Emi Maria

Emi Maria (stylized as EMI MARIA; born 9 June 1987) is a Japanese and Papua New Guinean R&B singer-songwriter who debuted in 2007 with the EP Between the Music. Emi Maria was born in 1987 in Papua New Guinea. Her mother is Japanese, while her father is Papua New Guinean. She spent the first five years of her life in Papua New Guinea, before moving to Kobe in Japan. She first started listening to R&B at 6 due to her sister, listening to such artists as Janet and Michael Jackson, and K-Ci & JoJo. She began writing lyrics in junior high school. By high school, she had started writing music and producing her own tracks. She participated in the MTV Star Tour, and started performing lives in the Kansai area from 2006 onwards. In 2007, she started appearing on many different Japanese urban artists' albums as a guest artist, such as Seeda and MC Moggy. In 2007, Emi Maria released her first EP, Between the Music on Freest Inc., a label she had created for herself.