After giving another go-round with Kirinji's（キリンジ）scintillating "Ai wo aru dake, Subete"（愛をあるだけ、すべて）album of 2018 which includes the spacey and suspenseful "AI no Touhikou"（AIの逃避行）with special guest MC Itsuka（いつか）from Charisma.com, I started wondering how the warp-speed rapper was doing. It was in the same year that the duo broke up once her partner, DJ Gonchi（ゴンチ）, decided that it was time to go.
Well, I started looking for another song of theirs and found this one called "Otsubone Rock" (Queen Bee Rock) which was a track on Charisma.com's 2nd mini-album "OLest" from July 2015. My last article on the duo, "Kongara Girl"（こんがらガール）, is also included in the album.
As Wikipedia states, "OLest" is a riff on The Best Office Lady, and "Otsubone Rock" is apparently about that Queen Bee in the workplace who will do anything to stay on top of the hive (saw something like that happening in one of my occupations years ago). Strangely enough, the lyrics remind me of a Nicole Kidman movie that I heard about a few decades back.
"Otsubone Rock" has got that percolating rap by Itsuka, who also wrote and composed the song along with Masaru Iwabuchi（岩渕マサル）, and it has that likeable twangy guitar which puts in some of that "Peter Gunn" suspense into the proceedings. I also like that intro which sounds like a machine gun going off and isn't that what a typical Charisma.com song is all about?
As for the video, seeing Itsuka carrying the ladder and both her and Gonchi walking like bosses in the factory must have been a shoutout to the late 1990s "Shomu-Ni"（ショムニ...General Affairs Department, General Affairs Section 2）franchise on Fuji-TV. I did watch the first two seasons and it stars a group of hardened OLs relegated to a corporate HQ limbo section only for them to be actually saving the company time and time again. I would think that Itsuka and Gonchi would make valuable additions to the section considering that Gonchi could intimidate anyone with those eyes and Itsuka looks like someone who could quietly rip a person into shreds with her tongue.
"OLest" managed to peak at No. 31 on Oricon. Despite the fact that Gonchi has left the duo, I am happy to find out that Itsuka has carried on as a solo act under the Charisma.com name but seeing her 2018 video at her website, she has greatly changed her appearance.
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