Liz Marquis: How did you get involved with the Samurai Champloo series and in what ways did the success of “Battlecry” change your life?

Shing02: The anime was offered to me through Nujabes right before 2004 when it first aired, when I was living in Oakland. At the time all I knew was that this was going to be a late-night offering in Japan, so I never imagined it would be syndicated Stateside or that it would ever be a hit. I knew through my friends like Del (the Funky Homosapien) that Cowboy Bebop had a cult following and Shinichiro Watanabe (the director) already was known, so that should have been an indication, but I wasn’t really hip to it. So we ended up recording a Japanese version of the opening song over an instrumental that became “Horizon” on Nujabes’ album but somehow it got nixed. Then we were asked to do an English version and Nujabes sent me the beat for Battlecry. I thought it was dark and abstract but since I have a Samurai background in my ancestry and I also had a friend who is a sword-smith in Japan, I just wrote to it and the rest is history… Now I have 20-something kids coming up to me saying “I used to watch the show when I was 9!"