San Francisco, CA · instrumental hip-hop · turntablism

DJ Shadow

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'Endtroducing…' rewired what a sampler could do — Bay Area royalty on home turf, still digging deeper than anyone.

DJ Shadow, born Joshua Paul Davis on June 29, 1972, grew up in Davis, California, the town he later took as his stage name. He began experimenting with a four-track recorder while still in high school and worked as a DJ on the University of California, Davis campus station KDVS, absorbing funk, jazz and rock records alongside hip-hop.

His early singles "In/Flux" and "Lost and Found (S.F.L.)" mixed hip-hop with ambient, soul and rock instincts drawn from crate-digging, and a Mixmag writer's description of "In/Flux" helped popularize the term trip hop. Davis has cited Kurtis Mantronik, Steinski and Prince Paul as key influences on his sample-based approach.

In 1993 he helped start the Solesides label with Blackalicious and Lyrics Born, a Bay Area outlet that later became Quannum Projects. The same year, Mo' Wax founder James Lavelle signed him in London, an association that led to Davis contributing scratches to a Massive Attack remix.

Endtroducing….., released in 1996, was built using only an Akai MPC60 sampler, a pair of turntables and a borrowed Pro Tools rig. Guinness later listed it as the first completely sampled album, and Time magazine named it among its all-time 100 best albums.

Between 1996 and 1999, Davis also worked as part of the group Unkle, producing their debut album Psyence Fiction, which included a guest vocal from Thom Yorke. He kept issuing solo records afterward, and his all-vinyl sets with Cut Chemist, built from the pair's shared record collections, run alongside heavy visuals and reworked versions of his catalogue in his live show.

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instrumental hip-hopturntablism