Review: Keyco - Seven
Over the past six years, Tokyo born Keyco has carved out her own niche in Japan’s urban scene. Using her influences from hip hop and R&B, she gained praise from many female fans. She’s appeared on countless numbers of songs with artists such as Loop Junktion, IQ, and Kick The Can Crew’s Little.
Her fourth album, SEVEN, released in June of last year, (2004) drew from the same influences that got her an audience in 1999 with a little bit of jazz flavor and 70’s soul added in to the mix. The final product is a commendable mix of jazz, R&B, and hip hop.
The album opens up with and instrumental, chit a chit, produced by emcee LIBRO. It’s a shorter version of reborn which appears later on in the album. It’s an interesting mix of Keyco’s voice and tom toms with a piano and other assorted sounds. The track is rather refreshing and sets a good tone for the album.
The first full song on the album is High & Low, produced by LIBRO, who also appears on the song. The catchy keyboard riff and high energy mood are sure to rope you in. Keyco’s sort of raspy voice does the song justice backed by the keyboard, bass, piano and powerful drums. LIBRO’s verse adds a nice touch as well making this an excellent song to dance to.
The album keeps up its strong presence with songs like Ivory and Fuwari Fuwari, both of which lean on the R&B side. In contrast to High & Low’s powerful upbeat mood, these two similar tracks are mellow and relaxing. Both of them draw on powerful drum beats to drive the point home, but Fuwari Fuwari has a jazzier, smoother feeling to it than Ivory, which is closer to hardcore R&B thanks to the piano driven main melody. Keyco performs well on both tracks, again using her raspy voice to create a nice mood.
7th Avenue, perhaps the best song on the album, is a jazz inspired track that features rapper YOYO-C. The song will sound extremely familiar to fans of the American jazz band Soulive because it sounds almost exactly like a track they would make, which leaves me to wonder if they ghost produced it or it was lifted from them. Either way it’s an excellent track which carries the same upbeat vibe as High & Low. YOYO-C adds an excellent vibe to the song, and along with the jazz guitar riffs, piano, drums and bass 7th Avenue could carry the album single handedly.
The album does have some shortcomings. Songs that are too similar seem to end up grouped together and they can be easily forgotten. If it weren’t for the arrangements of Ivory and Fuwari Fuwari, they could have easily been looked over without giving them a second thought.
Other songs are just mediocre and are too easily forgotten. Tsuki to Taiyou (Moon and Sun) is one of these. It follows High & Low and sort of kills the euphoric buzz create by the song. The 70’s soul influenced track is ok at best, and kind of seems to get lost in the album.
Ano Hoshi no Dareka no Uta (The Star of Somebody’s Song) suffers the same fate as Ivory and Fuwari Fuwari. Even though it’s nowhere near the other two songs it carries almost exactly the same R&B feel. It’s an ok song, but what makes it worse is that there’s really nothing that stands out about it, so it blends in with the rest of the album.
On the whole the album is rather enjoyable, but it can sound generic at times. Some of the R&B beats fall by the wayside, and one of the two soul tracks seems to get lost in the shuffle. Still, I’d recommend this album to anyone who wants to see a more relaxed side of Japanese music. A definite buy.
Released: 6/16/2004 
