YOSHIKA

YOSHIKA was born in 1983 in Yokohama. When she was eleven-years-old, she moved to Canada for a year and a half, and then once again when she was seventeen she moved to the USA for two and a half years. She went to high school in California and while she was there she became interested in soul, R&B, and hip-hop. She admired artists such as Missy Elliott and TLC; this admiration caused her wish to make music herself. When she went back to Japan in 2002, she started singing songs for different commercials; for example a cover of Al Kooper's song Jolie for a Sony-campaign which ran from 2002 till 2003. When she signed to the indie label RED ALERT RECORDS in 2003, YOSHIKA's first single release was this cover song.

After JOLIE's success she released her first album STRAIGHT AHEAD in November 2003. The CD featured eight, mainly English tracks. YOSHIKA had written and composed all of the tracks, except for the cover song, and had even arranged the choruses of each song. Critics labeled the album as "a high-quality, western style R&B album." STRAIGHT AHEAD lived up to it's name, after the popular duo m-flo listened to it by chance and invited YOSHIKA to sing on their next album, the singer went straight ahead indeed, straight ahead to success! When BEAT SPACE NINE was released in August 2005, it featured three tracks with YOSHIKA: The fancy pop tune Loop In My Heart (Next to her colleague EMYLI), tO yOUR bEAT, and an atmospheric ballad called let go. Loop In My Heart and let go were also released as singles before the whole album appeared, and especially let go was a huge success, it had an extremely long chart run with a total of 31 weeks. Fortunately, this release provided YOSHIKA the audience's attention and a contract with the major label ATLANTIC JAPAN.

Her first major single Call me, written by BONNIE PINK, tied in with let go's success. After YOSHIKA's summer tour with m-flo ended, she released her second single, Just Us. Despite Just Us being used for the Nikon Coolpix camera ad's CM song, it did not do as well as Call Me had done on the charts. In defiance of this reversal YOSHIKA didn't give up and released her first major album timeless in January 2006. This album showed YOSHIKA's talents once again and had adequate achievement. Her future looked bright, it was announced that YOSHIKA would release her fourth single, Touch, in July 2006. However, the single was canceled due to the singer's pregnancy. In December 2006, Yoshika gave birth to a baby girl.

YOSHIKA took a break for two years. When she appeared on stage at a huge m-flo concert in Yokohama, her fans already guessed that she would try a comeback soon. However, YOSHIKA took her time, though she was featured on m-flo's best-of album Award SuperNova -LOVES BEST- with the collaboration song love comes and goes. This song also featured artists such as Emi Hinouchi, Ryohei Yamamoto, EMYLI, and LISA in February 2008; her fans had to be patient. In April her management announced a new release, the single supreme sound recreation will be released under the name tabiuta meets YOSHIKA on May 8th.

Hopefully YOSHIKA will be able to gain ground in the music business again and remain true to herself and her own style.