The hip-hop/jazz producer Nujabes and rapper Shing02 began collaborating back in 2000 with the idea of creating a series of songs. Along with being joined by many collaborators along the years, the album Luv(Sic) Hexalogy was eventually completed in earnest in 2015 and culminated as a six-part series that played on a number of introspective ideas such as the fatality of love, how the world and music connects us, and life after death.

As Nujabes and Shing02 began working on part 4 of Luv(sic) in 2010, Jeff Resureccion - a close friend of Shing02 - passed away and inspired the two to create a solemn, heavy-hearted part 5. Months later, Nujabes himself was involved in a fatal car accident and passed away soon after.

The main inspiration behind my design comes from the objects and patterns seen from zen gardens.

I chose to use sand as the base of the composition because the album often philosophizes one’s journey through life, death, and onwards. Sand is analogous with time, taking centuries to form rocks and is an integral part of the hourglass. People also change over time, and sand embodies this by continuously being reshaped and reformed.

Another inspiration was the waved patterns seen from landing water droplets. The waves from a water droplet all begin and end in the same way yet remain connected throughout their journey; a natural analogy to the album’s message of interconnectedness and coming full circle from start to finish.