DJ Shadow - The Outsider (Island, 2006)

DJ Shadow
The Outsider
Island
2006

Rating: 6.5 wandering nomads out of 10

I’m sure there are many of you out there who eagerly anticipate every nugget of goodness that Josh Davis aka DJ Shadow puts forth to the world. God knows that describes me – I’ve spent more time and money than I care to admit trying to track down all of his albums, singles, limited edition bootlegs, recorded DJ sets, you name it. I’m known in my circle of friends for having serious attention deficit disorder when it comes to music, so the fact that I’ve felt strongly for Shadow for 10+ years says a lot in my book. Obviously, with such lofty praise comes high expectations, and no mortal man can fulfill these desires day in and day out. In other words, to get to the root of the issue, the new Shadow album is disappointing. And yet at the same time, it’s a pretty good record too.

First and foremost, this is not your typical Shadow collage of dark, obscure samples laced together flawlessly…this album feels more like a hip-hop mix tape. There are a few rock-oriented numbers and a couple of almost-typical Shadow tracks, but the overall feel is that of a current Bay Area mix tape; in other words, Shadow has done gone “hyphy”. I personally like pretty much everything on this album, but at no point do you really feel like you are listening to another DJ Shadow masterpiece, but rather the local college radio station. There is no flow between songs at all, which is probably the worst part of it – even this smorgasbord of tracks would be better suited to a different placement of song locations.

But on to the songs themselves – Shadow has assembled a fantastic cast of musicians to help him out on this album. The three best tracks in my opinion are assisted by David Banner on “Seein’ Thangs”, a tag-team of Q-Tip and long-time Shadow cohort Lateef on “Enuff”, and Phonte Coleman of Little Brother on “Backstage Girl”. The hyphy gets brung by Bay Area locals Turf Talk, The Federation, Keak da Sneak, and the legendary E-40. Add in the guitarist dudes from Kasabian, a couple of tracks with vocals by Chris James of Stateless, and a few other odds-n-ends and that is the record.

Make no mistake, there's going to be a lot of backlash over this release from long-time fans. Some will like it, others won’t, and I’m guessing all of them will be a little bummed (like me) that the album isn’t what they expected. All told, I still expect to listen ot this a lot, as the music is good – but when I’m really itching to hear some DJ Shadow, I doubt this release will ever be the first to pop into my mind.