The first MADz’s recording session takes place in an apartment in Nagasaki, with a headset mic borrowed from a GTA setup, egg cartons stuck to the wall as a makeshift booth, and free software. Kohjiya is about twelve. He already knows he wants to do this seriously. Kohjiya was born in 2002 in Kōjiyamachi, a district of Nagasaki that gave him his stage name. He grew up with SHIÓLA and AURAL, his two closest friends since elementary school. SHIÓLA had been taking hip-hop dance classes since age six and opened their ears early. He and Kohjiya ended up on the same soccer team as AURAL. It was BAZOOKA!!! High School RAP Championship and Freestyle Dungeon on YouTube that made them want to rap themselves, not as some distant fantasy but as something people their own age were actually doing.
They started producing with GarageBand and Audacity on a borrowed computer. For the mic, SHIÓLA explains that their first recordings used the GTA headset Kohjiya had lying around. Then came the SHURE SM58, bought with a mix of Christmas money and a cheap audio interface. Egg cartons collected from the local chawanmushi shop served as soundproofing. MADz’s started selling CD-Rs for 500 yen at daytime events in local clubs. A hundred and fifty copies moved. Hip-hop fans a generation older encouraged them by buying. Kohjiya understood it was working. All three of them bought Roland SP-404 MK II units with money from day labor moving jobs. Their school banned part-time work, so they passed themselves off as high schoolers. The model they looked up to was Fla$hBackS, a crew where everyone both rapped and produced. It was a conscious decision, made at an age when most kids were still figuring out what to do on weekends.
KEIJU in the crowd, CD-R in hand
The story that says the most about Kohjiya happens at a concert in Nagasaki, when KEIJU was still performing under the name YOUNG JUJU. Kohjiya is in the audience, a teenager. After the set, he walks up and holds out the CD-R MADz had just pressed. He is stiff with nerves. KEIJU responds carefully and says thank you. Kohjiya still remembers it because that moment could just as easily not have happened at all. It was KORK, an older figure from Nagasaki, who went on to found the label ISLAND STATE, who later passed Kohjiya’s demos to IO and KEIJU. The connection was made. In 2021, the collab with ¥ellow Bucks drew attention. In 2023, Kohjiya co-wrote tracks for KEIJU’s EP Speed Tape, which topped Apple Music Japan’s overall chart. He appeared on albums by IO and Shurkn Pap. These people trusted him as a writer, not just as a featured voice.
In the studio in Yokohama, Kohjiya told FNMNL in January 2025 that the opening track of KJ SEASON 2, “Phantom,” was written four years earlier. He wrote it before leaving Nagasaki for Tokyo, imagining what it would feel like to be known. He pictured a future in which strangers would read interviews about him and form a fixed idea of who he was. He already found that uncomfortable. It’s the oldest song on the album, and the one that best captures his style: deconstructed flow, slightly off-beat, somewhere between rapping and singing, with autotune used as an instrument rather than a crutch. He says he found that style by doing it, not by deciding on it. He writes every day because stopping for two weeks costs him something. Not the ability, but the momentum. A muscle, he says.
2024: RAPSTAR, BIM x PUNPEE, Music Station
2024 is the year everything accelerates. He wins RAPSTAR 2024 on ABEMA. Shortly after, he appears on BIM’s “DNA” with PUNPEE. He’s the one singing the hook, not PUNPEE, which surprises everyone, including Kohjiya himself. The track started from a rough demo sent from the Ōkurasan studio, a hummed melody turned into a chorus, then shaped over drinks at BIM’s place with all three of them in the room. POP YOURS and THE HOPE both feature him as a guest throughout the festival season. That same year, he collaborated with SALU on “247” after SALU sent him an unprompted DM: “yooo let’s cook classic“. The session also produced “BRIGHT TIMES“, released under SALU’s name.
In 2025, STUTS’ “99 Steps“, featuring Kohjiya and Hana Hope, runs as a commercial for POCARI SWEAT, then gets him on Music Station. He records a FIRST TAKE session. Mid-2025 brings the album TIMELESS, which locks in the progression. In July 2026, “Ma Boyz (Remix)” arrives with MIKADO and G-k.i.d. At nineteen, his mother tells him his grandfather is Korean. He says he might have been told as a child and just doesn’t remember. That realization shows up in “Evil Twin”: “a Japanese person with different roots.” Not a crisis, just something to put into words. He told FNMNL that in his mind, a rapper is someone who puts in the effort to be cool. He’s still at it.
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