So in this interview that can be found on Shmuplations here, Naofumi Hataya says: “For Sonic CD’s opening and ending themes, Sega enlisted the help of music production company Being, who were at the time the biggest name in the music industry (it’s the same company that B’z and other major artists are attached to). With Being’s help, we got Keiko Utoku to do the vocals. For the lyrics, we were able to call on Casey Rankin from the rock band SHOGUN. Casey was a good-natured guy, I remember how much I really liked him. For the recording, he brought these two black guys who were friends of his.” Upon reading this, I had assumed that he was referring to the performers of the rap vocals on Sonic- You Can Do Anything and Cosmic Eternity- Believe In Yourself, however, upon doing research into some of Casey Rankin’s music, I thought those vocals were actually just his. I just assumed these people Hataya mentioned maybe did backup vocals and didn’t really think about it for a while. That is until recently, when after releasing my Sonic Mysteries Iceberg video, I realized I had forgotten to include this. Thinking more about it is when I realized maybe he was actually referring to the non-sampled vocals on Stardust Speedway, Metallic Madness, and the Boss theme. So I decided to do my own research into it, and from looking through Casey Rankin’s work, I came across credits for his 1988 project Miyabi Project, which was the only Casey Rankin or SHOGUN project I could find extensive, detailed credits for. This record contains the track Yosaku- Let’s Go Crazy, which included rap vocals from someone named James Norwood. Upon looking him up, I found out not only has he worked with Casey Rankin, he has also done work for other video games, fairly well known ones too, including being the narrator for Bust A Groove for the PlayStation and performing the remix of the DK Rap from Super Smash Bros. Melee. After listening to all 3 of these recordings, I could safely assume that he WAS another vocalist for the opening and closing themes of Sonic CD and may have been part of the chant in Stardust Speedway. Through further digging, I found his Instagram. I DM’d him asking if he had recalled working on the game, and he thanked me for recognizing his work and confirmed that he did. I then proceeded to ask him if he remembered any other vocalists besides himself and the 2 we know of (Rankin and Utoku) working on the soundtrack. He then left me on seen. I tried to search further and tried to also ask other people connected to him or Rankin if they possibly knew, but even when they responded, my questions yielded no answers. After this, I found there actually was at least one place on the internet that credited James Norwood (though I honestly wouldn’t have been able to find this before I found out about him from my own research). That being Giant Bomb’s credits for Sonic CD. However, no other uncredited vocalists are mentioned, and he goes uncredited everywhere else, including Sega Retro and his contribution to the games’ soundtrack have gone largely unrecognized. The other vocalists have still gone uncredited and are completely unknown. Not only that, I think there were more uncredited vocalists who contributed to the soundtrack than the 2 Hataya alluded to. The Metallic Madness rap vocals sound nothing like James Norwood, and neither do the vocals for the “poem” read during the Boss theme (though I can't really tell, given how everything else in the song overpowers the vocals), leading me to believe at least 2 more people contributed uncredited vocals to the soundtrack. There’s also that female vocal on Stardust Speedway that doesn’t seem to be a sample, and sounds like it was recorded specifically for the song. I’m shocked there isn’t more interest out there in this subject. The reason I decided to post this here is because I hoped I could find some like minded people would be willing to help with the search. I wanted to make a video on it, but I’ve decided not to out of fear of people going and harassing anyone, and I’m not sure if I trust that people won’t do that even if I tell them not to, so I hope posting this here puts more eyes on the search while still keeping it on the low.
Whoooaa now that I think about it, the vocals in CD and Melee's DK Rap do sound astoundingly similar. It's totally the same guy. Getting confirmation they're really the same person is huge to me. Great work.
Not sure if this helps you, or if this is was unknown to others reading this thread, but I have seen some videos on YouTube where the person discusses the origin of samples used in various Sonic games, and does a comparison of the sample they found to what was used in the game. There are a few creators who are doing this, but here is one I pulled-up quickly on YouTube. It's possible some of the vocalist you are trying to track down were vocalists used in a sample pack? (Just tossing out a suggestion.) My personal favorite was the origin of "hit record" sample used in Sonic Rush, which someone successfully tracked down to an old radio ad for the Barracuda vehicle.
I think it's still bonkers that Malcom X was sampled for Wrapped in Black LMAO, but yeah, additionally not only are there are a lot of sample CDs out there back in the day, but if they were anything like Naganuma, they could've also taken audio from unorthodox sources and cleared them. That's the thing too - all of these Sonic CD tracks got re-released with the vocals intact (the Original Soundtrack 20th Anniversary Edition), which at least implies that there were no problems legally with anything used in the songs (or, rather, the master recordings - we still have not had a remix of You Can Do Anything that uses the vocals). Something that we've used for archival purposes for Pendulum & Knife Party tracks in another community I'm in is a royalties database - and everything is credited there for obvious reasons. I wonder if there's a JP version of this, or if there are US royalties that get paid out?
Trust me, I've searched deep for this over the years. Most songs before Sonic Adventure aren't properly registered on JASRAC, and even those that are, JASRAC doesn't admin video game rights for SEGA/WAVE MASTER - take in consideration that copyright is handled completely differently in Japan, video game songs usually weren't treated as real songs, thus composers and trackers alike were paid through their salaries only.
Martin Luther King is too centrist for Sonic. He supports Black Power and doesn't give a fuck. Slay King.
Great topic. I don't have much to add directly, except that some years ago I contacted Hataya and he was very responsive and polite (I had a friend translate everything to make it easy for him). He is (was?) very active on Twitter and interacts with followers all the time. He seems quite proud of the work he did in Sonic CD and is very open to discussing it. You could try asking him on there.
I posted this before. For the Boss Theme - I believe this was Steve (Ray) Burton, he was an international product consultant/translator for Sega and lived in Japan at the time. He also provided voices for Metal Head on the 32x. This was confirmed by Mazin several years ago. Steve was special thank'd for Sonic CD.
Ha, this is cool. Yeah, maybe the musicians wanted to be uncredited at the time, but that would be a bit unconventional. I was listening to the JP soundtrack for the first time in ages tonight, shit is still awesome
Thank you all for responding! With all of the help you've given me, I'm definitely more confident in releasing a video on this and hopefully bringing more attention to these mysteries. Hopefully I can get it out a little after the middle of May!
