Saib

Words by Justin Ruiz.

They say to never meet your heroes.
They say that you’ll be disappointed if you do.
They clearly have no idea what they’re talking about.

I got to meet a hero of mine recently. Someone who has inspired me for almost 10 years now. Someone who has shaped the LoFi and Jazz Hop scenes of my generation. Someone who is so underappreciated to the masses it’s almost criminal. He goes by Saib.

A QUICK HISTORY LESSON

If you haven’t been living under a rock for the past decade, you’ve undoubtedly come across LoFi. Open YouTube and you can find dozens of channels dedicated to the genre. From STEEZYAF to LoFi Girl, all you have to do is type in

“beats to insert verb to”,

and you’ll find exactly what you’re looking for; dozens of channels, thousands of artists, hundreds of thousands of songs. The proliferation of the genre happened rapidly in the past few years, but this type of attention wasn’t always the case.

LoFi as a term has been around since the 1950s. Its literal meaning is ‘low fidelity’; designating music that was, to put it bluntly, recorded on shitty equipment, with shitty instruments, by producers and engineers who didn’t know what they were doing. But it was cheap and the D.I.Y mentality was pervasive. Anyone who wanted to make something on a budget, well, this was your way to do so.

Fast forward to the ‘90s and you have a new definition, one that takes on more of an alternative or indie connotation. We’re moving away from the technological underpinnings of the music to focus more on the vibe and feeling the music evokes.

Enter the 2000s and the beat-making scene. Samplers like the SP 303 and 404 opened the floodgates for producers to chop samples way faster than ever before. These machines even come with a ‘LoFi’ setting that makes the music sound a little dirty, a little warped, a little grimey. And it sounded cool.

Now, there are a lot of reasons why LoFi became so popular with Millenials and early Gen Z. Here in the U.S. I attribute it to hip hop and anime. Specifically on the hip hop side:

J Dilla beats
Madlib x MF Doom’s project Madvillainy

On the anime/cartoon side:

programs like Toonami and Adult Swim, respectively airing in heavy rotation anime and Japanese movies to an American audience.
Adult Swim commercial buffers, fondly known as Bumps.

If you don’t know any of these things mentioned above, I suggest you stop reading this immediately, click on the links and go do some research + soul-searching into your life choices.

Abroad, and specifically in Japan, it was the works of artist Seba Jun, aka, Nujabes, Tsutchie and FORCE OF NATURE, along with fat jon, hailing from the US, to deliver arguably the greatest anime soundtrack of all-time for Samurai Champloo, which ushered in a new style of beats, a fusion of jazz with a singular, minimalist aesthetic. Combine these unique geographical perspectives and LoFi as we know it today, was born.

What really took LoFi to new heights was the internet age of the 2010s, centered around YouTube and Soundcloud. If you’re kind of old like me (hello 30), then you remember the importance of sites like Datpiff, Majestic, Bandcamp and Soundcloud for the sheer sake of getting music out into the world early on.

With a little bit of elbow grease, you could find your audience and they could find you, online. YouTube started live streaming when I was a freshman in college, 2013. STEEZYAF was one, if not the first, 24/7 live stream focused on LoFi music/beats. Just like any new thing, it took time to grow, but quickly there was a following. Some, but certainly not all, of the OGs from the online LoFi scene are Jinsang, j^p^n, [bsd.u], tomppabeats, eevee, and my new best friend Saib (😃).

FROM HUMBLE BEGINNINGS

I come from a middle class working family. The dream my parents held for my brother and I was to go to college, earn a degree, earn lots of money and have a stable and stress free life. I can fully understand this perspective given they didn’t have the easiest times growing up. Yet, that was not at all what I had in mind for myself.

So, as you can imagine, it was very refreshing and somewhat validating hearing that Saib had similar expectations placed upon him that he didn’t want to follow.

I remember when I was a bit older, maybe 15, telling my parents I wanted to be an artist and to make music. They told me that was a good joke, but that I shouldn’t expect to make a living off of that. I’d need something else to fall back on. In Morocco, there was this expectation to become a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer and to have a stable life. I studied Computer Science and IT because I knew it would be a field with a lot of work. But once I graduated, music was all I wanted to do.

Saib doesn’t come from a musical family. His parents aren’t musicians, nor did they express a deep interest in music themselves. Saib was introduced to music almost as a way to occupy his time growing up. His mother enrolled him in a music academy, against his will, when he was 9. Not really taking it seriously, not really paying attention, he reluctantly learned violin and stuck around for a few years.

It wasn’t until the teachers at the music school went on strike that he came across an older student playing guitar. This proved to be a huge turning point in his life.

I just saw this old guy playing one day and thought to myself, he’s really cool. And I didn’t like the violin so I just decided to make the switch. It helped that I had a lot of free time on my hands too.

The free time quickly became structured guitar time. Saib’s older brother, who was DJing in Morocco at the time, gave him a copy of Ableton Live and encouraged him to record what he was doing. In true LoFi fashion, with just his new DAW, a guitar, an FX pedal and an old PC, Saib got to work.

FINDING INSPIRATION

As someone who’s tried teaching themselves guitar, it requires a lot of time and a lot of self discipline. Saib had both. He would listen to bands like Porcupine Tree and try to copy some of the greats like Joe Satriani, Andy McKee and Don Ross. Yet, LoFi and hip hop were still undiscovered, off on a distant horizon.

I was really into rock. All sorts of things, like UK prog rock, all types of metal, the blues. Hip Hop wasn’t really on my radar because there wasn’t a huge scene happening in Morocco at the time. It wasn’t until I stumbled across Samurai Champloo and the great Nujabes, where I realized that’s a style I really like.

The importance of Nujabes within music, specifically LoFi and any of its derivatives, cannot be overstated. He was a pioneering force of nature that was taken from this world too soon. While saddened that he isn’t with us in the physical, I always take solace when I learn about others he’s influenced and what he has done for music as a whole. It’s even more special getting to work for Nao Tokui, a collaborator and friend of Nujabes, hearing stories, seeing old photos. You’re bound to be inspired.

One thing I learned from Saib is to try and recreate your favorite artists’ sound and their style. Not to rip them off, but to shape and mold your own sound and aesthetic as a tribute.

A game changer for me was watching a lot of Anime and just getting into the soundtracks. Everything by Yoko Kanno and the soundtrack to Samurai Champloo were really vital for me early on. I just remember distinctly listening to Nujabes and then wanting to recreate in that style. I think that’s where my initial inspiration was rooted in and just wanting to create a similar vibe.

Ipanema, Saib’s first EP, came out in 2015. There was an immediate response within the LoFi/Jazz Hop space that would see landmark releases year after year. I distinctly remember where I was in my life when arguably his most popular project, Bebop, dropped on Bandcamp. I was an aimless 23 year old splitting time in San Francisco at a job I didn’t really want to do. I was contemplating quitting out of sheer frustration. I took in Dolores Park, a staple of SF and found a nice hill overlooking the city. It was a bit muggy in early August, a little sticky from the humidity, midday. I got the notification of new Saib on Bandcamp, and I’m a simple man, so I clicked.

For the next 48 minutes, I was transported back in time, to when I first watched Cowboy Bebop as a little kid who had no idea what he was watching. The story told, the emotion, the nostalgia, just all came together in what I can only describe as music nirvana. I almost think the album should be an add-on wherever one can stream the show, they go so well together.

This is exactly what I admire about Saib and all of his works. You get to see his influences, from anime to guitar, with his own spin on everything he’s taken in. How he chooses to create is a direct response to what he’s living at that particular point in time. There’s an ability to see into his past, while helping you relive yours.

I think influence is sometimes random but usually just where you are in life. I remember taking the bus around the city when I was younger and when I hear some of my earlier works that I created during my time in University, I’m transported back to that bus. So really just capturing where you are in life I think is how I am inspired. And of course this evolves as I evolve as a person.

Not sticking to the script or resting on his laurels is not only admirable, but vital to Saib. Because he’s constantly changing, his work and process must change as well. There are so many cases of artists returning to what has worked for them in the past, and yet there’s always other avenues to venture down. Thinking about his future, Saib already knows which new avenue he wants to explore.

For instance, I’m working on a house EP right now. I’m doing this because I kind of want to go more towards the nightlife scene, because the problem with LoFi and Jazz Hip Hop is it’s really hard to have a presence in the community. It’s such an online-consumed genre of music where people don’t really care about who the artist is behind the track.

The driver is getting on a playlist and that’s difficult to stand out or to get shows going as an artist. The idea was to do house stuff because that’s my interest right now and then try out how it would be or if I could maybe DJ and showcase a bit of the things I’ve learned from past works and then put it into a different context.

With an interesting creative past and a clear direction for the future, Saib is also tuning in to the technological breakthroughs happening in real time.

AI, CREATIVITY and the FUTURE

I’ve worked in AI for the past 8 years in some form or fashion. And what I’ve learned about this field is that whatever you learn will be obsolete in 2-3 years, like some exponentiated version of Moore’s Law. Research in 2016 when I graduated is laughed at today. I’m not saying that metaphorically either, I literally was laughed at when describing my own research at an AI conference in 2023 to an aspiring researcher and PhD student. (it’s ok, we both shared a laugh after he bought me a beer.)

For Saib, who studied Computer Science and did a Master’s thesis on Deep Reinforcement Learning, AI is a reckoning we’ll have to deal with. And the time will come for us to think critically about AI’s role in creative fields.

It feels inevitable. This stuff is here to stay. Personally, I don’t feel like AI is at the point where it can overtake humans in the creative process. And yet, I’ve had my experiences with Lofi and Jazz Hop where today, there are a lot of tracks that are created by AI. It’s so easy to create a 4 bar loop with a beat and get playlisted. But this isn’t really a problem with AI, but with the humans that curate these playlists and the listeners.

Some people don’t really care about the music and the origins of it. I’m personally not like that, but it tells me that creativity is changing. I still think humans need to continue to be the driving force and to use these things responsibly. Especially with AI, there’s so many ways to abuse the tooling or the services. Data is such a currency in AI, we need some sort of ethical board or governing board to ensure that people and companies are behaving responsibly and not doing things they shouldn’t be.

This does bring up fascinating questions that we as listeners and consumers don’t often consider, but need to. Namely, what is the value in creating and why am I drawn to this particular piece of work, whatever it may be?

To try and answer generally is to make a lot of assumptions for humanity, so I won’t attempt to do that. For me personally though, the value in creating is the purest form of what it means to be human. Specifically, the value lies in the fact that not only can we create, but that creating as an act is a form of expression that no other entity on this earth can do. The intent, the motivation, the source of the creation is purely individual and resides with the creator.

Being drawn to any particular piece of work is to understand on some level its creator’s perspective, their motivation, their story during the act of creating. And this feels extremely human. It is the reason people love Saib’s music, because it transports you to another time in your life, nostalgic for the good and the bad, the pleasure and the pain, the love and the heartbreak.

For these very reasons, it is also why Saib is so beloved within the community. There is an emotional thread that he is able to capture across all of his works that is very hard to describe. But I’ll spare you more of me trying, just go read the YouTube or Bandcamp comments for any of his works and you’ll understand.

As Humanity embarks on this journey with AI, Saib is optimistic:

I’m excited to see how we the people respond and treat each other with AI making its way into everything. I think we’ll have AIs that can write crazy compositions that make Beethoven look like a child, but I think we’ll still want to choose to listen to the human composer. Because that’s who we are at the end of the day, human.

We are seeing one of the greats in a fairly young genre evolve right before our eyes. Change is inevitable and Saib takes it all in stride, embracing life as it unfolds. He chooses to be open and thus his artistry evolves as well.

He has been inspired and influenced by so many and has in turn inspired countless others. I can only hope to follow his lead in my own life and maybe inspire someone else along the way. And at the end of the day, isn’t that all one can really hope for?