I just caught word Japanese producer, Nujabes died in a car crash on February 26, 2010. Because of the producer’s personal and private lifestyle, many did not find out until just this week.

This is a very unfortunate loss for hiphop music, and certainly for the Japanese hiphop community. Homie was only 36; an extremely prolific and much admired producer.

I first heard Nujabes when he produced tracks for the Samurai Champloo anime. Specifically, the show’s intro featuring Shing02, “Battle Cry”:

Rest in peace, Nujabes. I’m glad he has left a huge amount of work for all of us to enjoy until the end of time. Peace, homie.

• Shing02: Jun Seba aka Nujabes, Rest In Peace

In 1999 we got up with Japanese MC, Shing02 to record the song, “Contact” for the Projecto: 2501 album.

Shing0′s verse is entirely in Japanese, but I just came across the lyrics translation he provided. Here it is, peep:

If existence itself is a part of fate,
Then is our music merely a faithful reproduction
Of a completed work from future dimensions…?

Indigestible information age melodrama,
the transparent majority will perish
Like nitrogen in the atmosphere,
and our hydrogen plus oxygen,
Also in imminent danger
Misled definition of culminating vocab on ethnic proportions
shapeless hope, strangely enough
Sonic recordings in coming years will be a memory of yester years
While repeating numerics punctuate time
After much anticipation, the ship takes off, never to return to earth
With contact lost and eternal darkness seeping into my bones
I found myself sending telegrams day and night but to no avail
A dead machine left me nothing
Too late to vent anger or to bring suit,
The only path left to fly is this narrow moment
A present that comes after future,
however the present is in the past
how ironic…
10-29… – Shing02

Trading card illustrations: Colm Doherty