He returned in glory in 2000, when his third studio album, The Changing Same, sold 1.26 million copies (that year's "Rakuen" single added 500,000 more), getting him gigs at MTV Summer Summit in Taiwan and even the R&B mecca of the Apollo Theater in New York, with Hirai being the first Japanese performer to play the venue. He started big - his first two singles, "Precious Junk" and "Katahou Zutsu No Earphone" (both 1995), were used in TV dramas - but the sales of his two albums, Un-Balanced (1995) and Stare At (1996), were modest, and so Hirai proceeded with caution, dropping only two singles from 1997 to 1999. His career began in the early '90s: in 1993, Hirai, still a student, won an audition at Sony and got a deal with the label. ![]() ![]() Ken Hirai's steady, competent falsetto, good looks, and - most importantly - predilection for classic R&B and soul, which he mixes with jazz, funk, and hip-hop, made him a top-league feature on the Japanese scene and throughout East Asia, with the total amount of CDs he's sold being close to 14 million.
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