As 2025 winds down, Asia’s Hip Hop scene is only speeding up. In a year where the right beat, hook, or look can send an artist viral from anywhere in the world, the culture’s center of gravity keeps shifting and expanding. For LiFTED LiSTS: Best of 2025, we looked back at the past 365 days to spot the patterns shaping the movement: Tokyo and Mumbai setting the pace, women firmly in control, Canto Rap carving out its space, the growing power of YouTube series, and plenty more. Dive in to see what defined Asian Hip Hop in 2025.

It used to be New York City. It used to be Los Angeles. It used to be Atlanta. Even London had one of the biggest Hip Hop scenes in the world. Now, with population shifts and taste realignment, Tokyo, Japan and Mumbai, India are two of the biggest engines for the growth of Hip Hop and have become the epicenters of Asian Rap music.

If you haven’t been to Tokyo in a while, go. There are so many good DJs playing music on street corners, elevators, in grocery stores, or in the countless 10-person all-vinyl shops that it’s insane. In a single month in 2025, the DMC held its 40th anniversary with guests like the Invisibl Skratch Piklz, DJ Honda and DJ Craze, Red Bull held the BC One World Finals with Skratch Bastid and Redman, and the Beatboxing World Championship crowned a new champion…all in the same block. This doesn’t take into consideration the amount of incredible Japanese Hip Hop coming out from the prefectures every week and the record store scene that is better than anywhere else in the world. Tokyo is lit and always one step ahead of the rest of the planet.

Mumbai is right in the mix as well. Just recently, Rolling Loud got 65,000 fans together for a weekend to celebrate Hip Hop. This is a feat that would have been unheard of only a few years ago. Also, Nas’ World Reunion, Travis Scott’s Circus Maximus, Post Malone and a Tyla concert shows that music is motivating people to buy tickets to see Hip Hop (and Hip Hop adjacent) concerts live.

As for the internal music scene, Indian Hip Hop is poppin’ on every level. There is enough underground music for the heads - practically every one of the country’s 28 states and territories has a local language star - while major artists like DIVINE and Emiway Banitai are showing the young kids how to make albums, and…

With 1.4 billion people, India’s population is 48.4 percent women. That’s 677 million voices that are longing to be heard. For a while, most of the MCs in India were men, but that is no longer the case. Raja Kumari, SIRI, Dee MC, Meba Ofilia, and the Wild Wild Women have been laying the groundwork on women's empowerment, patriarchal norms, mental health, cultural identity, and urban struggles.

In 2025, two female MCs are skyrocketing in popularity–Reble and Param. 19-year-old Param had a viral hit with ‘That Girl’ and she has been one of the most talked about rappers in 2025.

Reble is a certified star in the making. She’s caused a bidding war between labels and has a Punk Rock-meets-Hip Hop vibe. With‘New Riot,’ Reble has embraced the universe’s chaos, and those 677 million female voices will soon have a new role model.

Each time we’ve done a year-end list, we look back and see that the ladies are killing it. This year was a very good year for female Rap, and the baddies have taken over and aren’t going anywhere for a long time. Top female rappers like Awich, RAMENGVRL, MILLI, Jessi, and Camo continue to set the bar for what’s happening with Rap and R&B in the region. And there’s a new crop of baddies popping up that are forgoing the traditional routes of getting their music heard and seen and using social media and YouTube series to their advantage. Nene, Litty, 3Li¥en, Moon, Wilai, and Yayoi Diamon are all putting in serious work and it’s paying off for them.

If you havent heard ‘大展鴻圖 Blueprint Supreme’ blasting from restaurants, cars, and clubs, you must not live in the Cantonese-speaking world. Or, increasingly the English-speaking one. The MVP of the year is 攬佬SKAI ISYOURGOD because not only did he make a bop, but he went viral in the US, and also took over Jay Chou as most-streamed Chinese artist on Spotify. He also played his song in front of NBA players Ja Morant in China and Draymond Green in the Bay area when he was in town on his US tour. SKAI knows that Canto Rap is on the up and up so he had Haysen Cheng opening, and even brought out MC Jin on the US tour’s final show.

People can brag about how many followers they have on Instagram or TikTok, but the real deal social media for real is YouTube. If you create something on YouTube that blows, you have created a new life for yourself. If an artist has an album coming out, they better be hitting the hottest YouTube spots for maximum exposure. Right now, there are so many great YouTube series, it’s hard to whittle them down, but here’s a small sample from the past year:

For old heads, Rage Rap just doesn’t make any sense. The beats are fuzzy, the 808s and synths are glitchy AF, and the lyrics barely rhyme. For the modern day Hip Hop generation, Rage Rap is more about a vibe than about music sometimes, and artists like Playboy Carti and Lil Uzi Vert are their heroes. It’s catching on in Asia as well since Carti, Ken Carson, Destroy Lonely, the whole Homixide Crew were taking over Lollapalooza India. Also, Rage is catching on in China as Chengdu’s FOUR4444 video for ‘童趣猫耳手表’ became wildly popular on LiFTED’s Instagram because she resurrects King Von in AI.

The intermingling of food and fashion has been on the rise over the past few years, but in 2025, brands really stepped up. In Japan, streetwear god NIGO was announced as the creative director of Family Mart. Soon after, house slippers looking like Famichicki were sold in the stores. Over the years, CLOT has worked with McDonald’s to make their uniforms cool. In 2025, they introduced the McSpicy Alienegra, which was a pattern for bags, shoes, and pins only available in China. We’re waiting for that KFC x BBC drop!

Imagine being JP The Wavy and getting a phone call from one of the coolest artists on the planet, making music and being in a group with him, and then putting out the wild ‘LV Murakami’ video, which has nearly 11 million views. It must feel like a dream but MNNK Bro with Takashi Murakami has put out a few songs and some vinyl with trading cards, plus one of the most creative videos of the year that doubles as an ad for Louis Vuitton. Incredible.

2025 was a historic year for Morobeats as the crew basically soundtracked a protest against the one percent with ‘ANAK KA NG PU!’ But that was not enough. The country hosted the first-ever Filipino Music Awards in 2025, and Morobeats’s, ‘Gubat na Siyudad’ featuring Kambal and GMac and produced by DJ Medmessiah, won for Hip Hop Song of the Year. Morobeats has gone from the being the self-proclaimed ‘Boom Bap kings of Asia’ to representing the Philippines to the fullest with raw energy and speaking truth to power.

The feeling in the air is that 2026 will be a monumental year for Asian artists. Three-time Grammy winner Ne Yo, OG Chinese-American Hip Hop artist MC Jin, and India Bollywood legend Sonu Nigam have teamed up with former Warner Music Asia head Jonathan Serbin to form the Voltron-like Asia-centric Pacific Music Group. The Hong Kong-based label aims to bring Asian artists to the world and the world’s artists into Asia. In particular, MC Jin will front the label’s Hip Hop imprint, to be announced in the first quarter of 2026.