May J.

May J. was born on June 20, 1988 in Yokohama. She has roots in Japan, Iran, Turkey, Russia and Spain. Since early childhood she dreamed of becoming a star. To make her dream come true, she took up piano, dance and ballet classes, as well as vocal training. At the age of 14 she won a contest organized by Sony Music and signed to this label soon after. However, after that she didn’t perform for a couple of years as she decided to finish school.

May J. debuted with her mini-album All My Girls on July 12th, 2006. Over the course of several years, she regularly released singles and albums but didn’t get much attention despite the fact that she was called the “Japanese Beyonce” by label promoters. In October 2008, the young singer became a host of NHK’s all-English Japanese music show “J-MELO,” which is broadcasted in more than 180 countries.

March 2009 saw a change of labels - May J. signed to Avex. It instantly influenced her success: her second full-length album Family hit fourth place on the Oricon charts. Throughout the year, she collaborated with various R&B and pop artists, among them Koda Kumi, Every Little Thing, Otsuka Ai, m-flo, mihimaru GT, BENI, moumoon and many others. In the first half of 2010 May J. set off on her first one-man promotional tour for her third album, May J. Tour 2010〜LIVE for you〜, and played in 40 cities across the country; the final show was held at Shibuya AX.

In 2011 May J. kept busy. She released another full-length album, Colors, participated on the best collaboration album "With -Best Collaboration Non-Stop DJ mix-" mixed by DJ WATARAI, participated in the fashion show Tokyo Girls Collection and recorded several new tracks featuring R&B stars.