Tracks often revolved around just one or two deftly edited samples - anything from Miles Davis to Andean musician Una Ramos - and spare instrumentation. However, he quickly began to hone in on a signature sound: warm and unabashedly emotive, as indebted to spiritual jazz as it was to early-’90s boom bap. Seba’s early material showed that he’d been paying close attention to “golden age” jazz-rap stalwarts like Pete Rock and A Tribe Called Quest, as well as the instrumental hip-hop released by British label Mo’ Wax, once home to DJ Shadow and Japan’s own DJ Krush. There were times where we talked about a song we were going to work on for hours before we actually recorded it.” “We would discuss, and at times debate, song direction and the art direction of the projects. “I stayed in Shibuya for a month and recorded around 25 songs with him,” Substantial says, recalling a creative relationship that wasn’t without moments of friction. In 2000, Seba arranged for Substantial, then an up-and-coming MC on the New York scene, to fly to Japan to record an entire album. Funky DL appeared on the followup, “Peoples Don’t Stray,” and went on to become a regular sparring partner. The lead track featured the bilingual Japanese rapper L Universe, now better known by his J-pop alias, Verbal. Nujabes released his first 12-inch, “Ain’t No Mystery,” in 1999 on his own Hydeout Productions, the label that would provide an outlet for almost his entire oeuvre. When I made my first loop, it was all I listened to for an entire day.” It was more a case of, ‘If I loop a sample from this record, then put another sample on top, what will it sound like?’. “I wasn’t thinking about making a song at first. “I started making tracks because I wanted to hear music that sampled the old soul and jazz I liked,” he told Sound & Recording Magazine in 2003, in what two of his friends told me was the only interview they could remember him ever doing.
Seba dabbled in music-making while at high school, but began to work seriously on producing beats around 1998, releasing a clutch of well-received DJ mixtapes. Sometimes the owner’s personal tastes trumped commercial considerations: When Jay-Z released crossover hit “Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem)” in 1998, Seba only stocked a few copies because he didn’t like the song. He opened his own shop, Guinness Records, at the age of 21 in 1995, and it soon developed a following among discerning beat heads, not least because it sold the latest underground hip-hop releases for less than anywhere else. Like many of his generation, Seba’s musical career started amid the vibrant record store scene of 1990s Shibuya.
“It wasn’t just, ‘Hey, I have this track and I want you on it.’ I know he gave a lot of people opportunities.” “I think he was building a musical family for himself: people he liked to share and work with,” says Fat Jon. Many will be familiar from the regular support roles they played throughout Nujabes’ career: Shing02 Fat Jon and his Five Deez bandmate, Pase Rock multi-instrumentalist Uyama Hiroto rapper Cise Starr, from Gainesville hip-hop crew CYNE Maryland-born MC Substantial the British rapper and producer Funky DL. This week, an international cast of rappers, musicians and DJs will gather for tribute shows in Tokyo and Osaka, to mark the fifth anniversary of Seba’s death.
HOW DID NUJABES DIE SERIES
Without the assistance of an overseas record label, his myth flourished on MySpace and online forums fans pored over YouTube clips and his contributions to the soundtrack of cult anime series “Samurai Champloo.”Īnd like the late J Dilla, the Detroit hip-hop producer with whom he is often compared, Nujabes’ posthumous fame has only surpassed the renown that he enjoyed during his lifetime. Yet by the time of his death at 36, Nujabes (pronounced “noo-jah-bess”) had become one of Japan’s most revered hip-hop producers, while building a substantial international following. “Nujabes really didn’t want people to know him like that.”
“Please just remember, that was all by design,” says “Fat Jon” Marshall, producer and MC with the Cincinnati hip-hop crew Five Deez, and a close friend and collaborator.
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