Rock-rap group ZZ formed in the industrial city of Fuji, about 100-km west of Tokyo in 1998, soon relocating to the much larger Shizuoka where they built up a local following playing at the city's clubs. Within two years the band were playing at venues in Tokyo's Shimokitazawa district, an area that is a Mecca for underground bands, sharing the bill with the popular rap-metal act RIZE.
After independently releasing a mini-album and single in 2000, their career gained momentum when Japan's biggest monthly rock magazine, ROCKIN' ON, glowingly reviewed their second single, Brightest, in early 2001. Its follow-up, Himawari (Sunflower), went up to top 75 in the USEN charts (a request chart) and was picked up by one of Tokyo's major commercial radio stations, BayFM. That same year, the station would go on to grant the group their own regular program titled Na Na Na Now Young, but not before they had released their debut album, Absolute Beat Complex.
In 2003, ZZ made the step up to the large independent label Avex Entertainment for the release of their single Rhythmist, which is the band's biggest hit to date, reaching top 10 in the USEN charts. The single was just a taste of what to expect from their album Definitive Energy Flow, which the group supported by going on their first nationwide tour. Having had a couple of songs featured as opening/ending songs on Japanese television programs, the group scored a minor coup when their tune A to Z was chosen as the ending song to the anime series "ONE PIECE," which like many popular anime, has been adapted into English, Chinese and Korean. Appropriately, ZZ played their first live shows in South Korea in 2004. It was not the first time they performed abroad; Two years earlier they had played to 8,000 people at a music festival in Dalian, China.
For their 2004 single, Just Only One, ZZ collaborated with Kaori Ueda, aka DJ KAORI, a hip-hop DJ who has played at parties for artists like P. Diddy. The track was featured on their second album for Avex 2005's Generation Hip Innocence. Following its release, the band performed their first shows in the USA, capitalizing on their anime associations by playing at the anime conventions FanimeCon in San Jose and Dallas' A-Kon, one of the three largest such conventions in the USA.
Not even an association with the Japan national team's ill-fated 2006 World Cup campaign—having recorded the supporters' song SAMURAI BLUE (replete with terrace-friendly "oh oh" chants and cries of "Nippon! Nippon!")—dimmed the group's enthusiasm. The band continued to play regular live shows through the year. In addition, online ZZ are joining an increasing number of Japanese bands by uploading their songs (in the case of ZZ, the majority of their back catalog) to the USA iTunes Music Store.
Since 2007, ZZ hasn't been active, which seems shocking considering their performance in the USA that year. However, this is a great performing band with songs that get the listener energetic and wanting more.
