SoulJa’s Koko ni iru yo with Aoyama Thelma has been topping the Oricon charts for almost a month now and has shown up everywhere from commericials to music shows, but will SoulJa be forever remembered as a one-hit wonder or will he become an overnight Hip-Hop superstar?

The singer, songwriter, and rapper known as SoulJa has little to give in experience on the mainstream music scene. He is an extremely new artist under Universal’s Nayutawave Records label, along with big names in the J-Urban community like Dohzi-T and ET-King, as well as J-Pop stars Mihimaru GT, TOKIO, and Spits. He’s so new that information on him, even on Japanese websites, is hard to find. His official website, http://www.soulja.jp, does have limited information about the artist. It is known that his mother is from Belgium, which explains his strikingly non-Japanese facial features, and that he is 24 years old, just recently celebrating his birthday six days ago (11/01).

Spirits, SoulJa’s first major debut album, due out today (11/07), has large shoes to fill for Japanese Hip-Hop fans. It’s not very often a brand new Hip-Hop artist breaks the top 10 Oricon single charts the way that SoulJa did with Koko ni Iru yo. Few male Hip-Hop artists have accomplished the feat this year, but doing so puts SoulJa in league with the likes of Kreva and Seamo. Such high expectations for an artist who, aside from an almost unknown mini-album in 2005, lacks any kind of history in the business, could be fatal for an up-and-coming star. His official website has already accumulated over 200,000 hits since the release of Koko ni Iru yo in mid-september. This multi-talented artist seems to be relying on his own for Spirits, because, aside from Aoyama Thelma, his album has no collaborations, which is a daring move for a brand new Hip-Hop act. Despite this, SoulJa represents both R&B and Hip-Hop equally on Spirits, with tracks like Rain and A Song for You to please fans of his latest single, and hardcore Hip-Hop tracks like Dogg Pound and First Contact to show off his mic skills.

There are many questions that surround this brand new artist and his major debut album. Will SoulJa’s Spirits live up to fan’s expectations? Will his R&B and Hip-Hop hybrid style continue to top the charts? Why is the J in his name capitalized? Will he crank that Soulja Boy? Let’s hope all those questions and more are answered after his debut and that this promising star doesn’t get swallowed up in the current that is Japanese mainstream music. What do you think will happen to the engima that is known as SoulJa and what do you think of Spirits?

Sources
HMV
Soulja
Wikipedia

WidgetBucks - Trend Watch - WidgetBucks.com