12/25/2023 0 Comments Nujabes full discographyThat’s when we started working on To This Union a Sun Was Born. That was the first time meeting him in-person. Ended up signing a contract with him shortly after, and in ’00 he flew me out to Japan for a month. After he heard it, he sent me some beats back. He requested I send him more stuff, and I sent him more of my material. Luckily, I didn’t hang up, and I took him seriously. The man on the other end of the phone had a really thick accent, and I’ve got a bunch of friends which are clowns, so I just thought it was one of my friends. Next thing you know, Jun calls me up out of the blue. My friend went on to play a mixtape that was made in school, called Disc 1, which happened to have me on it. Jun hit up my friend and asked him if there’s any rappers in New York at the time worth checking out, and my homeboy told Jun to listen to me. This was before anyone knew who “Nujabes” was. When my friend went back home to Japan, he got a gig at Jun’s record store. That friend later went on to become a rapper that people would come to know later as Sphere Of Influence. Stanley “Substantial” Robinson, a musician, passionate activist, community organizer, and one half of Bop Alloy, has been a student of hip-hop for over two decades. Tracklist for Sweet Sticky Thing courtesy of maxwellwt Physical cassette of Sweet Sticky Thing Creating ‘To This Union A Sun Was Born’ with Substantial I actually didn’t know this myself until I flew back to Seattle and met up with my friend, and showed him a picture and said ‘I got a picture with L-Universe, he collaborated with Jun’ and my friend was like ‘Yo, that’s Verbal!’ Ain’t No Mystery, a collaboration between Nujabes and L-Universe (Verbal) The cover for Sweet Sticky Thing Verbal is a ridiculously huge pop star.Ī lot of people don’t know this. Marcus had a few words to say about that: L-Universe is Verbal. Nujabes also started collaborating with L-Universe near this time, known as Verbal today (and affiliated with his wife Yoon, with their AMBUSH line). It is the first full-length piece of work under the pseudonym Nujabes. The cassette is considered a grail among underground hip-hop cassette collectors, given its extremely limited cassette-only, local-only release. Often discussed and referred to as simply, Sweet Sticky Thing, the title is nod to Ohio Players’ track of the same name on their classic album Honey. Within the same year, a 36-track mixtape-18 A-side, 18 B-side-called Sweet Sticky Thing ~Reload All Good Music From Old To The New~ was released through Hyde Out Recordings (now Hyde Out Productions, a sister company). Tokyo is tens of millions of people, so lots of customers moving through the shop, and he did really well. He would then take that, press it onto vinyl, then throw it in with the Nas bin, so people would be looking for Nas, who was one of the top artists at the time, and they would stumble upon this strange record and think “Who is Nujabes?” not knowing it was the actual owner of the store.Ĭrazy hustle. Learning the ropes of how they were crafted, Jun went on to remix Nas’ One Love off Illmatic, pressing it on wax through Top Graphicers in 1998, and mixing it in with the popular records at the time, to gain traction of his moniker (Dimention Ball at the time)-a technique heralded as a ‘crazy hustle’ by Pase: I think he did a Nas bootleg of One Love, that’s what his brother told me. While working at his record shop, Jun eventually dove into the world of production, making his own beats. Jun didn’t really like the commercial hip-hop, so if it wasn’t like DJ Premier, Pete Rock, or Five Deez, he wasn’t with it. His store leaned more towards stuff you’d sample, and underground hip-hop. Jun’s shop was, for lack of a better term, the underground hip-hop spot. They’re all gone now, but back then it was an identity for each store, and you went to each store for whatever sort of music they had. Pase Rock, one of Jun’s closest friends, gives interesting insight regarding the dynamics of Tokyo record shops: So, as you may know, each record shop in Japan has its own sort of style and flavor. There is also a very rare video of his record shop, shot around 10 years ago, courtesy of DJ Sarasa. However, it continued to operate digitally through Tribe, the shop underneath Guinness Records on the third floor, which managed Hydeout Productions’ record sales. The physical shop was closed in 2011, a year after Jun’s passing. Drawn to music from a young age, he would go on to own Guinness Records in Shibuya, investing himself into the business side of music. Seba “Nujabes” Jun was a record shop owner and producer, though most know him for the latter.Ībove anything else, however, he was a student of hip-hop. Due to length, contributions are indexed as follows:
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