Kennet Schmitz, my partner in "crime" in the website, recently introduced me to this song by Mike Shinoda. We are big fans of Shinoda's work as part of the American rock band Linkin Park and his own side-project, the hip-hop band Fort Minor. His song "Kenji" is one of the tracks of Fort Minor's album The Rising Tied, and is about the troubled experiences of Japanese-Americans in internment camps during WWII. I loved his use of pop-culture, specifically rap, to deal with these past events and his present feelings and thoughts about them. Through Shinoda's defiant lyrics and rapping style history bursted into my ears in a very creative and powerful way; this "cool" rap got me to think about the routes that war forces upon people's lives, and to remember my grandfather Kanji and all those Japanese men that were imprisoned in Cuba during WWII.
Perhaps one day I'll write a song, since I like writing in general; if I do, I hope to come up with a rap song as powerful as Mike Shinoda's "Kenji."