“It’s just a whole different marketplace,” he shrugs about his home country, waving at a future attempt to break through there.įor now, he doesn’t need to worry. It’s certainly not the norm for popular music coming out of Japan, where bright, bubbly J-pop dominates, although Joji has supporters across other parts of Asia and has become a favorite for in-the-know U.S. “It’s an ‘everyone’s going through a tough time’ sort of a vibe,'” Joji says of his music. She don’t care if I die.” The delicate chords, underlined by warm, heartbeat percussion, are offset by the nihilism of the lyrics. “I know I’m cryptic, and I’m worthless… I don’t wanna die so young, got so much to do.” Or there’s the elegiac “Yeah Right.” “I’ma f–k up my life,” he sings, ever so sweetly. Then the static and reverb kick in, turning his voice into a resonant undercurrent. On album opener “Attention,” for instance, Joji leans into his lullaby-like tendencies: “When you cry, you waste your time over boys you never liked,” he complains, almost mumbling. With their support in place, Joji set about making - and releasing - the kind of music that he wanted to create: idiosyncratic, complex songs that speak to listeners mired in end-times malaise.
He linked up with 88rising, a music collective and record label that supports artists of Asian descent a new documentary tracks how Joji’s label mates like Indonesia-born Rich Brian and China’s Higher Brothers are challenging norms around Asian-originated music, including putting on a dedicated summer music festival. (Since then, dance challenge videos have become an online norm.)īut in 2017 Joji retired from his YouTube career, having grown out of the style of the content and needing to address “pretty gnarly” medical issues he was dealing with, as he describes it. In 2013, dressed in a pink lycra bodysuit, he helped launch the shockingly viral “Harlem Shake” dance trend that would rile up the internet. He was always making music, but his YouTube channel’s success came first, in which he created a comedy universe with its own devoted Wiki for inside jokes.
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