''4 Real'' is fourth

studio album An album is a collection of audio recordings issued on compact disc (CD), Phonograph record, vinyl, audio tape, or another medium such as Digital distribution#Music, digital distribution. Albums of recorded sound were developed in the early ...

by Japanese recording artist

Crystal Kay is a Japanese singer, songwriter, actress and radio host. After releasing her first single, "Eternal Memories" (1999), Crystal Kay gained fame for her third studio album, '' Almost Seventeen'' (2002), which debuted at number 2 on the Japanese ...

. It was released via

Sony Music Entertainment Japan , often abbreviated as SMEJ or simply SME, and also known as Sony Music Japan for short (stylized as ''SonyMusic''), is a Japanese music arm for Sony. Founded in 1968 as CBS/Sony, SMEJ is directly owned by Sony Group Corporation and is opera ...

on November 27, 2003, and was made available as a stand-alone CD and for digital consumption. The title ''4 Real'' is play on the phrase "for real"—signifying the singer's fourth record. It contains primarily

contemporary R&B Contemporary R&B (or simply R&B) is a popular music genre that combines rhythm and blues with elements of pop, soul, funk, hip hop, and electronic music. The genre features a distinctive record production style, drum machine-backed rhythm ...

influences and saw contributions from various songwriters and producers, including

M-Flo is a Japanese hip hop group consisting of record producer DJ Taku Takahashi, Verbal and Lisa. Lisa left the group in 2002 to pursue a solo career and the remaining members then started the M-Flo Loves... project working different vocalists fo ...

, Yoshika and

Keri Hilson Keri Lynn Hilson (born December 5, 1982) is an American R&B singer, songwriter and actress. She was born and raised in Decatur, Georgia and spent most of her youth working with producer Anthony Dent as a songwriter and background vocalist for ...

, among others. The album spawned four singles, which were all released over the course of 2003. Commercially, ''4 Real'' peaked at number six on the

Oricon Albums Chart The Oricon Albums Chart is the Japanese music industry standard albums popularity chart issued daily, weekly, monthly and yearly by Oricon. Oricon originally published LP, CT, Cartridge and CD charts prior to the establishment of the Oricon Albu ...

and became her second top-ten album in Japan, following the top-three release ''

Almost Seventeen ''Almost Seventeen'' is Crystal Kay's third album. It is her second R&B dominant album and is produced by a similar team as worked on ''637: Always and forever''. A large part of the record was written and produced by Michico and T-Kura of Giant ...

'' (2002). The album continued to chart for a total of 25 weeks in the country. Within a month of the album's release, it was certified gold by the

Recording Industry Association of Japan The is an industry trade group composed of Japanese corporations involved in the music industry. It was founded in 1942 as the Japan Phonogram Record Cultural Association, and adopted its current name in 1969. The RIAJ's activities include pr ...

(RIAJ) for physical shipments of over 250,000 units. It went on to sell over 246,000 copies in 2004, and was ranked the 59th best-selling album of the year in Japan.

Track listing

Charts

Album

Singles

Sales and certifications

Release history

References

External links