A Japanese pop singer from Osaka on the avex rhythm zone label, she has been contending with Ayumi Hamasaki and Namie Amuro since the year 2000 as one of the top J-Pop singers. She first gained traction with a role in Final Fantasy X-2 as the voice actor and singing voice of Lenne, producing "real Emotion" and "1000
Words". Covering the 1970s anime theme song "
CUTIE HONEY" and releasing a special "12 Singles of
Christmas" series of singles through 2005-2006 kept the momentum going, and she became a household
name.
She is known for her husky voice, variety of genres/style of songs (cute & fun, sexy, r&b,
rap, rock, reggae, ballad), and being the "
Queen of Live" - having memorable live performances with creative theatrics. She comes from a
family of singers: her mother was a lounge singer and played the koto, and her younger sister is another J-Pop star, misono. She has been married to KENJI03 from BACK-ON since 2011, and they have one son born the following year.
Over the years she has collaborated with many artists, ranging from Fergie to Katori Shingo of SMAP to Tohoshinki / DBSK, to
T-
Pain and of course her own sister, misono.
As she surpassed her 15th anniversary, she started to go in a more western-style direction of
music with more trap and hip-hop, which has created some dissonance in the fanbase but overall, Kuu is still Kuu.
Koda Kumi'
s songs are usually catchy, even if they'
re slow ballads.
Koda Kumi speaks super fast, it's hard to keep up!
Ayumi Hamasaki gave Koda Kumi some personal gifts recently. I think it's safe to say they
don'
t hate each other.
If Koda Kumi's husky voice is so detestable, then what about Ayumi Hamasaki's high-pitched nasal whine?
