By Nick Psillas
When people think of the label, “hip-hop,” they don’t normally picture a white kid from Southern California. In 1996, DJ/Producer Josh Davis (a.k.a. DJ Shadow) changed all that. In one fell swoop, Shadow released his first solo record, and gained credit for creating the half-popular “Trip-Hop” trend that followed through to the late ’90s. Hemade the Guinness Book of World Records for creating the first album based entirely on sampled sources. Shadow sampled everything from old radio and T.V. commercials, archived speeches, drum loops, and artists as diverse as The Beastie Boys, Stanley Clarke, and Masters of Ceremony. And that’s just on the forty-eight-second intro track.
Davis is less a musician than a conductor on this album, piecing together rhythms and movements, queueing up every single instrument and putting them into perfect positon. And the beauty of Davis’ work is that, despite only using pre-existing sounds, he manages to make the entire record sound like one living, breathing organism. The album sounds alive in a way that every other electronic album before it (not to mention the ones that tried to copy it afterward) had never been able to accomplish. Tracks like the opener, “Building Steam With a Grain of Salt,” and the single, “Midnight in a Perfect World,” both sway and swell with bold, shimmering keys, while the drums in the background crash away almost sloppily, but the closer you listen, the more you can see where it’s all going. These songs are, dare I say, like The Beatles at their finest moments; You can imagine every note, even if you can’t hear it, and you know exactly which note is coming next. That’s not to say that the album is predictable; it’s saying that it’s got such an understandable flow to it at points that you can feel Shadow’s vision, and you know exactly what he’s trying to do.
However, not every song is designed in such a way. The more epic tracks like “Changeling/Transmission 1” and “Napalm Brain/Scatter Brain” switch channels without warning, careening from metal blast beats to funk rhythms to old-fashioned hip-hop and soul breaks. But even with this seemingly sporadic and A.D.D.-like form of “songwriting,” it all makes sense. Unlike most albums or songs where one sees frequent changes in tune and time, “Endtroducing…” neither needs or provides the time to readjust. Shadow keeps on like a steam locomotive with the brakes cut, stopping for nothing, flying through landscapes-all the while with its eye on the light at the end of the tunnel.
Even forgetting the sheer scope and mythology surrounding this album, it’s undeniable that this is not only DJ Shadow’s strongest work, not only one of the best albums of the ’90s, but one of the greatest hip-hop albums ever conceived.

DJ Shawdow (nastylittleman.com)