Herbie Hancock's work in the early 1980s, particularly his collaboration with Bill Laswell on the album Future Shock, played a pivotal role in defining the genre by incorporating electro and hip-hop rhythms.
By the late 1980s, many hip-hop musicians were exploring jazz-rap, including groups like Gang Starr, The Roots, A Tribe Called Quest, and Nas.
In the mid-1990s and early 2000s, downtempo artists such as Jazztronik, St Germain, Trüby Trio, DJ Takemura, Perry Hemus, and Jazzanova delved deeper into jazz.
During the same period, producers of intelligent dance music, including notable names like Squarepusher and Spring Heel Jack, and later London Elektricity and Landslide, also showed interest in nu jazz.
Figures from hardcore and breakcore scenes, such as Alec Empire, Nic Endo, and Venetian Snares, experimented with a harsher and more noisy variant of nu jazz.