Nujabes (born Jun Seba), a Japanese hip-hop producer, was killed in a car accident in Tokyo. Nujabes crashed when leaving the Metropolitan Expressway in Tokyo's Minato Ward. Nujabes was 36 years old when he died. The car crash that killed Nujabes took place on February 26, 2010, the same day a magnitude 7.3 earthquake struck off the coast of Japan. Nujabes' death was only publicly confirmed by Hydeout Productions and by his friend and collaborator, Shing02, today; he was buried by his family in a private ceremony. Nujabes was the founder of Hydeout Productions, as well as the owner of two Tokyo record stores, Guinness Records and T Records. Nujabes (who came by his artistic name by spelling his real name backwards) also contributed music to the anime "Samurai Champloo", an anachronistic tale mixing samurai lore and modern hip-hop culture. Nujabes was a private person, and so many, even those who worked closely with him, did not know he had died. - from dj premieres blog

i ran into some of his beats on youtube a year ago, and fell in love with his jazzy soulful beats as soon as i heard them. i searched his name and eventually got download links to most of his works. i understand that a lot of his other stuff are only released on vinyl, how i would love to get to listen to those. i used one of his instrumentals entitled "another reflection" and wrote my song "latak" to it. you can listen and watch the video which i already posted earlier on this blog.

let me share another one of my favorite instrumental of his, this one is called modal soul.



R.I.P