Shadow's fall and rise

A little over a decade ago a young producer named Josh Davis – aka DJ Shadow – released his debut album on a small, independent UK label. Today, Endtroducing is still lauded as one of the best hip hop albums ever.
“It’s so funny,” Shadow muses, his oversized clothes and baseball cap contrasting curiously with his serious demeanour, “I don’t really remember who I was when I was working on Endtroducing. There’s a big difference between when you’re 22 and 32.”
For a long time, it seemed as if the legacy of that record would cast a crippling shadow over Davis, who would record just one more solo LP – the underwhelming Private Press – in the next 10 years.
Recently, however, he seems to have finally left Entroducing behind, releasing The Outsider – which is very different from his previous work – to a generally positive critical reaction. Moving on from the sample-heavy template of his earlier records was, he feels, a liberating and very necessary step.
“I felt like at a certain point using only samples was holding me back as an artist,” says the San Francisco native. “I feel like the Private Press – and this is going to sound kind of lame – but I feel like it was kind of a gift to my hardcore fans to try and top Endtroducing. Afterwards, I felt that was it like, ‘I’m not going to make any more albums on the MPC sampler. There are just too many different things I want to do.'”
Shadow today wishes to be known as a musician rather than simply a carpetbagger who stitches together other people’s sounds.
“My goals are more long-term than just being remembered as the sample guy,” he explains. “In that respect, with The Outsider I really feel like I was finally able to get back to doing what I want to do at my own pace, which I think is a quick pace because the one complaint I always hear is, ‘What’s all this new shit, why don’t you do what you’re known for and stay in your little comfortable box so we don’t have to keep re-interpreting who you are and what you do?’ And obviously no artist ever wants to hear that. I definitely never intended to repeat myself, ever.”

Shadow began DJ-ing as a teenager on community radio, scoring a couple of independent releases on Boy Area hip-hop label Solesides. It was then that James Lavell, founder of UK-based Mo’ Wax Records, heard his work and offered to release his debut LP with full distribution. The rest is hip hop history.
The association with Lavelle and Mo’ Wax paved the way for the second project for which Shadow is best known, UNKLE.
Essentially, UNKLE is Lavelle’s baby in terms of organisation, style and concept. For each of the three UNKLE albums, however, he has collaborated with different producers, including Shadow.
By far the best selling and most acclaimed Unkle release to date was their first full length LP, 1998’s Psyence Fiction. And this, of course, is the album which had Shadow at the controls. With guest appearances from such A-listers as Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, Ian Brown, The Beastie Boys’ Mike D, Badly Drawn Boy and Richard Ashcroft, Psyence Fiction was always going to be a heavyweight project and was ludicrously hyped before its release.
With expectations running high, some found the project to be underwhelming. Many more, however, judged it to be a triumph.
“I remember I’d read a review and be really excited,” says Shadow. “I felt like I’d really grown between Endtroducing and UNKLE, and the review would say, ‘We’re giving the album X amount of stars because James Lavelle’s hair looks funny,’ or, ‘Look at his clothes, who does he think he is?’ and I’d be like, ‘But what about the music?’”
Either way, Shadow hasn’t worked with UNKLE since. One wonders if all the hostility put him off?
“UNKLE existed before me and it existed after me.” Shadow professes. “To use a modern example, it’d be like the Gorillaz: [Dan The] Automator did the first one, Danger Mouse the second one. It really is Damon Albarn’s project in the same way that UNKLE is James Lavelle’s project – and at any one time he’ll just bring in whoever he thinks is going to bring a fresh approach. So Tim Goldsworthy, who went on to help form DFA, was UNKLE with Lavelle before me – and then, after me, he used a guy named Rich File. So for me it was a good opportunity and good learning experience. And that’s all it was ever intended to be”.