american jpop idol?

How can I (an african american girl) become a jpop idol? I really wanna work at LDH and avex.

First of all, you need to be able to sing well. How good is your singing? How old are you? What genre of music can you sing?

Second, how good is your Japanese? You might be able to get away with intermediate Japanese fluency level, if your singing is good enough to compensate, but it has to be really damn good.

Third, your level of attractiveness. Japan is not a PC-oriented country like many states in the US. If you are not good looking, you won't be able to appeal to many people. And Japanese, or Asians in general, don't see African features as attractive for the most part.

So, two things you must have: singing talent, maybe some dancing skills, and physical attractiveness. Those two things are much more important than Japanese fluency, which you can slowly improve over time. As for singing talent and attractiveness, you either have them or you don't.

Another alternate route is to singing songs in English, but write songs about Japan. That way, you can still attract Japanese fans without being an actual J-pop idol. But of course, the biggest question remains: how good are you at singing or writing music?

No chance due to nationalism.

The real question is can you sing Japanese and do you live in Japan?

If no - then your chances are slim at best.....

Contact smaller agencies, producers, etc. about auditions. Chances of you getting noticed by Avex are extremely slim unfortunately, but there ARE foreign idols in Japan, as someone who follows idols I've seen plenty. Mostly indie/underground idols though, the only foreign mainstream idols I can think of are Chinese or Korean, or half-Japanese.

To say there is no chance is, in my opinion, nonsense. Becoming a small-time idol isn't that hard for Japanese girls, of course you will find it more challenging, but it is not impossible. See what local idol groups are in your area and start from there.

In terms of what sort of Japanese language proficiency skills you'll need to develop, pronunciation, particularly while singing, will be the most important thing, assuming you have someone else writing your lyrics for you.

There's a successful J-pop artist named Crystal Kay who's half African-American and half Korean, who attended high school at a U.S. military base in Japan. Grammatically, her Japanese is very good, but she has a noticeable "foreign" accent when speaking. When singing, though, her pronunciation is perfect.

However, you mention specifically wanting to be an "idol," not just a J-pop musician. In today's idol industry, image and media/fan interaction are more important than ever, so you'll also need an outstanding ability to communicate in Japanese in terms of grammar and vocabulary. That doesn't mean you'll have to be perfect, as the occasional bit of "foreign-ness" in terms of Japanese skill can be seen as charming, but you'll probably need to maintain an energetic aura while also being easy to understand in interviews, meet-and-greets, etc.

I personally don't think singing skill is vital to become a JPOP idol, when I hear some of the idols singing without playback, it is hard to imagine what they did to become an idol.

Looks are very important in Japan to the point, that even some sales jobs are only given to good looking women. And I visited many big japanese companies for my job and the bigger the company the better looking the staff at the reception normally is. I know that this is not nice, since looks shouldn't matter in these jobs, but they do in Japan. I also remember working in my old company and we had a Karaoke party with our customer Sony. And the manager from Sony while being half drunk openly said, they are only doing business with us because of the looks of their contact person in our company.

That being said, I don't think you have to be good looking naturally, it is probably enough to look very good (or in the case of an idol rather cute) when wearing makeup, as I saw some idols without makeup and also couldn't believe how they became idols.
Well thinking about it more, having to be good looking to be a singer is not exclusive to Japan, how many unattractive women in the world became famous singers, and the ones who are, must have an incredible singing talent.

Summing everything up, I think the most important parts to become an idol in Japan are to be very cute (with makeup is okay) and having a very cute speaking / singing voice.