Artist Fujii Kaze shares his self-affirmational new single Workin’ Hard. Released via Universal Music LLC, Workin’ Hard is the official TV broadcast theme song of 2023 FIBA Basketball World Cup in Japan.

Ever since Shinunoga E-Wa from Fujii Kaze’s 1st album “Help Ever Hurt Never” went viral in Thailand in July 2022, the popularity of the song spread globally. Approximately one year from the phenomenon, Fujii Kaze’s new single has just arrived.

To be inspired, Fujii Kaze went to watch the game of B-League, which is a professional men's basketball league in Japan, and Japan's national team games in preparation to write this song.

Fujii Kaze stayed in Los Angeles to create a demo to reflect the excitement of basketball games and emotion of the game in the music. After returning to Japan, continued to brush up the music and went back to Los Angeles to record the song while he was preparing for the Asian tour and producing the video.

Produced by Dahi, who has worked with Drake, Kendrick Lamar, SZA, etc., mixed by Jeff Ellis, the mastering engineer was Dale Becker, and each section of the song was created by a Grammy award winning team. In addition to the completely world-class sound, the collaboration of the lyrics written by Kaze himself, which can be taken as a shout-out to the Japanese representatives, is impressive. 

On making the song and music video, Kaze shared to his fans, “This song is an anthem of love and respect to all who are living and doing their best. It is also a positive self-affirmation. And at the same time, it expresses the importance of cooperating with, and working for others. Cuz this is also the TV broadcast theme song of 2023 FIBA Basketball World Cup, and you cannot play basketball alone :) Let’s work together, do our best, and respect each other. I’m sending much love and energy with this song. I’m happy if you feel it. ♡”

Fujii Kaze is a rising singer songwriter from Japan. He started practicing classical piano when he was little after being influenced by his father. Since he was 12, Kaze uploaded piano covers of popular songs on YouTube, which eventually caught the music industry’s attention and led him to make a label deal.

In May 2020, Kaze released his first album “Help Ever Hurt Never” with a message not to hurt anyone but just help, while the world was right in the middle of the pandemic. It reached No. 1 on Billboard Japan’s Hot Album chart and got numerous prestigious awards in Japan. He was selected as YouTube Japan’s first Artist On The Rise and picked for Spotify’s global program, RADAR.

In September 2021, he hosted an aspirational event titled Fujii Kaze “Free” Live 2021 at NISSAN stadium. Hoping to free up people’s minds through his music, Kaze performed just by himself only with a grand piano at the 70,000-capacity stadium without any audience due to Japan’s state of emergency in response to the spread of COVID-19. It was livestreamed globally on YouTube and reached over 179,000 peak concurrent views. The event ended up becoming the world’s No. 1 trending topic on Twitter.

In March 2022, Kaze released his second album “Love All Serve All”. The title is a phrase that he cherishes, which also aligns with the title of his first album. Again, the album reached No. 1 on Billboard Japan’s Hot Album chart and got numerous prestigious awards.

In July 2022, Shinunoga E-Wa from his first album went viral in Thailand. With that, the song reached #4 on Spotify’s Global Viral chart, and reached #1 on the platform’s local viral charts in 23 countries including Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Korea, UK, France, Canada, Brazil, and Egypt and reached #2 in the US.

In October 2022, he held a stadium show “LOVE ALL SERVE ALL STADIUM LIVE” at Panasonic Stadium Suita in Osaka, this time in front of a live audience and completely sold out at 70,000-capacity. The show is now available on Netflix globally.

From June to July 2023, he held his first 7-city, 11-show tour of Asia, with all shows sold out.