Cowboy Bebop is a Japanese neo-noir space Western anime television series which aired on TV Tokyo and Wowow from 1998 to 1999. It was created and animated by Sunrise, led by a production team of director Shinichirō Watanabe, screenwriter Keiko Nobumoto, character designer Toshihiro Kawamoto, mechanical designer Kimitoshi Yamane, and composer Yoko Kanno, who are collectively billed as Hajime Yatate.
Yoko Kanno is a Japanese composer, arranger and music producer of soundtracks for anime series, video games, television dramas and movies. She has written scores for Cowboy Bebop, Terror in Resonance, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Wolf's Rain, Turn A Gundam and Darker than Black. Kanno is a keyboardist and the frontwoman for Seatbelts, who perform many of her compositions.
Shinichirō Watanabe is a Japanese anime television and film director, best known for directing the critically acclaimed and commercially successful anime series Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo, and Space Dandy. An auteur of the industry, Watanabe's work is characterized by evocative uses of music, mature themes, and the incorporation of multiple genres.
Cowboy Bebop: The Movie, known in Japan as Cowboy Bebop: Knockin' on Heaven's Door, is a 2001 Japanese anime science fiction action film based on the 1998 anime series Cowboy Bebop created by Hajime Yatate. Several staff from the original series worked on the film, including director Shinichirō Watanabe, writer Keiko Nobumoto, character designer/animation director Toshihiro Kawamoto, and composer Yoko Kanno. The Japanese and English voice casts also reprised their roles.
Tulivu-Donna Lynn Cumberbatch was a jazz singer from Brooklyn. Her African name "Tulivu" translates from Swahili loosely to "beautiful," and her middle name, "Donna Lynn" is derived from "Donna Lee," the jazz piece made popular by Charlie Parker. Her father, Harold Cumberbatch was a baritone saxophone player. She died on January 17, 2022.
Emily Bindiger is an American singer who is part of the a cappella group the Accidentals. She played the role of Francine in the children's show The Great Space Coaster.
Seatbelts is a Japanese band led by composer and instrumentalist Yoko Kanno. An international ensemble comprising both a stable lineup of musicians and various collaborators, the band was assembled by Kanno in 1998 to perform the soundtrack music for the Cowboy Bebop anime series. Their repertoire covered and blended many different genres, mainly jazz, but also a wide variety of rock, electronic, funk, blues, orchestral pop and other styles of genres.
Tsuneo Imahori is a Japanese guitarist and composer.
Ilaria Graziano is an Italian singer. She gained popularity with the release of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex and the subsequent original soundtracks, composed by Yoko Kanno.
Cowboy Bebop: Tsuioku no Serenade is a PlayStation 2 action/beat 'em up video game from Bandai, released in Japan on August 25, 2005. It has an original story based on the anime series Cowboy Bebop.
Steve Conte is an American musician, songwriter, guitarist, music producer, and lead singer of the band Steve Conte NYC. He has worked with Japanese composer Yoko Kanno on a variety of anime soundtracks including Wolf's Rain, Cowboy Bebop, RahXephon and Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 2nd GIG. He is the former lead guitarist of the New York Dolls.
Mai Yamane is a Japanese singer, known for her work on the Cowboy Bebop soundtrack with Yoko Kanno and for her 1980 hit Tasogare.
Aoi Tada is a Japanese singer and former voice actress. She formerly belonged to the Gekidan Himawari theatre group. She voiced the role of Edward Wong Hau Pepelu Tivrusky IV in Cowboy Bebop and performed an insert song to the series, "Wo Qui Non Coin".
Everready (The Religion) is the fifth studio album by rapper Tech N9ne. The album was released in 2006 as a "Collector's Edition" CD that contains a second CD featuring 14 songs from Tech N9ne as well as other Strange Music artists. "Jellysickle" & "My Wife, My Bitch, My Girl" also appeared on the 25 To Life video game soundtrack, while a censored version of "The Beast" was featured on the soundtrack to Madden NFL 06, released in 2005. In 2010, the song "Riot Maker" was used by Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (TNA) as the official theme for their Hard Justice pay-per-view. The album debuted at #50 on the Billboard 200 with 22,000 copies sold in its first week. The song "Caribou Lou" was later certified Gold in 2012, and certified platinum later in 2017.
Cowboy Bebop is a PlayStation game published by Bandai, based on the anime of the same name.
Paul Shapiro is a jazz, world, and klezmer saxophonist from New York City.
Kids on the Slope is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Yuki Kodama. It was serialized in the manga magazine Monthly Flowers from 2007 to 2012, and was published as ten tankōbon volumes by Shogakukan. The series follows Kaoru Nishimi, an introverted high school student who discovers jazz music through his friendship with his delinquent classmate Sentarō Kawabuchi.
Stanley Robinson, known as Substantial, is a hip hop recording artist from Prince George's County, Maryland. He now operates out of Virginia.
The music of the 2004 anime series Samurai Champloo, created by the studio Manglobe, was produced by a team of four composers drawn from the hip hop musical scene. They were Shinji "Tsutchie" Tsuchida of Shakkazombie, Fat Jon, Nujabes and Force of Nature. The musical direction was chosen by series creator and director Shinichirō Watanabe as part of his planned blending of hip hop culture with the anime's setting in the Edo period, additionally incorporating contributions from guest artists. The opening theme "Battlecry" was performed and co-written by Shing02, while the various ending themes were performed by Minmi, Kazami, and Azuma Riki. The final episode's ending theme was "San Francisco", licensed from the rapper band Midicronica.
