The late Japanese hip-hop producer Nujabes was well-known for fusing jazz with hip-hop to make some of the best instrumental hip-hop of the 2000s. Although I haven't listened to all of his work, I loved his production for Samurai Champloo and his sampling of American jazz music to create the wondrous collage of sounds in his own music. I've decided to share links to 2 of my favorite Nujabes songs and provide the jazz samples necessary for making them amazing jazz hip-hop.
The first song is "Feather," which samples Yusef Lateef's "Love Theme for The Robe." Lateef loved to play songs from film soundtracks and the best songs on his album, Eastern Sounds (which endeavored to fuse American jazz with Asian music but remains firmly entrenched in the jazz idiom). Nujabes samples the piano for "Feather." Ignore the rapping, which isn't very good...
Instrumental
Yusef Lateef sample. Yusef Lateef made something beautiful here.
Nujabes' "The Final View" is one of my favorite jazz-rap songs of all time. Amazing use of the Yusef Lateef sample here. Again, the song is from a film soundtrack that Yusef lateef had covered. The sample is built on the jazz piano chords and oboe playing of Yusef Lateef with some hip-hop drums thrown in.
Yusef Lateef's "Love Theme from Spartacus"
Ahmad Jamal, a jazz pianist, also covered the song
And here is the original song from the film
Nujabes sampled Ahmad Jamal's take for his "Eclipse"
In addition to sampling jazz versions of soundtracks, Nujabes also samples Brazilian music and post-bop American jazz. His "Horn in the Middle" samples "Joshua" by Miles Davis.
Miles Davis
Live version
Nujabes sampled a Brazilian jazz/bossa nova song for his "Lady Brown." The sample is Luiz Bonfa's "The Shade of the Mango Tree."
Original
heya, I got onto this page and was excited to read about nujabes as I am a massive fan. There is some interesting stuff, so well done but your comment about the rapping on feather I disagree with. The verses on feather are incredible, they are extraordinarily written and extremely figurative, spiritually uplifting and all strung together with a real nice flow that complements the beat. Im not sure if you have listened to much hip hop but the songs popularity is a strong indicator that obviously the verses on the beat are amazing. I recommend listening to the track a couple more times then go loof up the lyrics.
ReplyDeleteHmm, I looked at the lyrics and yes, they're clever and interesting. But, I don't know, they don't seem mixed in well with the song since the music overpowers the rapper, and I dislike his voice. But yeah, you right, they're not bad lyrically.
ReplyDeleteFair enough its all personal opinion and also there are two rappers, cise and akin from cyne
ReplyDelete