Hi-prix

An anonymous poster gave me a link to this new Sony music signing, Hi-prix, a couple of female high school rappers who passed an audition and are now making hip hop flavoured pop music on the label.

Sound familiar? Well, it looks familiar too- their videos are so eerily similar to Halcali's old work that you start to wonder how the label could be so shameless. Yes, this is a label directly ripping off their own band. No one is going to claim that Halcali are the first female pop duo with hip hop leanings of course, we can go back decades and still see examples of that, but the image, the style, the promos, the dancing- it's like a bad photocopy.

Make no mistake though, Hi-prix are the Halcali that Sony wished Halcali was from the start- faceless, bland, easily marketable, and horribly, horribly safe. It's tempting to think Hi-prix is Sony taking Halcali back to the drawing board- how can we take out those interesting rough edges that having been making us much money domestically, make them more magazine and market ready?

Check out the videos for the result. The songs are utterly dire. Don't be surprised to see these girls storm the Oricon charts in the near future though. Come back Do-nuts, all is forgiven!