Awich, CHICO CARLITO, ONE OK ROCK, and Paledusk have come together as YAO for the first installment of Red Bull IN-YO!, a new video series on Red Bull’s Japanese hip-hop YouTube channel Red Bull Mic. The series creates new music through sessions pairing hip-hop with other genres, with the first four acts bringing their respective sounds into direct collision across the rock and hip-hop scenes.
Awich, the reigning queen of Japanese hip-hop, lines up alongside rapper CHICO CARLITO, while the rock side brings globally active bands ONE OK ROCK and Fukuoka-born Paledusk.
YAO have also launched official Instagram and YouTube channels, suggesting the project may extend beyond this first collaboration.
The series title plays on the Chinese concept of yin and yang, in which opposing forces maintain balance with one another. What exists here, though, is “rhyme and yang”. The thinking is that “yang”, the outside genre, feeds into hip-hop culture, with the two combining to make something new.
In the past, ONE OK ROCK enlisted Paledusk and CHICO CARLITO to collaborate on the 2025 track ‘C.U.R.I.O.S.I.T.Y.’ which featured on the band’s 11th studio album ‘DETOX’. All four shared the stage earlier this year at ONE OK ROCK’s docomo presents THE MUSIC STADIUM 2026, which drew 120,000 fans to MUFG Stadium (Japan National Stadium) across two days.
Watch the Red Bull IN-YO! debut now via Red Bull Mic.
