A Quick Salute To 30 Years Of DJ Shadow's Endtroducing

The Questlove Show hoped to record an episode with DJ Shadow while he was on the East Coast for the 30th-anniversary tour of Endtroducing….., but scheduling didn’t work out this time. Instead, Open Mike Eagle—who is performing on some of Shadow’s current tour dates—and Cousin Jake celebrate Shadow’s landmark debut, its lasting impact, and more. They talk about crate-digging in dollar bins, Shadow’s little-known production work for Paris, Gift of Gab’s verse on “Midnight in a Perfect World,” and the difference between a beatmaker and a producer. They also explain why Shadow’s music demands active listening—not background or the dreaded “beats to study to.” See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:59Speaker 03

  The Questlove Show is a production of iHeart Radio.

• 1:15Speaker 04

  What's up, open mic eagle?

• 1:16Speaker 03

  Man, I'm chilling. How are you cousin Jake, cousin brother Jake?

• 1:20Speaker 04

  I mean, we were talking about a minute ago. I think it is that season of fatigue, but no one's gonna notice that today.

• 1:26Speaker 03

  No, never. We shouldn't even have brought it up.

• 1:29Speaker 04

  Well, are you a caffeine consumer?

• 1:33Speaker 03

  Oh, gosh, I am mostly caffeine. I don't even have blood anymore.

• 1:36Speaker 04

  How do you?

• 1:37Speaker 03

  No, I'm not sophisticated, so I have, you know, like a regular coffee maker.

• 1:44Speaker 04

  Drip coffee?

• 1:44Speaker 03

  Drip coffee, and I don't even put fancy stuff in it. I just buy ground stuff that smells good to me.

• 1:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:52Speaker 03

  And I make a big pot of it every day and I drink it all by myself.

• 1:56Speaker 04

  Whole pot?

• 1:57Speaker 03

  I mean, so luckily, I don't have the sort of coffee maker that keeps it warm.

• 2:03Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 2:03Speaker 03

  Because if I did, then I probably would drink the whole pot. But after like cup three, it's like it starts getting lukewarm and I'm like, okay, I'm okay.

• 2:12Speaker 04

  So, oh, so you're like on a ticking clock. You like gotta consume it before it gets cold.

• 2:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, and it takes, you know, it, because it's like a thermal sort of pot. So it keeps things relatively warm. But I like it hot, I like hot coffee.

• 2:26Speaker 04

  Like, is that the first thing you do?

• 2:27Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 2:28Speaker 04

  Nice.

• 2:29Speaker 03

  Wake up, put my coffee on.

• 2:32Speaker 04

  Just like in the commercials.

• 2:32Speaker 03

  Melon through the house. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The best part of waking up, all of that, you know what I'm saying?

• 2:37Speaker 04

  And I do think that that, like, I do my best work, you know. I have been somebody without an office for almost all of my life, you know. So my office, it can be a, you know, crazy Dunkin' Donuts in Philadelphia with folks doing things they shouldn't in the bathroom. It can be a very, you know, very styling and profiling boutique coffee shop. I like it all, but when it comes to stuff at home, I always want like what, I like the house to smell like it did at my grandfather's house. And he was drinking that big plastic, I mean, he was even the type that would put the stuff that you just stirred into the coffee, like the.

• 3:20Speaker 03

  The crystals? The coffee crystals? Like senka?

• 3:25Speaker 04

  I always laugh at line in Fast Times at Ridgemont High where he says, I switched to senka, so have a heart. Yeah, man, but I'm with you. I'm a classic person. I did have a strong cup of leftover coffee, like 30 minutes. So, yeah, no one's gonna know we're tired.

• 3:41Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 3:42Speaker 04

  Because we're both here and to talk about DJ Shadow and the 30th anniversary, which has already happened, of Introducing, you know, his debut album. And correct me if I'm wrong, but you're doing some touring work with Shadow right now.

• 3:57Speaker 03

  I am. I am on shows with DJ Shadow, two shows in Chicago and one in Nashville all next month.

• 4:04Speaker 04

  Wow. Have you ever, you know, worked with Shadow, performed with Shadow before?

• 4:09Speaker 03

  I have not, never worked with him, never met him. This will all be a first.

• 4:13Speaker 04

  Awesome, awesome. Are you out there alone or is Kenny with you?

• 4:17Speaker 03

  Oh, I'm out there alone.

• 4:18Speaker 04

  Got you. That's really exciting and to have, I would venture to bet that you probably started listening to DJ Shadow at a time when you were living in Chicago.

• 4:28Speaker 03

  Well, I was living in Southern Illinois at the time. I was in college is when, I believe I was in college when Introducing came out. I remember hearing it a lot in college and it's funny because the thing that I remember most about it, and follow me here, folks, don't take this the wrong way. My main memory was being annoyed by it.

• 4:50Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 4:51Speaker 03

  And the reason was, I and most of my friends were big freestyle rappers. And what this album sounded like to me at first was just a bunch of beats with no rappers on them. And so, we would just rap over it all the time. We would just have it on, people would put it on, and we would just rap and rap and rap and rap and rap. And I remember thinking of these beats, these pieces of music, as beats that needed rap verses on them. Like, I wanted to hear this as a rap album. Was like my main takeaway from the first time I was hearing it. But I was also a crazy person back then.

• 5:32Speaker 03

  Like, I didn't, I didn't, I was very dismissive of a lot of things very quickly if they didn't suit my very specific hip hop needs.

• 5:41Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 5:41Speaker 03

  At the time. And so, in looking back at the album now, I just see it so differently. I see it so different now. And it's like, I think I started to get it long before now, but in listening to it again now, I'm like, oh, right. Like, I can see why this was as impactful as it was and see what I was missing about it in that time, because my needs were so specific.

• 6:09Speaker 04

  Interesting. And I mean, at that point, and I should say this, one of the reasons you and I are talking about it, we wanted to have Shadow on the Questlove Show. And, you know, Shadow is West Coast based, he's on tour right now. I'm gonna try to see him in Philly. Again, that's totally up to childcare and things going on, but we weren't able to make it happen. Amir was emphatic, he wanted Shadow on. Shadow was adjusting things in his schedule and it just couldn't, it couldn't happen. One of the things we've been trying to do, you know, on the full-length episodes of the Questlove Show is have them in studio. There are times, I mean, you, last year, did yours virtually. We had Pasta Nus and George Anne and a few Manny Fresh that have been virtual.

• 6:52Speaker 04

  Whenever possible, we really try to wait till folks are in either New York or LA, wherever the show is, to do these. And I couldn't let the anniversary slide, nor could you, without talking about it. But my question to you is, you know, when that album came out, were you up on Black Alissious or up on Soul Sides or any of that?

• 7:10Speaker 03

  So I was up on Black Alissious. I had heard some singles. So, the majority of my rap listening at that time was either albums that I bought with my own money or friends of mine bought. And I had some DJ homies on campus too, because remember, this was all in college. And they would make tapes and sometimes their tapes was just my listening diet, because the only radio station around that played hip hop was me and my friends. We had a show on the campus station and we could, we would just play whatever we had in our collections that didn't have curse words in it. That was everybody's hip hop diet came from us, except for the DJs we knew who made tapes. So, the DJ homie would put Black Alissious songs on tapes and Latirics songs.

• 7:52Speaker 03

  So like, you know, we'd hear that stuff and that stuff was so thrilling. I mean, I came to be a part of the LA underground scene later, but really, aside from what I'd heard earlier with like AC alone and Micah Nine and Abstract Rude, the next wave that I heard, even before I heard of, you know, Murs and the Living Legends, I heard Black Alissious and Latirics. So I thought that stuff was mind blowing to me.

• 8:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 8:20Speaker 03

  And then the same DJ homie would be the one that put, uh, put Shadow on the tables, you know, and, and he wanted us to just listen to it. But we were, we were knuckleheads. We were knuckleheads. We didn't have time to sit and listen to beats.

• 8:37Speaker 04

  Man, that's, uh, that's pretty cool. So with that album, I mean, now, and you said that over the years, it's, it's like, I think any body of work should. I mean, things evolve, our relationships with albums and songs and artists evolve. But how do you, um, how do you process it now?

• 8:54Speaker 03

  Well, it was a little bit after that time in my life, because during that time in my life, generally, I had a hard time with any real instrumental music. I hadn't even really gotten deep into jazz yet at that point. It was like my, my listening diet was underground hip hop and like alt-rock, and that was pretty much it. So my, my horizon started to expand a little bit after that, to where I would discover a band like Stereolab, for instance. And I fell in love with Stereolab immediately, just because their sense of melody just grabbed me by the shirt collar from the start. But I can listen to Introducing now and hear like, oh, these are similar.

• 9:38Speaker 03

  You know, this blend of like orchestral, jazz almost, breakbeat, like drum and bass, they're painting in a similar way, Stereolab. I just couldn't see it, because the needle on Introducing was a little bit more towards hip hop in a way where I was just hearing it as beats. But now I can hear it as, oh, these are dope, like compositions, and really take them in that way.

• 10:14Speaker 03

  Hey, it's Nile Rodgers, host of Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series. I'm driving across the country, meeting some of today's most fascinating artists. We're exploring the stories before the moment that changed everything. This week, I'm joined by my friend, John Ledge. How does music actually enter your mind?

• 10:36Speaker 04

  I'm not sure why or how the music comes to me, but I think people who love music and write music, our brains are just filled with music.

• 10:45Speaker 03

  Right.

• 10:46Speaker 04

  Like, we have listened to so much music, we've been a part of so much music. I think of the story that I want to tell, the mood that I want to create with the music, start playing chords, see where they lead me.

• 10:57Speaker 03

  Sometimes, I'm just not even thinking about music, right? And I hear this little thing, and I go, oh, that could be this.

• 11:07Speaker 04

  You know, you just have to be ready for when the inspiration hits.

• 11:10Speaker 03

  When it comes.

• 11:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 11:11Speaker 03

  Experience Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series on the iHeartRadio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind every chart-topping hit, you know by heart there's an original. Writing it someplace where nobody was listening. Some basement, some bedroom, somebody with headphones on at 3:00 in the morning chasing a thing they couldn't even name yet. Behind the culture that marks a generation, there's an original. Already moving, already shaking things up, already looping that one bar, already off-tempo, on purpose, because on purpose was the point. Behind every night that changed the room, somebody had to walk in first.

• 11:55Speaker 03

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• 12:14Speaker 04

  You know, Amir talks a lot on QLS about, you know, when It Takes a Nation of Millions came out, and he realized the incredible added value of his parents' extensive record collection. Because, you know, the samples, both, you know, first with Public Enemy, and then a year later with Three Feet High and Rising, and Paul's Boutique. And I had kind of a similar epiphany of like, you know, even the first time I heard Can I Kick It, like, my mom and my dad weren't Velvet Underground fans, but they had radio on where I knew Lou Reed walk on the wild side.

• 12:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:49Speaker 04

  So to hear that show up in a rap record was amazing to me, because it just showed me of this connection of the music I grew up with and this whole vocabulary. And with Shadow, learning years later that, you know, Introducing is not an album comprised of samples that he was traveling the globe for. A lot of it was just sort of like you see him in the film Scratch, in the basement, you know, I think at one point in that movie, in that documentary, he says like, "One time I'm digging and I found like a, some animal, like a bird, a dead bird down here." Like, he is in the catacombs of record stores, pulling from the dollar bin, so to speak, to grab these sources and give them new life. You know, a lot of, and I don't want to say forgotten records, but like, and then when

• 13:33Speaker 04

  you see that film later and you understand, like, Shadow gets kind of deep with it. But he does so, and I really commend this, like, he's not pretentious about it at all. He didn't market it as like, "I'm doing this." Just the album is made the way that it's made, and my appreciation, that idea of recycling sound into something new is brilliant. And, you know, I didn't, I certainly didn't catch Introducing in 96, but I would have caught it in like 98, 99.

• 14:03Speaker 03

  That's around when I would have heard it, too. I didn't realize, yeah, 96, right, 30-year anniversary, so I would have heard it around 98, 99 as well.

• 14:08Speaker 04

  Exactly. And it's funny, because I was, you know, in a different way than you, but like, I was that guy who was buying a lot of my first CDs and vinyl, literally out of like the 50-cent and dollar bins. And there's an album, you remember the artist out of San Francisco, Paris?

• 14:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 14:26Speaker 04

  I've interviewed him over the years. I always thought, you know, history doesn't give him the credit he deserves.

• 14:30Speaker 03

  I agree.

• 14:31Speaker 04

  But Shadow did a lot of programming on Paris's second album.

• 14:34Speaker 03

  I did not know that.

• 14:36Speaker 04

  And, you know, to learn that, and then again, I mean, you and I had a recent conversation about Vince Staples and these kind of pockets and compartments that people put things in, but to know that a producer like Shadow, who's, you know, working with Leterix and Blackalicious and the Soul Sides crew, is also doing things with an artist like Paris in the Bay, again, just shows that these boundaries don't exist. But I was a huge fan of that album, and then to see him making this very instrumental art stuff really grabbed me. And I, I always held The Gift of Gab as one of the greatest MCs.

• 15:08Speaker 03

  Rest in peace, Gift of Gab, one of the most incredible.

• 15:10Speaker 04

  Yeah. And Midnight in a Perfect World, like, to me, I just, even before the anniversary was upon us, I played that whole album, and it's one of the newer editions that has the remixes and the B-sides. But even my wife, who is not the biggest hip-hop head, was like, "This is incredible." The poetry and the layers of these sounds, and it's an album that has held up so well. And I have to say, have, first of all, have you ever seen Shadow live?

• 15:36Speaker 03

  No, I've never seen him live.

• 15:38Speaker 04

  I have wanted to every time. I've seen Cut Chemist a number of times.

• 15:42Speaker 03

  Seen Cut Chemist quite a few times, too.

• 15:44Speaker 04

  I want to, I want to see this tour. I hope I can pull it off, and I wish you were part of the Philly date.

• 15:50Speaker 03

  I wish I was, too.

• 15:51Speaker 04

  But what do you, I mean, now, there's all these terms that didn't exist in the 90s, or didn't seem to at least, of trip-hop and downtempo. And I'm sure they did, but they weren't in the lexicon where they are now, instrumental hip-hop. But like, what do you see as the impact of Introducing on a genre or subgenre?

• 16:11Speaker 03

  Well, I think if you fast-forward 20 years at least, like, I don't know if you get A Flying Lotus if there's no Introducing. What it also made me remember was LP's A Little Johnny from the Hospital instrumental album, which I also, actually, even beyond this, I actually ignored that project at the time, because I just wanted to hear Company Flow. I didn't want to hear.

• 16:37Speaker 04

  For the same reasons, right?

• 16:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, and the scratch pickles were becoming very popular at that time. You had like Wave Twisters and stuff.

• 16:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, Mix Master Mike had all those albums.

• 16:48Speaker 03

  Exactly. And so that was stuff that I was like, oh, I could, I could get that, because I was into the performance aspect of it. But when you, when you listen to Shadow, what you hear is like instrumental music put together by somebody who is in hip-hop, but like, it's being put together with the care of like a film score. You know? Like, that level of attention brought to each song, and then brought to the interlude between each songs. I mean, I don't think Prince Paul put out his first instrumental album till after this, that came out.

• 17:24Speaker 04

  He might have, the Psychoanalysis, you mean?

• 17:26Speaker 03

  I guess there were a couple instrumental pieces.

• 17:28Speaker 04

  You're right, though.

• 17:29Speaker 03

  Uh, like, yeah, You Made Me on Psychoanalysis, right, that could sit, that sits next to this.

• 17:35Speaker 04

  Right.

• 17:35Speaker 03

  You know what I'm saying? And, and you're right, it's like, there's a feeling, these pieces are put together with feeling and emotional intention, to where you sit and listen to this thing like an experience, in a way that I can see now, I didn't have the intentions for then, but this is reflective of a ton of music that I love now. Like I said, not only Stereolab, which is something that developed on the other side of the world, which I don't know how direct the connection would be, but specifically like Flying Lotus, and a lot of like the low-end Theory LA Beat scene.

• 18:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 18:11Speaker 03

  And the jazz-level attention to detail that they bring into instrumental albums that have jazz aesthetics, but still have this almost unspoken hip-hop undercurrent. I feel like that points back to this. I don't know if there's anything earlier than this that would, that would fit the bill.

• 18:34Speaker 04

  No, that's a really good point, and I, I mean, it's so interesting to hear your perspective of wanting, you know, A, wanting to rap on it, but B, at face value, wanting raps on it, you know? And what's interesting is, you know, you, I mentioned Gab on Introducing, and I think of like, You know, blueprint and copyright on RJ D2's Dead Ringer. And it's funny how these guys, and I know, you know, that was an album that I think was a next tent pole, you know, five or six years later in the space. But what's interesting, when you mentioned that intentionality and liken it to jazz, it's almost like that era of jazz in the sixties where you might have a vocalist on one or two tracks.

• 19:13Speaker 03

  Right.

• 19:13Speaker 04

  And as you're listening, it hits extra hard. And Shadow, definitely with his crew, with Latif and Lyrix Born and, yeah, the whole crew, they, they did that. And it really like, when you're listening to that album, you hunger for the raps. Not because, but like the, the words hit different when you've just had 30 minutes without. And I think there's something to be said for that. And definitely in these days where everything, we live in a shuffle culture. I know people aren't carrying iPods anymore, but everybody's playlisting. So to have a lean back experience, and I know you make lean back albums, but I'm curious of like, and I know you don't know, but I mean, does, is this one of those scenarios where he plays the album in sequence on tour or not?

• 19:57Speaker 03

  That's a great question. And I'll be, I'll be really interested to see that. I feel like whenever I go see artists play their classic album and they don't play it in sequence, I'm always a little surprised.

• 20:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 20:12Speaker 03

  And this is a case specifically where because there's not many words on it, I don't know if people are going to hunger to hear it in sequence in the same way. Like I think he might have a little more room to, to not disappoint anybody if he played it out of sequence for this one. But it is put together so intentionally that it might be hard for him not to, you know?

• 20:38Speaker 04

  Yeah. I always, and it was one of the questions I was gonna try to nudge Amir to ask. There was that period of time, I mean, you know, where Shadow did some stuff with Def Jukes, you know, he's done some stuff with Fonte. I mean, on his own albums, he's had albums that have had more vocal guests, but I hunger for some more MC collaborations in Shadows, in Shadows' career. Not to say that he hasn't given us enough, but I'm always curious what he's up to, especially in the wake of a tour like this.

• 21:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, cause I, I think, and this might be what I've been trying to say, and I think I might've actually just figured out how to say it, is that these are instrumentals that feel like songs to me. And that is why I wanted to hear lyrics on there when I first heard them, because they felt like songs without lyrics.

• 21:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 21:27Speaker 03

  You know? And so in his ability to craft pieces that are that song fertile, you know what I'm saying? Cause not everybody does that. Like it's the difference in a lot of senses between a beat maker and a producer.

• 21:43Speaker 04

  Right.

• 21:44Speaker 03

  Right? Like sometimes a beat maker will make a, a loop that's dope, right? But then that's just all the beat is. That's all of the pieces. But a producer knows how to make it move and make it have an intro and a bridge and, you know, rising action and falling action. And Shadows' capability of that, it does make you want to hear more songs with lyrics.

• 22:06Speaker 04

  Yeah. You connected it to some of the beat movement that you've been a part of in LA, but I never, I never put Shadow in that like beats to study to. That's one of my biggest beefs with, like, with modern day, like instrumental culture. There's no beat to study to. You can put something on. A lot of that stuff is hypnotic and designed to just let you focus and be background.

• 22:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:29Speaker 04

  With somebody like a Shadow is always active listening and that's where the beauty is, you know?

• 22:33Speaker 03

  Exactly. It's not, it's not made to be ignored in any sense.

• 22:37Speaker 04

  No, absolutely not. Well, you've incentivized a lot of folks in the Midwest, please see Shadow, but wherever he is, and I hope to manifest a proper, I just want to be a fly on the wall. DJ Shadow and Questlove conversation. I can only imagine the records and the influences and the things that those two guys would talk about. And now I'm just realizing, you know, the roots in Shadow were label mates for that weird window at MCA. When Black Licious was there, everyone, everyone ended up, like MCA was the ultimate team for one minute. And then, you know, everything changed.

• 23:11Speaker 03

  And everything too, yeah.

• 23:12Speaker 04

  Yeah. Zdilla and all of it. So, but, um, man, it's always a pleasure. I encourage everyone, you know, please, you know, stay in touch with the show. Whatever you got to say, please hit us up in the DMs, uh, for the QLS DMs or drop us a line through the contact us on Questlove Supreme. But open mic, this is the last thing I'm doing this week for work. It's always a pleasure to rap with you.

• 23:34Speaker 03

  Jake's clocking out.

• 23:35Speaker 04

  Well, not entirely.

• 23:36Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 23:37Speaker 04

  Last thing for today. But, um, I wish you safe travels, man. We're gonna talk soon, okay?

• 23:42Speaker 03

  All right, man. Take care, brother.

• 23:44Speaker 04

  Peace.

• 24:03Speaker 00

  Questlove Show is a production of iHeart Radio.

• 24:12Speaker 00

  Behind every chart topping hit, you know by heart, there's an original. Writing it someplace where nobody was listening. Behind the culture that marks a generation, there's an original. Already moving, already shaking things up. Behind every night that changed the room, somebody had to walk in first. Not knowing it would land, but doing it anyway. Originals are out there. Living stories worth telling. What's yours? Behind every original, live in Levis.

• 24:47Speaker 05

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