You don’t necessarily think about the musical talents of various VTubers when thinking about the meteoric rise in online virtual streamers, but recently, many VTubers have taken to doing karaoke streams. Fueled by song requests from fans and choices of their own, for as popular as these streams have been, broader outreach into original music outside of Kizuna AI hasn’t yet reached major highs. Even when they do perform original music, you don’t immediately think of these VTubers performing original rap songs, but that’s exactly what Hololive EN VTuber Mori Calliope has done, and their original rap songs have skyrocketed to the top of Hip-Hop/Rap download charts around the world thanks to their dedicated fan base.
Mori Calliope’s ‘DEAD BEATS’ EP has, on the back of feverish support from her subscribers, jumped to the top of the Hip-Hop/Rap download album charts in both the US and UK. Not content with just a spot at the top of the genre charts, the song has jumped to near the top of the general album charts on iTunes in the US, 8th in the UK all albums chart, with top positions being reported in countries like Canada and even Japan. People around the world are jumping on these sick bars!
This isn’t the first time that Hololive have made a jump into music. The Hololive Idol Project centered on the company’s Japanese idols has produced multiple songs over the past year and been pushed heavily by the company. Still, these company-driven efforts have proved somewhat successful, but none have seen much success outside of Japan, unlike this EP. Even if some of the support for the album is simply people wanting to see the EP topping the charts (it should be noted that similar chart-topping achievements aren’t being noted on other download services), it’s still an impressive achievement.
The rap stylings of these songs won’t be for everyone, but they’re fun songs. If you don’t want to purchase the EP for yourself, the songs are streaming in their entirety over on YouTube.