First of all, I want to point out that no matter how lame he'll ever come to be, I will always love and respect Josh Davis aka DJ Shadow. His groundbreaking album 'Endtroducing......' proved sampling is an art and opened the door to jazz, blues, soul and funk for a lot of hiphopheadz like me. I had the privilege to see him perform twice and I consider those concerts to be two of the best I've ever witnessed.
For his third official release, 'The Outsider', Shadow was inspired by the local Bay Area hyphy-sound. This crunk-subgenre was popularised by rappers Keak Da Sneak and E-40 (both featured on 'The Outsider') and it's main goal is "getting stupid" and "going dumb". Not quite the stuff one would expect the guy who crafted 'Midnight In A Perfect World' or 'Mutual Slump' to bring, but you can't expect him not experimenting either, so... I gave it a listen. When I tell you 'The Outsider' is the only Shadow-production I don't own, it should give you an idea of how much I didn't like it. Listen to crap like '3 Freaks (ft. Keak Da Sneak & Turf Talk)', 'Seein Thangs (ft. David Banner)' or silly pop-rock like 'Erase You (ft. Chris James)' and try not to vomit.
In fact, there was only one song that I instantly adored (I absolutely disliked most of the album) and that's the un-Shadow-like 'This Time (I'm Gonna Try It My Way)'. This string-coated soultrack is very catchy and sounds like a rare groove Davis found while diggin' in the crates, but after checking the credits, I noticed that Shadow was helped by The Heliocentrics and The London Session Orchestra. The excellent singing is uncredited, since Shadow found the vocals on abondoned tapes he found in an old recording studio.
Shadow, I know you've tried it your way this time, but for music's sake, please do it the Endtroducing......-way!
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