Nujabes - Feather ft CYNE

"Here lies an artisan of pure beauty." That's the only way I could describe Jun Seba in a space as small as a tombstone. 

Seba, who was revealed on Wednesday to have died in a February 26th car crash, was known by underground hip hop fans as Nujabes, a Japanese beatmaker of extraordinary talent and stunning scope of vision. Known for his focus on the melodic and dreamy, his keyboard-driven sound is unstaunchingly uplifting, yet profoundly honest. His deceptively simple piano riffs cut directly to my soul, to childhood memories, to hopes and dreams and my ancient and hard-lost misconception that the world is Utopia. It's hard to exaggerate how much I'm affected by his music--it consistently draws out of me that deep recognition that comes from the things that resonate with the darkest root of my being. Nujabes had the rare ability to infuse the melancholy with the upbeat, using his beats to capture a pure piece of paradisiacal sunny euphoria and carry it down to our gritty Gotham of lost dreams and boredom. 

 

To us mortals, such a death looks tragic, and indeed, I have no doubt that the loss of this man was one of the biggest losses mankind has suffered through so far this year. But Nujabes was one of those rare few brilliant enough, capable enough to place his soul in a capsule and send it careening into the future. My guess is that the light his music shines will continue to shoot forward until the cosmos's last note of music is absorbed and lost.

 

Rest In Beats.