***1/2 DJ Shadow
ENDTRODUCING . . .
(Mo Wax/ffrr)
Shadow's debut album is not rap music, or pop music, or dance music. It's
instrumental hip-hop made for listening, and without much mainstream appeal.
More than that, it represents the ever-elusive "next level" many hip-hoppers
make claim to but few actually achieve. It's hip-hop's bebop, the analogy being
that if Dr. Dre sways hips like a Duke Ellington big band, DJ Shadow rattles
brains like a Charlie Parker solo. In "The Number Song," for example, Shadow
takes the vital core of hip-hop -- the frenetic resolution of the breakbeat,
equal parts get-down and tighten-up -- and sustains it through an entire song,
an impossible four and a half minutes of heightened, cut-up, one-man jamming.
No room for a rap, no place for a hook.
Thank the Lord, Endtroducing can't sustain that fevered pitch
throughout. Elsewhere, Shadow investigates more subtle moods and colors; it's
never static, and rarely less than gripping. More than the Fugees, more than
the Native Tongues, Shadow is hip-hop's great hope to bring back the real.
Where he'll take it, though, is anyone's guess.
-- Roni Sarig