In late 2017, George Kusunoki Miller did what almost no one who builds a massive internet following manages to do gracefully: he walked away from it entirely. He had been Filthy Frank — a YouTube provocateur with millions of subscribers, an elaborate absurdist comedy universe, and a cultural footprint bigger than most recording artists twice his age. Then recurring seizures made sustaining the character medically untenable, and he made the harder choice. He put it down, signed with 88Rising, and became Joji. The version of that story with a bad ending is one you’ve seen. This is the other kind.
About Joji
The first album under the Joji name, Ballads 1, arrived in 2018 and reached No. 3 on the Billboard 200 — not a modest debut for an artist whose previous public output had involved shock comedy and internet memes. Nectar matched that chart peak in 2020. Smithereens (2022) produced the single “Glimpse of Us” — a spare, devastatingly quiet piano ballad that peaked at No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 and topped the ARIA Charts in Australia, his highest-charting single to date. None of it sounds like anything Filthy Frank would have touched. The catalog is built from lo-fi textures, trip-hop cadences, and a vocal delivery that is patient and interior — R&B made for listening in a dark room, which makes the arena scale of the SOLARIS tour an interesting proposition in its own right.
In February 2026, Joji released Piss in the Wind on Palace Creek, his own independent label — the first album released without 88Rising or 12Tone Music Group in his corner. Twenty-one tracks; ten of them run under two minutes. The critical reception has been uneven: NME and Melodic Magazine both praised the emotional minimalism and the authenticity of the thing, while noting that the compressed, fragmented track structure can make the full listen feel scattershot. Collaborators include Giveon and 4batz. The standout is “Past Won’t Leave My Bed” — the kind of song that sounds like it was made for headphones and will now be performed in a building that holds 20,000 people. There is something worth watching in that tension.
SOLARIS Tour at American Airlines Center
The SOLARIS tour — Joji’s global run in support of Piss in the Wind — arrives at American Airlines Center on Wednesday, July 8. The North American leg runs June 16 through July 23, 2026, moving through Newark, Toronto, Chicago, Boston, Brooklyn, Atlanta, and Austin before hitting Dallas, then continuing west through Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Salt Lake City, and Denver. Production for SOLARIS was designed specifically for the tour and will include the first-ever live performances of Piss in the Wind material alongside catalog highlights — “Slow Dancing in the Dark,” “Sanctuary,” and “Glimpse of Us.” Support across all North American dates comes from Nate Sib and Corbin. Doors at 5:00 PM; show at 6:30 PM.
American Airlines Center
American Airlines Center sits at 2500 Victory Avenue in Dallas — a 20,000-capacity arena and one of the anchor live music venues in the Dallas–Fort Worth market. It is an A-list stop on any North American arena tour, and the July 8 date places Joji in the building near the midpoint of the North American leg, with the European and Asia-Pacific legs to follow later in the year.
Tickets
Tickets for Joji at American Airlines Center on July 8, 2026 are available through Ticketmaster.