DJ Shadow
The Outsider
Universal
Rating: 
Remember the game we played as children, when we tried to catch our own shadow? Those shadows were as elusive as DJ Shadow’s The Outsider, an album that refuses to be caught in simple genre classification. Even fans who expect a complete change of pace from 2004Â’s Live! In Tune and On Time may find themselves blindsided by its near-schizophrenic nature.
Hyphy, the West Coast interpretation of crunk, is the largest influence on Shadow’s latest, resulting in tracks like “3 Freaks,” “Keep ’em Close” and “Turf Dancing.” It’s hard to comprehend how the same producer/DJ went from a debut like Endtroducing to heading the hyphy movement, and incorporating droning synthesizer sounds over what sounds like a drum machine borrowed from Lil Jon. Had the entire album been saturated with nothing but hyphy, people would have demanded to know who produced this album and where the real DJ Shadow went. Included among the club songs, however, is the bouncy soul track “This Time.” The chorus warns the listener that Shadow is “going to try it [his] way,” but I’m not aware of a time when he wasn’t trying things his way.
There are more palatable moments throughout the album. Some of the songs have a Radiohead influence, like “The Tiger” and “Erase You” featuring singer Chris James, who sounds eerily similar to Thom Yorke. Rap/rock fans will thoroughly enjoy “Backstage Girl” featuring Phonte from Little Brother. Phonte relates a tale of freaking a bad girl, and he explains, “I told her straight up, I got a significant other but she didn’t care/She just told me that for tonight, she wanted to be my insignificant other.” Then The Outsider’s schizophrenia really begins to sink in when “Artifact” hits your ears and offers a quaint touch of grindcore.
After trying to digest the erratic mash up of songs on The Outsider a few times, it struck me that the album is based on Shadow’s extensive knowledge of music and his purported vast record collection. That’s a lot of music for one man. The DJ serves as a channel, so eventually he’ll reach a point of critical mass from the building up of sounds. In that sense, The Outsider may very well be similar to Common’s Electric Circus. Not that they sound similar, but rather that it is something Shadow has to get out of his system. Hopefully, like Common did with Be, next time Shadow will come back strong.
— James O’Connor
