Japan’s No. 1 Hip-Hop Stars Creepy Nuts Drop Wild New Singles ‘Mirage’ and ‘Nemure’

SONGS DOUBLE AS OPENING AND CLOSING THEMES OF SEASON 2 OF HIT ANIME SERIES CALL OF THE NIGHT“Mirage”

Genre-upending Japanese hip-hop unit Creepy Nuts release two brand new singles: the Latin-infused “Mirage” and the high-energy “Nemure” — the opening and closing themes of Season 2 of the hit supernatural anime Yofukashi no Uta (Call of the Night). The duo — battle rap champ R-shitei and DMC World DJ Championships hero DJ Matsunaga — have a rich history of lending their dynamic music to TV series, and are also celebrating the release of their fourth album LEGION, out now via Sony Music Japan. 

Listen to “Mirage” HERE.

Listen to “Nemure” HERE.

Revisit LEGION HERE.

The new songs capture Creepy Nuts’s striking talent and musical breadth. “Mirage” employs Spanish guitar and a syncopated beat while R-shitei unleashes vocals that evoke, in turns, Astrud Gilberto and Bad Bunny. The lyrics tap into the groundbreaking vampire series’ themes — fleeting moments, complex emotions, questions of identity, passion and the paranormal.

“Nemure” (“Sleep”), on the other hand, mixes up chopped strings, jittery club percussion, and flitting bits of melody for a song that viscerally captures the feeling of not wasting a second, and embracing life while the world slumbers: “Dance until the morning comes / Can’t give up, until that time / I’ll keep it all to myself, ah yeah / Just a little more… / Just one more song… / Just one more… yeah.”

Illustrating the duo’s unique place in Japanese culture, the original 2019 Yofukashi no Uta manga was inspired by a Creepy Nuts song of the same name. When the anime launched in 2022, the group provided the opening and closing themes for Season 1, too: “Daten” (“Fallen Angel”) and “Yofukashi no Uta.” Season 2 of Call of the Night launches today on HIDIVE.

In May, Creepy Nuts took home two awards at the 9th Crunchyroll Anime Awards — Best Opening Sequence and Best Anime Song for their original song “Otonoke,” which doubled as the theme for the series Dan Da Dan. They were up against stiff competition including Yungblud, K-pop stars Tomorrow X Together, and, well, themselves for their massive hit “Bling-Bang-Bang-Born” (from Mashle: Magic and Muscles), which they also played live.

That same month, Creepy Nuts made a historic sweep of the 2025 Music Awards Japan, winning nine categories including Best Japanese Hip Hop/Rap Artist and Song of the Year (plus seven other trophies) for “Bling-Bang-Bang-Born” — catch their performance HERE. That song has reached 800 million global streams to date while “Otonoke” has racked up more than 330 million of its own. Both tracks feature on LEGION alongside the raucous single “doppelgänger” which is also the theme for the live-action film adaptation of Under Ninja.

Follow along as Creepy Nuts continue to spread their wild, boundless music across the world.

“Nemure”

About Creepy Nuts 

Creepy Nuts is a hip-hop unit consisting of R-shitei (R-rated), the first MC in J-rap history to win the country’s top MC battle competition UMB Grand Championship three times consecutively, and DJ Matsunaga, who won the world’s largest DJ competition DMC World DJ Championships in 2019 and performed at the closing ceremony of 2021 Tokyo Olympics. While they both have such impressive titles under their belts, both members of Creepy Nuts are known in their home country for their laid-back personalities and talk skills, making them popular staples in TV variety shows. They have also been regular hosts on the historic All Night Nippon radio program for five years, and many people probably recognize them as radio stars as well. Music-wise, their mini-album To Us Former Prodigies, released August 2020, reached No. 2 on the Billboard Japan Hot Albums chart. Also, their track “Nobishiro” from the album Case became their first song to surpass 100 million streams (as of Dec. 1, 2022), and “Daten” — the opener for the anime Yofukashi no Uta (Call of the Night), which is based on the duo’s song of the same title — released in 2022, reached No. 35 on the Japan Hot 100, the highest position for them at the time. On their tour promoting the album Ensemble Play that includes this track, they sold out the Saitama Super Arena near Tokyo, the largest capacity venue in their career up to that point. Then, “Bling-Bang-Bang-Born” shot to No. 5 on the Japan Hot 100 on the chart dated Jan. 24, 2024, the week after it debuted No. 27, which was already higher than the duo’s record for “Daten.” The following week, “Bling-Bang-Bang-Born” became Creepy Nuts’ first-ever No. 1 hit. This track is gaining more traction outside of Japan. Featured as the Season 2 opener for the anime series Mashle, the comical dance by the protagonist Mash set to the refrain of the song’s title attracted attention on TikTok. The song was downloaded and streamed on a global scale before it reached Japanese audiences. “Bling-Bang-Bang-Born” racked up over 100 million streams globally in just a month after its release, topped the iTunes hip-hop charts in over 30 countries, and climbed to #2 on Apple Music’s Global Chart. The duo’s breakthrough didn’t stop there, their song “Otonoke,” has also succeeded on Billboard’s World Digital Song Sales chart, reaching No. 1 five times (on the charts dated Oct. 19, Nov. 2, Nov. 16, Nov. 23 and Dec. 14).