STUTS and DJ Mitsu the Beats talk about the honeymoon between hip hop and jazz

Ever since I started making tracks, I've been influenced by Mitsu's first album, "New Awakening," and his beat-making techniques, so it's an honor to have this conversation with you today. Today's theme is "Jazz and Hip Hop Beats." How did you first come into contact with jazz, Mitsu?

Originally, my father collected jazz records, and Wes Montgomery and others were often played at home. However, I think it was only after I discovered hip-hop that I started researching and listening to it on my own.

It's the same for me. At first, I bought jazz records to see if I could sample them, but then I started to like fusion and funk. There were albums like De La Soul's sampling collection, and I studied beat making while listening to them. Today, Mitsu will introduce us to some important songs when discussing jazz and hip-hop.

One of the things I came across when I first started making beats was Slick Rick's "Behind Bars." I dug around to find out where it came from, and I ended up being drawn to Les McCann's "Sometimes I Cry."

When I listen to "Sometimes I Cry" again, it feels similar to the way Mitsu's beats and Rhodes piano intertwine.

There was a time when this kind of fusion jazz was criticized, but to us it's on the same level. I think hip-hop culture can convey that there was a lot of good jazz out there.

When I first started digging into jazz, fusion music like Donald Byrd was the most familiar to me. The beat and bass groove feel like an extension of hip hop.

That's right. The next song I'd like to introduce is "Love Theme from Spartacus" by Yusef Lateef.

Speaking of this song, I knew it because Nujabes sampled it in "The Final View."

Indeed, when talking about jazz and hip-hop, Nujabes is an essential part of the conversation.

Where did that kind of music start to emerge from in the late '90s to early 2000s, when the jazz hip-hop movement led by Mitsu and Nujabes was in full swing?

The reason I started sampling jazz wasn't because I admired people overseas or because I wanted to follow the trends of the scene. I found a phrase I liked in jazz, so I sampled it and started making beats, and that's how it ended up. I guess it just came about spontaneously, with a group of people with the same idea at the same time.

Jazz has a certain randomness to it. Different phrases will appear each time you play the same song, and I think that's what fascinates track makers.

From here on, we continue with hip hop, starting with "The Look of Love" on a J-88. The intro to this song starts when I'm doing compilations at live shows, and even now it always gets the crowd going when I DJ it.

I was also heavily influenced by Slum Village, and I think that this is where the underground jazz hip-hop movement of the late '90s was created.

That's true. I thought about it in a very independent way, but maybe that was the biggest influence.

The guitar loop is impressive, but this was also sampled from jazz.

Barney Kessel's "The Look of Love" is used quite a bit. I'd also like to introduce "Jazz (We've Got)," a representative song from A Tribe Called Quest's second album.

Personally, I got into hip-hop through that album, so I thought this song was the one. Were you also influenced by their use of jazz, Mitsu?

I also first heard Tribe through this song on their second album, and I think it had a big influence on me.

I don't really like categorizing it as "jazzy hip hop," but I think that was the very beginning of that kind of music. Were there any other hip hop songs from the same era that were really jazzy?

I'd say "Can I Get Open" by Original Flavor. It was the first jazz hip-hop song I ever heard, but chronologically speaking, Tribe was the milestone release.

Tribe may have been the first hip-hop album to feature jazz so prominently throughout. The connections between hip-hop and jazz have become more diverse, but it was fun to hear mainly about the early days of that era in the 90s!