Endtroducing - review

"I was scared, I have to admit- at first..." - Mutual Slump, track 8, Endtroducing

And once again, the way a generation understood music was changed. From the narrow perspective, DJ Shadow had almost single-handedly made instrumental hip-hop a credible genre, but more than that, the way in which he approached his music truly brought a sense of artistry and culture (back) into hip-hop, reminding all the heads out there who might have forgotten that this hip-hop music is an art-form, and it can sit comfortably right next to any other art-form, be it photography, paint or cinema. Indeed it was the ways in which Shadow merged all of these elements together that not only strengthened hip-hop at one of it's vulnerable times, but brought in so many more fans.

I remember hearing Building Steam with a grain of Salt. I will never, ever forget the feeling as the song faded out. I must have been 17 at the time, and the feeling that welled up inside me as the beautiful piano sample played out was 'I've never heard anything like this before'. It was instantly likeable, instantly cinematic, grand and sumptuous, here was a man who knew how to pull the right strings. The ominous voice still echoes in my mind, the perfectly chilled californian tones casually let us know the truth, "It's like, it's not really me, the music's coming through me..."

Like all albums that truly changed things, there are elements of the past, and elements of the wild experimental future, and most importantly perhaps, absolutely none of 'the present'. The past is best represented in funky tracks like The Number Song & What does your Soul look like (Part 1). The future was there for all of us to digest, to comprehend in our own way. It was represented in the meandering, wandering spirit of the Changeling, which, put simply, changes, evolving and discovering new areas at every turn. Like a robotic space-probe sent into alien territory, the baseline prods and pokes around clumsily, unleashing exotic guitar samples that turn into flute, that turn into space saxaphone that rides us out into a journey of extended synth heaven.

We were narrow minded hip-hop heads before Endtroducing dropped. None of us would like to have thought of ourselves as narrow minded, but we were, we must have been. Why else would we have been so surprised (even if it were pleasantly so) at hearing rock guitars, why else were we so shocked to hear the rave tempo of Napalm Brain/Scatterbrain, or the wild drumming of Stem/Long Stem ? Why else were we slightly embaressed and quieting our love for the pure jazz that was What does your Soul look like? We were children, brought into a new era by a man with a vision bigger than ours. No one dreamed of this music before it was made except DJ Shadow, it was his vision, and he's inspired so many more because of that open, inclusive approach to creating music. On a personal note I'd like to say that DJ Shadow gave birth to me as an artist. He let that vision of something bigger than hip-hop, and yet at the same time, still undeniably hip-hop, flourish in the face of all those who were content to let hip-hop carry on in the gutter.

In reality though, what was he really doing? Shadow was only bringing those who had forgotten back to the true ways of hip-hop music. The days when Afrika Bambaataa made people scratch their heads because he was sampling what was wrongly seen as clumsy white rock & roll, the days when the people quickly stopped scratching their heads when they realised how dope these musical hybrids sounded. Hip-hop, when performed in all it's conceptual perfection, is the essence of humanity, (yes!) for how else does this world revolve without different cultures and styles intermingling for the benefit of a greater good? There is no music, there is only hip-hop. Nothing else, if its contained under a genre, can ever be as progressive as hip-hop. Shadow proved on this record that all music is hip-hop, and true hip-hop is all music.

It goes without saying that this skilful and evocative music is timeless, if you are one of the few who haven't heard it, then hear it. Let it be a soundtrack to your life for a while, you'll look back on it with warmth one day in the future, trust me.

Y.Misdaq aka Yoshi, 22 Nov 2003