PHILADELPHIA TRIBUNE
May 24, 1996
Japanese Pop Star Tries Hand At Soul
By Charles Reeves
Music is the universal language. No matter what their cultural
background, audiences love good
music.
Toshi, known to his fans in the Far East as Toshinobu Kubota,
is making his American debut with
his contemporary R&B album, Sunshine Moonlight.
The Japanese native, who produced the album and wrote 10 of its
11 tracks, proves himself
equally adept at laying down infectious grooves and pouring out
smooth ballads.
"I need to do both, I think we all do." he said. "There are
times when I feel like I really have to let
loose, get very aggressive, and when that time is done, I can
balance it with quieter times. All of
this is on Sunshine, Moonlight."
Although Toshi has been a fixture on the Japanese charts for
the better part of a decade, this is his
first album sung entirely in English. After having started his
career in the music business as a
songwriter, Toshi took just a year to parlay that talent into a
recording contract of his own.
His Japanese debut album, Shake It Paradise, went platinum.
selling over one million copies in
Japan. He went on to record three more albums that went
platinum as well.
"I wanted to wait to come to America until I thought I could do
it properly." he said. "I wanted to
learn English well enough that I could write songs that
wouldn't seem like they're just translated
from Japanese. Sometimes they are, since I think in Japanese,
but I want to make an album in a
way that people would think of me as a singer first."
In 1990, Toshi took a trip to explore the roots of
African-American music. He traveled to New
Orleans, Brazil, and Africa. Toshi explained his feelings about
the experience.
"I learned the history of the people as well as the music.
which helped me understand even more. I
learned why the music sounds the way it does... the spiritual
parts. Traveling around was good
for me as an artist because staying just in Japan would have
just been too cozy. It's good for your
creativity to have different inputs all the time."
Sunshine, Moonlight was recorded in New York with the help of
producers Nile Rogers. Victory
and Dwayne Wiggins (Tony Tone Toni). The result is a diverse
album with cover songs such as
"Just the Two of Us," the upbeat "Funk It Up." and "Jam With
Me." and ballads like "My Love."