I often wonder about DJ Shadow, and when he was working on Endtroducing...... if he knew it was going to get such critical acclaim, be such a landmark in the hip-hop genre? I mean, the album made the Guinness Book of World Records for fuck's sake (for being the first album constructed entirely of sampled material), has appeared on so many "Best Of" lists and has legitimized turntablism and sampling as true art forms- this might be the one album your mom could name (because of its inclusion on Time Magazine's 2006 Best Albums of All-Time list). Seriously...
So we've all read the hype and most of us have listened for ourselves- this one's for you fence-sitters (I'm trying to sway you over to our side), or you guys that haven't heard it yet (casual hip-hop fans: once you've heard this and you're still convinced that "hip-hop isn't real music...", please send me your address so I can mail you the back of my hand because you deserve a slap!) because I think the proof is in the pudding.
This took like two whole years to produce- I can only imagine the frustration (if you've ever messed around with or own an Akai MPC-60, you know what I'm talking about) trying to make this work, and as coherent and flowing as this record is; the fact remains that it's a record in the truest sense of the word- as in the record of an event: the event being a man, a turntable, 60,000+ records (it's been said this man's collection rivals most large music shops) and that old sampler coming together in perfect harmony.
I'm also including the album he did with Cut Chemist (formerly one-half of Jurassic 5's production team); 1999's Brainfreeze, another album made completely with samples from old soul, funk, jazz and rock 45's. They did it tag-team style, recorded in one take as a practice for a double DJ set they were scheduled to play live at the Future Primitive Soundsession in San Francisco.
The man is a genius, yo. Get hip to this shit, now!
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