I don't know, but I've never liked DJ Shadow. I've never been able to listen to any of his albums all the way through. He's overrated; there's nothing to his albums, like when you're the last one to get to the donut box and there's just a little bit of frosting left.
Screeeeeeech, hold up.
Endtroducing is a bona fide classic. It is the greatest produced hip hop album ever, period. It should be listened to from front to back, there is such a unity with those songs.
It is one of the few albums that clicked instantly for me. Like it was so obvious how great the album was.
How DJ Shadow resurrected these forgotten artists dwelling in the basement of a record shop, breathing new life into them and making it work is astonishing.
I love Shadow's navel gazing throughout the album and those moments of pure transcendence.
Everything about it is just flawless.
Nobody will ever to reach those heights again, it was the record of a lifetime, but in that record it contains many lifetimes.
I know this is coming across as ultra pretentious, but I couldn't imagine life without that album. It totally changed me and completely changed my artistic direction forever.
There's Endtroducing and then everything else when it comes to hip-hop beats. And from a white dude nontheless.
Now I liked The Private Press a lot too, actually. And his work with UNKLE on Psyence Fiction.
There was a limited release album he did called Diminishing Returns, which was a 2 hour set on John Peel's radio program (or maybe it was just BBC), great stuff though.
Yeah his current work is garbage. Especially the Outsider. Terrible album, but I will still applaud him for trying something new even if it doesn't work.
His fanbase I think is pretty terrible in how the react to his new work, well of course he will never make another Endtroducing, and why should he? You are either a fan of the album or the artist, as he said.
But really I could talk forever about Endtroducing. How he samples brilliantly the drummer talking about how he is a teacher and a student of the drums, and makes a mockery of him, then blows him away with his own drumming. Or all of the other samples from Twin Peaks to Prince of Darkness that work so seamlessly.