The sped-up sample on the Trunk Boiz classic "Cupcake No Fillin" remains unknown, so for a new version of the song, Oakland's Seiji Oda sang it himself. (Sydney Welch)
While filming the video for his update of the classic Bay Area love song “Cupcake No Fillin,” rapper, singer and producer Seiji Oda stood in East Oakland’s Dimond Park, wearing a white T-shirt of a pink cupcake crossed out.
The creators of the original anti-cupcaking anthem, B*Janky and F.A. Tha Jefe of the Trunk Boiz, stood nearby, surrounded by over two dozen people — musicians, dancers and community members. Some held cupcakes, others held scraper bikes; all of them chanted the song’s hook: Cupcake no fillin’ / I ain’t got time, ’cause I got a lot of women.
Seiji Oda took out his phone and started recording.
“I wanted to capture that energy,” he says during a recent phone call. He then added that audio to “no fillins²,” a standout track from his latest album, Human + Nature.
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Oakland’s Seiji Oda burst into national consciousness last year with his lo-fi hit “a gentle gigg,” which tamed the chaos of hyphy in favor of centered, Zen-like atmospherics. Fans dubbed it “therapeutic thizzing”; on its viral journey, it was reposted widely, including by SZA.
For his follow-up, the 27-year-old of Japanese-Irish-Panamanian descent coalesced the sounds of Japanese babbling brooks and warbler birds, as well as Brazilian baile funk and Bay Area blap. Human + Nature has pop rifts and 808 kicks, a smattering of top-tier Bay Area features and philosophical bars about love. There’s his grandmother’s piano, tranquil harmonizing and player lines like “Good hygiene / baby I stay flossing.”
And most of it started with voice notes. His field recordings of birdsong or the ocean would serve as a starting point for a song. “And then,” he says, “I’d kind of see where that takes me.”
The ‘gentle gigg’ general himself, Seiji Oda (A’s hat, center) among people gathered at Dimond Park for the video shoot of ‘no fillins².’ (Kenny Ko)
On the song “a leaf is a lung,” he recorded the sound of waves crashing, matched the soundscape with chords played on a keyboard and then imagined what sort of lyrics he’d spit if he were in that environment.
“It just made me feel kind of tropical,” he says, “so I sang.”
Seiji Oda laid down lead and background vocals, then sampled himself and sang over it again. He then added some “mobby drums,” providing the combination of aggressive bass-heavy percussion and airy-melodic vocals that’s a staple in his music, he calls it “ethereal blap.”
His love for hard-hitting drums is evident in the lead single “peaceful³,” featuring Vallejo’s LaRussell. On Human + Nature, Seiji Oda changes up the drums on the second verse to sound like Mac Dre’s “Boss Tycoon,” underscoring LaRussell’s Furly Ghost-like flow.
Seiji Oda refers to “peaceful³” as the heartbeat of the album, a song that segues seamlessly into the following track “Bossa Nova,” which illustrates his influences beyond the Bay.
“I’ve been listening to so much baile funk,” says Seiji Oda, discussing the track he co-produced with Kiron KP and Quinn Carroll. Steeped in the Brazilian martial art of Capoeira since a kid, Seiji Oda notes that “Brazilian music– baile funk and bossa nova– they’re all kind of intertwined. So, I’ve been super inspired by that music lately.”
Dancer and social media influencer Junebug pulled up to Seiji Oda’s ‘no fillins²’ video shoot in a huge Hyphy 101 t-shirt. (Sydney Welch)
On “green tea,” featuring Union City’s Kiyomi, a seemingly normal pop song packs a punch as the duo floats over their shared love of Bay Area bass. While making “ahead of myself” with Sacramento’s Nate Curry, Seiji Oda was inspired by his guest’s alien-like way of freely layering harmonies on a track.
Then there’s “MOBBY MIYAZAKI,” with San Francisco’s Young Bari, in which Seiji Oda pulls from another Bay Area classic — Young Bari’s “So Mobby” — and pairs it with a flip of Joe Hisaishi’s music from Studio Ghibli films directed by legendary Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki.
Seiji Oda even returned to his grandmother’s house in Japan for a spark of creativity. Her voice is layered into the mix of the minute-long interlude “yaki yasai (obaachan’s piano),” recorded while she was cooking. “I just wanted to capture that moment,” he says, “it just felt really intimate.”
And on “BEMYLIGHT” with Berkeley’s Rexx Life Raj, he brings back the blap based on a voice memo of an uguisu bird, also known as a Japanese bush warbler.
Vallejo’s 9-year-old rising rap star Ave Rose Haro makes a cameo in Seiji Oda’s music video, filmed at Dimond Park in East Oakland. (Sydney Welch)
In fact, Seiji Oda sometimes starts recording a voice memo as soon as he wakes up. “I call it ‘meditation on the mic,'” he says, sometimes taking 20 or 30 minutes of his day to document his waking thoughts. On “time is a spiral, i think,” Seiji Oda convenes two different morning meditations into one philosophical track.
“My overarching goal with music,” says Seiji Oda, “is to bring myself more peace, and then to share that with people.”
By documenting the sounds of the natural world, adding some drums and sharing it with the people, he’s achieving his goal — one ethereal blap at a time.
