyodan: I had fun, I was a little nervous because I kept forgetting my lines. Parts of it feel like old times, because the mistakes I made now, I made with CIRRRCLE, and to look at it that way, shows who I really am. I think it’s silly.

Amiide: Not just at our show, but also at VivaOla’s show, we met our fans. After that I went to Umi’s concert and met a couple more fans there. And I thought, “I missed this.”

Jyodan: When you take that away from us…it’s weird creating when you don’t know who’s listening. To see anyone in person and realize oh hey it’s you, now I know you. It’s so nice. Doesn’t matter how old we get. It’s the best feeling in the world.

You probably noticed that Shibuya is pretty crazy with the redevelopment and tourist activity. What kind of changes stood out to you on this trip?

Amiide: So many foreigners.

Jyodan: That was my number one. Who are all these foreign people who don’t speak Japanese? It must be because of the cherry blossoms. It feels like in 2024, it’s like everyone in the world just thought alright…

Amiide: …Let's go see sakura

Jyodan; That’s the number one thing, more than the buildings. Also, I’d say 50% of the buildings changed, easily. The skate park, all of Miyashita park. The best part that hasn’t changed, are the bathrooms in the city, if you know where they are. You have to know secret bathrooms. Any major city, you have to know which bathrooms are good and not.

In the last couple of years, there has been increasing awareness and promotion of diversity in Japan. Have you noticed any changes in attitude?

Amiide: Not really.

Jyodan: I think the biggest factor is time. If I see that there’s any change in diversity, it’s because the younger generation grew up and a lot of them would be half Japanese or something else, and they’re old enough to work. I see more bilingual people, but they’re really young. For the people above 18-21, that age, it still seems the same to me.

Amiide: To be honest, for me, I’ve always been surrounded by diverse people, so I don’t notice any differences from 5 years ago to now. And also I’ve been away for about 2 years. But Jyodan didn’t get stopped this time, right?

Jyodan: This is the first trip, maybe the second, that I didn’t get stopped and frisked. So that’s different. There’s like more police, but they don’t bother me anymore. It might be because of the Olympics, or diversity, it’s very rare, because I’ve been getting stopped ever since I was 13. I’ve been stopped in a work uniform, in street clothes, night or day, with a bike or without a bike. I’ve been stopped everywhere. I’ve noticed that change, because I haven’t been stopped. Whatever the reason, I praise the city for that. It’s such a huge waste of time.

As we know, Japan is basically a homogenous culture that tends to hammer down nails that stick out. Have you ever experienced discrimination in Japan?

Amiide: For me personally, not really, because most of my friends are really chill. I never had any really strong discrimination. Maybe I’m just not sensitive to it. My family is cool. But Twitter is horrible.

Jyodan: I’m the opposite. My internet culture is very much okay. In real life, I am tested, what used to be day by day, used to be week by week, now it’s month by month. I stay indoors a lot. A lot of stop and frisk. I’ve been turned away from a few apartments for being military related, but I’m not, for being American, or for just being black. This was in college when I was looking for my apartment. I say I ended up in my apartment, because the other ones I chose, no one would take me. It wasn’t about money. It was just no. By that time I was already in Japan for over 10 years and I was a Japanese major. So I don’t think I misunderstood that. I get heat anywhere I go, I get friction anywhere, sometimes it’s age, sometimes it’s the car you drive. People talk wild to me, to this day. And between right now and the time of CIRRRCLE, whenever I was coming out and introducing ourselves, I read a lot more contracts. I read a lot of boring stuff in front of other people. And that’s helped me with discrimination.

Amiide: A lot of foreigners can’t get apartments. I have experienced it in a way, because my wife Laura, is a foreigner, and on top of that, we’re a gay couple. In Japan they don’t recognize us as a couple, they recognize us as roommates. So I had to rent the place under my name, and then add her later.

I remember on social media Amiide you showed that you got the partnership certificate in Japan.

Amiide: Yeah but legally partnership in Japan doesn’t do anything. Laura couldn’t even get a visa. Even after 5 years, we still can’t get married in Japan. So that hasn’t changed.

Cover art by Hyperbeamcat

<Hold On>

You’ve just released your second EP titled Hold On. Just reflecting on the first EP, that felt like a trial run, and it was a treat for CIRRRCLE fans just to hear new material, but this EP feels more like a statement, that you’re back for real. Has there been a change in attitude?

Amiide: The first EP we used a lot of songs that we already had demos. But for the new one, we created it from scratch. So it’s completely new.

Jyodan: It’s more organized. Ami really pushed me for both these two EPs. She really supported me. I was very difficult in front of a microphone. Ami was like “Record this” and I was like “Uhh I dunno”. I feel like I got through it because of Ami. I feel like I was not working the best. 

To hear that the second EP sounds more cohesive and put together, it’s nice to hear what people think, because I was genuinely out of it. I hope it still makes sense. I don’t want to waste people’s time.

What’s your favorite thing about each other?

Amiide: Jyodan is loyal. Very loyal. That’s my favorite thing about him.

Jyodan: My favorite thing about Ami is that she’s smart. I think I know a lot of smart people, and Ami is one of the smartest people in terms of style and fashion. No one does what she does.

I love the chorus of Doin’ it well because all the lines can be interpreted in positive and negative ways, you could be supportive or holding people back, you could be screwing up or making an impact, depending on the interpretation.

Jyodan: There’s a song from the 90’s by LL Cool J, in the chorus they sing “I’m doin it, I’m doin it well”, I always thought that was really cool. I was thinking I’m not doing the best and I’m not doing the greatest, but I’m doing what I need to do, I’m keeping it responsible. I think the message is no matter if you’re doing good or bad, do it well. If you’re down, if you're up, if you need help from someone or you don’t, do it really good, do it well. You still have to do it, it might as well be really well.

Sayin’ No is about speaking up and leaving a toxic relationship. We’ve probably all been there, maybe some of us still in there. It’s never easy and usually complex. What have you learned from your experiences? Do you have any advice for listeners in untenable relationships?

Jyodan: My advice to people with complex relationships is sometimes you have to say no to people. The common picture in someone’s head is just dating, but the truth is I have harder times now with my friends, than I do with any boyfriend, girlfriend, husband or wife. Because they’re like “hey you should do this with your life”, or “You should do this”. There’s a lot of pressure. I’ve had to tell a few people no. And it’s the people I’m closest with, and it sucks. It still sucks.

Amiide: I think sometimes people just need to let go.

When someone’s under the influence, they don’t really have control. As fun as it might be to have a Good Time in Disguise, would you prefer it if there was less substance use, like in Japan as opposed to the west?

Jyodan: No. It sounds paradoxical, but I wish there was more of it in a healthy way. Because Ami lived in LA and Japan, I lived in LA and Japan, if you travel from one side to the other, you’ll see that each side needs to tilt toward each other, to reach a balance, for real that’s just how I feel. I feel passionately about balance. I think Japanese culture needs to loosen up, if not with drugs or substances, then in general. That’s the message, it might not be the best procedure, but that’s the point. And then America could take some tips from Japan and clean up some stuff on the ground and do a lot of things less. And that would balance things out, honestly.

Amiide: For my lyrics, it was the theme, a story that happened to me while I was in Tokyo, and I just wrote about it.

Would you consider yourselves to be Reckless in any way? 

Amiide: I’m not reckless at all (laughs).

Jyodan: That’s why I wrote it too, I’m not reckless at all. I think I’m reckless, and then I see other people and realize “Oh, that is reckless”. We don’t drink, we don’t club like that, we don’t do the fun drugs. Just melatonin. I wrote my verse based on when I was 20, 21. I’m trying to be a little more reckless honestly. I’m not trying to get wrecked though. It’s a gamble to move up, you have to do some things that people don’t do.

Hold On is the lead single for the EP, and it's basically the story of your career. The world was your oyster back then, you were primed for the big time, and then it all went south. You struggled afterward, but you persevered and this is your comeback. Now, things are pointing up, but you’re keenly aware that it can fall apart in an instant. Knowing that risk, and given everything you’ve had to endure, why are you willing to do this all over again?

Amiide: It’s the only thing we want to do. It’s simple.

Jyodan: That’s all we ever talk about, still.

Amiide: I feel like music is life. It’s not about unfinished business.

Jyodan: We just think about what we are doing next. I just wanted to know what was next. How do I sound better? We never stopped, never thought about quitting. Luckily.

Will we be seeing you perform more often in Tokyo?

Amiide: Definitely, for sure. We will be in Tokyo in July, opening for TAIL. 

Jyodan: We’re hyper focused on Tokyo, and then the rest of Japan. We’re definitely not limited, we’re going to go much harder than we did for CIRRRCLE. Declaring it right now.

Will you ever perform with a band?

Amiide: We would love to.

Jyodan: I’ve been saying to Ami, when my rap career dies out, let me pop back up as her tour drummer. It’s my dream to drum and support her everywhere, so we can keep doing it. I would love to play with a live band, I want to be the band. I’ve been doing it since I was 10 years old.

We’re really looking forward to seeing you here more. Thanks for talking with us today!

Listen to Hold On on all platforms now and follow Otomodatchi on Instagram, YouTube, and X.

Revisit our feature on CIRRRCLE’s BESTY EP.

Also check out our interviews with VivaOla and Chocoholic!