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| Meisa Kuroki Hellcat Centerspread |
It seems like it’s a given that if you’re a Musician, you’ll be expected to star in dramas and movies, contrarily, if you’re an actress (or actor), you’re going to eventually be releasing a CD album or two. These releases are usually met with curiosity and general acceptance, though few of them really break out BIG.
Kyoko Fukada, Aya Ueto, Yu Yamada, these are just a few of the famous tarento who’ve gone on to release pop tunes of their own, so when I first heard that sultry actress Meisa Kuroki was giving singing a shot, I didn’t bat an eyelash, and was in fact quite keen on giving a listen to anything the luscious “Cool Beauty” had to offer!
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| Meisa Kuroki HELLCAT CD |
The very first recording Meisa released was an EP called “Hellcat” that featured a decidedly different Meisa from the sleek, demure, silky haired actress I’d come to know- here on the cover, she was done and trussed up like a New York Times Christmas Tree, befitting her new feline “rock” persona. But how did the actual music tracks stand up?
Well, I held hope that it would sound OK, little did I know that this album would BLOW ME AWAY and become one of my FAVORITE CDs of the year, certainly one of the most played discs in my car, with its ultra-catchy pseudo-rap music phrasing, saturated production and super phat low-end bass beats! Blasting the CD in my car, the bass end was so loud my car speakers would rattle and my friend was heard to yell, “I Feel Like I’m in a LOW RIDER CAR!” LOL!
Opening with the spacey-trancey track “Hear the Alarm?”, one is immediately amazed by the album’s awesome recording- presented with clear, crisp keyboard notes and Meisa’s airy vocals building up to the thunderous Bass kick…Holy CRAP what a way to start the thing! And as she sang “Angel In my Mind / Devil in My Mind” you knew this wasn’t the Meisa you thought you knew!
Then onto what I consider the albums’ centerpiece and MASTERpiece, the VERY Hip-Hoppish “Like This” which featured the EXTREMELY catchy (and aforementioned) tagline Bounce Bounce, So Do You Like This?, to which I give a resounding YES! I’ve even played this for friends and all of them seem to agree that this one really rocks! Oh, and the video’s great, too:
This next song of hers, a pretty straightforward rocker (except with amazing bass notes booming in the backdrop) called "Bad Girl!", instantly reminded me of the kind of kick-butt tunes that sexy singer Nana Tanimura would put out, with the synthesizers pulsing out chords as Meisa rattles off the lyrics at a machine-gun pace-FACE TO FACE! And if that wasn't enough, the official PV for the song was HOTTER THAN HELL, with Meisa alternately gyrating in a skimpy white dress go-go dancer style and slithering around in bed wearing the sexiest red negligee you ever feasted your eyes on! Sadly, this naughty version wasn't available on youtube, so all we've got is the music track:
Track Three is one of the first songs I really took to when I first began spinning this disc in my car, though at the time I had no idea what she was singing about, and though I was to later find out the song was called “Criminal”, Meisa’s slightly engrisshy take on it sounded to me like she was saying “Creamy, Creamy, Creamy Now!” which really had me wondering just WHAT she was singing about, though I DID catch the “You’re gonna get arrested!” line.
“No No No” is one of those tunes that seemed less of an actual song than Meisa rappping lyrics along to the sing-songy up and down beats, a style I found quite catchy though my friend declared the song’s “Beats were all off” in his opinion! AHAHA! Yet another song whose bass notes just shook my car speakers!
Then there’s the ironic song “Sex” in which a hot ‘n’ bothered Meisa purrs “I’m Going Crazy Thinking about SEX!”, the irony of course is, no matter how slutty and glitzy they play Meisa up to be, she never seems to shake the rigid and uptight image she’s portrayed in Dramas and Movies…though it’s a terrific song, not once do you ACTUALLY think she’s interested in anything sexual AT ALL!
The next track is “Lost” which is not only Meisa’s most “normal” radio-friendly song on this CD, but was actually a pretty fair indication of where her musical direction was going to go after this EP, which was further away from Hellcat’s real “R&B sound to a more techno feel a la PERFUME.
Well, after such a rousing collection of bopping’ tunes, the album ends with a rather somber song to “wrap it up”, the synth-driven "This is Crazy", an auto-tuned drenched song that evokes a detached melancholy feel even as Meisa urges her lover to "Step It Up" and "Stop The Kidding" regarding their dysfunctional relationship. A nice capper that reminded me a bit of Yamada Yu's "Free" somehow.
The quality and catchiness of Hellcat impressed me so much that I’ve even shared the album with my friends who wouldn’t be caught dead listening to j-pop music, and even they have to admit that it’s an extremely well-produced (over-produced?) record, and one friend even ventured that “this music could be played on the English speaking radio NOW and it would be a hit!” While I’m not sure how readily the rest of the world would accept this cool-as-ice Japanese actress-turned crooner, his compliment was in the right place!
From there Meisa would of course go on to even more singles as well as her first album MAGAZINE, but though I LOVE her later songs like 5IVE, LOL and even the droning “Wired Life”, there’s nothing that can top her first outing, the absolutely superb HELLCAT!
