Gen Hoshino Talks Evolution of Creative Process & ‘Innocence’ in First New Album in 6 Years: Billboard Japan Monthly Feature Interview 

Gen Hoshino sat down with Billboard Japan for its Monthly Feature series focusing on currently notable artists and works, to chat about his first new album in six years simply entitled Gen.

The new project, released May 14, is the Japanese superstar’s first full-length studio set since his previous smash hit album POP VIRUS. It contains 16 tracks including singles “Fushigi,” which topped the Billboard Japan Hot 100, “Create” (Japanese title: “Souzou”), the 35th anniversary theme song for Super Mario Brothers, and “Comedy” (“Kigeki”), the ending theme song for the anime SPYxFAMILY. Gen also includes a variety of other songs such as “Mad Hope (feat. Louis Cole, Sam Gendel, Sam Wilkes),” “2 (feat. Lee Youngji),” “Memories (feat. UMI, Camilo),” and “Eden (feat. Cordae, DJ Jazzy Jeff),” with guest artists from various countries.

The album is clearly different from Hoshino’s previous works in terms of sound design and songwriting. It reflects the changes in his production style that began during the pandemic, and his attempts to “sing about himself,” something he had previously tried to avoid doing. The 44-year-old singer-songwriter is set to break new ground in pop music with his latest project.

Gen debuted at No. 2 on Billboard Japan’s Hot Albums chart and No. 1 on the Download Albums chart on the tallies released May 21. Hoshino broke down the production of his latest project and shared his current mindset after his six-and-a-half-year journey in this new interview.

Gen shows the various changes that you’ve gone through since your last album POP VIRUS, and at the same time, it’s a work that opens up a new phase in pop music. I imagine the starting point was “Create.” What’s your take on the process from your previous album to this one?

Gen Hoshino: The EP Same Thing that I released after POP VIRUS was a project that was like a “journey to find out about the outside of myself.” Until then, I’d basically been creating music on my own, but I wanted to know how other people were doing it and also to update my world. After going through that, I started writing “Create” and the pandemic struck. During the time I couldn’t leave the house, I taught myself how to produce music on a digital audio workstation (DAW) from scratch, and made a song called “Oriai” to try it out. I thought, “I can handle this” (DAW production), so I produced “Create” again from scratch. Looking back, I think that was the starting point for this album.

I used to start out (writing songs) on my guitar, but with a DAW, I can use various sound sources and punch in the drums, bass, keyboards and stuff to create my own world by myself. When I first started using it, I was like, “OK, this is my thing” and was immediately hooked. From the very beginning, it felt like, “This is totally different from the way I used to make music.” My skills improved from there and the things I could do kept increasing. 

It’s great that you were having so much fun during the production.

It was like that in terms of creativity, and there was also that innocence towards music at the center. It kind of felt like how it was when I started playing the guitar in junior high. I’ve been in the business for 25 years now, and in the 20th year of my career, I got a new toy. I can maintain objectivity while doing the actual work feeling like a junior high school student. That was an experience I’d never had before.

The album includes tracks featuring Louis Cole, Sam Gendel, Sam Wilkes, Lee Youngji, UMI, Camilo, Cordae, and DJ Jazzy Jeff.

Before, I used to write a song on my guitar, write the score, have the band members get together, discuss it and record it, and that was it. This time it was different in that I started by creating the basic track on my own on a DAW, and if I thought that a part would work better recorded live, I had a musician come in and record it, then put that back on my computer and edited it again.

For example, for “Mad Hope,” I handed the beat that I’d made to Louis and said to him, “You can play it this way, or you can arrange it,” and he sent me the data of him playing it the same and the version where he’d arranged it. I then decided where and how I could use those various takes and edited them. After that, I changed the structure of the song to make it longer, so I visited Louis at his home and recorded some more. It was like I was making everything from beginning to end always at my fingertips.

So the flow was like, as I worked on the songs, the faces of the people I wanted to collaborate with would come to mind and I’d make an offer. “2” was like that, too. After I started writing the song, I thought, “It’d be great if Youngji rapped on this,” so I asked her to do it.

She covered your song “Koi” at her Japan show last year. Did you have any previous contact with her?

I liked her music and listened to it a lot, and have also seen the variety shows she appeared on. She debuted as a rapper while in high school and is definitely “current” in terms of sound and skill, but I sometimes detect a whiff of female rappers from the ’90s in her and she has various sides to her which fascinated me. Then a fan of hers sent an email to my radio show telling me that Youngji had covered “Koi” at a concert in Japan and said she was a fan of mine. We followed each other on Instagram after that.

You both wrote the lyrics for “2 (feat. Lee Youngji).” What kind of themes did you share?

It was about two people being invincible when they get together, and also about making it a song of empowerment for each of us. I already had my lyrics, and when I told her the theme, she came back with some great bars. She also offered to rap in Japanese, and her Japanese verses were really great, too. UMI and Camilo, who worked with me on “Memories,” as well as Cordae and Jazzy Jeff, who took part in “Eden,” really understood what I was trying to do, and they each interpreted it through their own filters and reflected that into their music. I was thinking how fortunate I was while working on the project that I could interact with them in such an organic way. 

So you didn’t know which direction the sounds would end up?

Right. But there was one thing I wanted to do sound-wise. Each song contains a variety of sounds. There are unadjusted sounds recorded with very cheap microphones, clean sounds recorded in a good studio, synth sounds from computers and those from real synthesizers. The theme of the sound production is that all of these sounds, clean and messy, old and new, are all equivalent and they can all exist at the same time. You can hear the sound of a guitar with noise mixed in that I played at home and the clear sound of a guitar that Ryo-chan (Ryosuke Nagaoka) played in the studio in a single track, or sounds from 2025 and sounds made in 2021 existing at the same time. Past and present, clean and messy are next to each other. It’s an album where I assembled various sounds according to my senses.

You’re currently in the midst of your Gen Hoshino presents MAD HOPE domestic tour, and will be embarking on your Asia trek from August.

It’s been a while, six years, since I’ve been on tour. It’s called MAD HOPE, so I guess it’s like a concept tour, and since I haven’t toured in a while, I want to include both my latest songs and the old ones. Live shows belong to the audience is how I basically see it, so I hope everyone enjoys it the way they like. Heading home afterwards saying, “That was fun,” “That was good” is great, isn’t it? I prefer making the music, so when it comes to performing live, I always just feel so grateful. I’ve always felt that the best thing is for everyone to enjoy the show, and that feeling has never changed.

–This interview by Tomoyuki Mori first appeared on Billboard Japan