MY FAVORITE SONG: November 12th, 2015
Nujabes - “Lady Brown Ft. Cise Starr” (Metaphorical Music)
This one is a throwback to my early high school years.
My best friend Jon was huge into Jazzy Hip-Hop. He listened to artists like Nujabes, Sound Providers, Little Brother and other related acts. Whenever I hear this, I imagine that we are at his house in his kitchen where the computer was with this song playing on the speakers.
I always considered Nujabes to be the smooth, luscious J Dilla. They were both born on February 7th, 1974 and both died again in February, Nujabes 4 years after Dilla. He wasn’t your typical Jazz Rap producer, in that he wasn’t taking small groove samples and creating loops out of them. Instead, he took larger sections of songs which allowed for the woodwind leads, string progressions and guitar chords to breathe much longer.
This song in particular takes a Luiz Bonfá acoustic guitar lead and speeds it up, giving it a much lighter and silkier identity. It also features Cise Starr from the Hip-Hop group CYNE. Thanks to Nujabes, I remember listening to some of CYNE’s material but I can’t remember any of it off the top of my head at the moment, it’s been so many years.
For anyone who was into a much smoother style of Hip-Hop, you probably had this song as one of your profile songs on MySpace. I know Jon did. So did I. The song is a tribute to women of color, praising them as being one of God’s most precise and intricate creations. It’s a song and message that can still be appreciated today, over a decade after it was released.
Most of all, this song was my gateway to discovering the Luv Sic series and Japanese rapper Shing02.
