Elly Japanese Dancer and Rapper Born 1987 in Misawa

Early life

Elly was born Koya Rosado Elliott on 21 September 1987 in Misawa, in Aomori Prefecture, Japan. His mother is Japanese and his father is African American. Misawa is home to an American military base, and he has described growing up in a town shaped by American culture. Friends in junior high school shortened his surname to "Elly", and he kept it as his stage name.

Music came early. While still in elementary school he bought DJ equipment with his pocket money and picked up the craft from a local record shop manager, and he began rapping in junior high. Baseball was his main sport: he was the catcher and cleanup hitter of his high school team, whose run at the regional summer tournament ended in the quarter-finals. He started dancing in high school after watching the film You Got Served, copying its routines with his brother. He then entered the Tokyo University of Agriculture on a baseball scholarship. In Tokyo he saw the dance team BASE HEADS perform at a club in Shibuya and decided to become a dancer, so in his second year he left both the university and baseball.

Career

In 2007 Elly formed the hip-hop dance crew THE TEAM, which marked the start of his professional dance work. He performed in clubs and at events and appeared as a backup dancer in music videos. In March 2010 he was spotted by EXPG Studio, the talent school run by LDH, and invited to dance as a guest in the Gekidan Exile play NIGHT BALLET. He joined the Gekidan Exile acting group that April.

On 19 July 2010 LDH announced the revival of Sandaime J Soul Brothers, and Elly was chosen as the first performer in the new group. The group's debut single, "Best Friend's Girl", came out on 10 November 2010 and entered the Oricon Singles Chart at number three. He left Gekidan Exile in July 2011. In August 2012 the group released "0 Zero", whose included track "Hanabi" became its first single to sell more than 100,000 copies. Elly choreographed "Hanabi", the first time he did so for the group, and the group appeared on NHK's Kohaku Uta Gassen for the first time at the end of that year.

The year 2014 was a turning point. He made his acting debut in the film Crows Explode, released on 12 April, and made his first appearance as a rapper on Exile Shokichi's song "THE ANTHEM", released on 4 June. On 25 June the group released "R.Y.U.S.E.I.", which reached number one on the Oricon chart and won the Japan Record Award. His choreography for it, including a "running man" move in the chorus, became widely imitated. His first leading film role came in Trash, released on 24 October 2015. From 2016 he played ICE, the leader of the MIGHTY WARRIORS, in the High&Low franchise, and he appeared in High&Low The Movie (2016) as well as in follow-up films and shows.

From 2016 he also performed as a rapper under the name CRAZYBOY, later written CrazyBoy. His first mini-album, NEOTOKYO EP, was released on 24 February 2017 and led the weekly download rankings of four major services in Japan. Three more mini-albums followed, along with the compilation NEOTOKYO FOREVER on 4 July 2018 and a solo tour in July 2018. He took part in international collaborations, including "BOW DOWN" with Snoop Dogg, PKCZ and Yultron. In July 2019 he played in Los Angeles for the first time, at OTAQUEST LIVE, and moved his solo work from the Rhythm Zone label to LDH MUSIC. In December 2020 he and Exile Shokichi were named ambassadors of the dance league D.LEAGUE.

Public roles

In April 2017 Elly was appointed tourism ambassador of his hometown, Misawa. He also became an enthusiastic player of the video game Fortnite from around 2018, streamed his play on YouTube from 2019, and took part in several celebrity esports events. He donated the prize money he earned at two of them to relief efforts.