March 6, 2020
Hydeout Productions
2xLP
Nujabes, he of the pretty samples and ambiguously pronounced stage-name, is the father of those "lofi chill hip hop beats to relax and study to" Youtube videos you see all the time. A DJ and record store owner in Tokyo, he's most well known for the LuvSic Hexology with Japanese MC Shing02 ("Pt. 3," maybe the most beautiful entry into one of rap's most beautiful series, is a highlight of Modal Soul), but is widely regarded as one of the more influential figures in the world of hip hop productions, with his knack for mining charming jazz samples and reconfiguring into balletic productions impacting the very DNA of beatmaking. A good analog is J Dilla, whose virtuosic command of splicing music was also tragically cut short, leading some to refer to Nujabes as 'The J Dilla of Japan' (one can only assume J Dilla has been called 'The Nujabes of the America'). The pair share a number of coincidental (freaky, even) parallels: on top of their shared mastery at wringing every emotional once from a piece of music, both were widely recognized as kindred, gentle souls, they shared the same birthday (Feb. 7), and died in the same month well short of their respective 40th birthdays (Dilla from complications with Lupus, Seba from a motorcycle accident). Yet, even cut so dramatically short, they remain integral figures in hip hops genealogy, with Modal Soul, in particular, developing a watershed legacy for both the charm of its music and the benevolence of its author.