Fifteen years after his debut record, Endtroducing, reformulated the sonic contours of hip-hop and pop, DJ Shadow has returned to let you know that The Less You Know, the Better.
“It’s very difficult for any artist to talk about any of this stuff on the record, because no one wants to get painted with the Metallica brush,” San Francisco-based Josh Davis, known to turntable geeks as DJ Shadow, told me by phone ahead of The Less You Know, the Better‘s Oct. 4 release. “As a musician that has been involved in one of the industries decimated by the internet, I’ve experienced a weird duality: The internet was supposed to democratize communication, but the opposite seems to have happened.”
It’s a democracy failure Davis saw crushed up close, given his proximity to Silicon Valley, where titans like Apple and Google sprouted from technological culture jammers into the undisputed masters of Wall Street’s universe. Davis helped launch independent label Solesides in the fertile and imaginative San Francisco Bay Area with hip-hop historian Jeff Chang and members of standouts like Blackalicious and Latyrx. Then he quickly broke into the mainstream on the strength of the record-breaking Endtroducing and its stunning 2002 follow-up, The Private Press.
Since then, the internet’s meteoric rise has shadowed, so to speak, his own, even as it steadily downsized the music industry’s earnings reports and artist-development efforts. While other hip-hop crossovers have come and gone like so much disposable pop product, DJ Shadow — who kicks off a U.S. leg of his international tour Oct. 21 in his hometown San Francisco — has remained relevant. He’s stronger than ever, judging by The Less You Know, the Better‘s expansive stylistic reach, which outdistances his defiant 2006 release, The Outsider, by miles.
“The Outsider was a shove,” he said. “The Less You Know, the Better is an embrace.”
It’s also an appeal, given the album’s title and its satirical cover art by San Francisco artist Tony Papesh, which features laptops and smartphones snarkily dismissing their master’s work.
“I can happily say that I have lived the dream of getting paid to publicly insult my boss,” Papesh told me in an e-mail interview readable in the sidebar below.
The smart-ass gadgets’ emotional detachment, as well as the internet age’s intensified polarization, signify what DJ Shadow calls a disturbing trend of technocultural “groupthink.”
I got deep with Davis on the rise and fall of the internet’s innocence and the music industry’s dominance in the interview below. We also break down The Less You Know, The Better’s sprawling musical concerns, from the heady psychedelia of “Circular Logic” and “Enemy Lines” to the mightily mashed metal of “I Gotta Rokk” and the golden-age hip-hop of “Stay the Course,” which features Talib Kweli and De La Soul’s Posdnous, who DJ Shadow calls “the most underrated emcee of all time.”
DJ Shadow’s The Less You Know, the Better is a sonically diverse appeal for disconnection in a technophilic age.
How do you think this new record fits in with your evolution as an artist?
DJ Shadow: I think it’s a high point. I feel better about this record than I’ve felt in a long time, and that’s not a slight to any of my other albums. I know how hard it is to satisfy myself with any project, and it’s only happened once or twice before, if at all. [Laughs] I feel really good about this one. It musically represents what I do better than anything I’ve done in a long time.
I think it integrates the diversity of your work pretty well. It covers a lot of sonic ground.
DJ Shadow: Everything that I’ve ever done has been pretty diverse. Endtroducing is the album that everyone says is my best, my most cohesive and all that, and I don’t dispute it. But at the same time, none of the songs sound similar to me. I thought my last record, The Outsider, had the most extreme examples of what I do, which was exciting to me. But this record is saying something different.
Judging by its title and artwork, the narrative seems to imply that disconnection is a healthy thing. Which is pretty profane for a cultural landscape that seems to be plugged into anything and everything, but not often making anything new or original.
DJ Shadow: I just think that the internet has been sold to us as our savior. As a means to create a new economy, as our spiritual salvation, whatever. Everything is supposed to be bigger and better online. But what I think people have lost sight of – and I don’t think the internet has done a good job of self-evaluation in this respect – is the massive shift between the brave new internet world of the late ’90s and now. Its early philosophy seemed to be one where everyone was an individual whose opinions were respected. A decade later, everything is corporate-owned, advertising is incessant, and the diverse opinions of internet commentary are often shouted down. Now there’s much more online groupthink.
All I’m trying to do as an individual and an artist is put my hand up and say that maybe it’s time to hover above the chessboard for a minute and evaluate what’s going on here. Certainly, as an artist that has been involved in one of the industries decimated by the internet, I’ve experienced a weird duality. The internet was supposed to democratize communication, but the opposite seems to have happened.
Adam Curtis’ recent documentary All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace analyzed that duality in fascinating detail. It makes one think twice about their technophilia.
DJ Shadow: One of the creepier moments of the last year that struck me was how my mother, who barely uses the internet, clicks on a news story, and then is guided by algorithms to the same stories and publishers. It seems innocuous and innocent enough, but it does mean she’s getting a skewed sense of the news. The more I think about it, the more I see it manifested in her. It’s pretty worrying. I don’t think people really understand what they are choosing to engage, and it’s in no corporation’s interest to inform them. It’s very similar to early television. No one wanted to talk about its potentially harmful effects. It took a long time for television to develop a conscience, and I think we’re seeing the same thing with new media.
And you have to walk the tightrope, given how much technology you use to make these albums. There’s even a shout-out to MPCs in “Circular Logic.”
“The message that we get 24 hours a day is that our lives are incomplete without this new phone or app or operating system.”
DJ Shadow: There tends to be an all-or-nothing expectation when we criticize technology, even though we’re all on it. I’m online an average of four hours a day. I’m not a Luddite. But I think it’s possible to be critical about something and still engage with it. I’m just trying to offer some perspective, given that I live in Silicon Valley. You and I live in their test tubes. We are the test-marketing capital of the world for anything tech. The message that we get 24 hours a day is that our lives are incomplete without this new phone or app or operating system or whatever it is. We, more than anywhere else in the world, are subject to that. And as a human being against incredible odds, I’m saying that is not the healthiest message to receive on a daily basis.
So yes, I’m on my computer 10 hours a day as it is, whether I’m making music, conducting business or whatever. And that’s another reason why I don’t do more, or I’m not an early adopter of anything that comes down the pipes. Frankly, I’m too busy … making something rather than doing any of the time-wasting things you can do on the internet. I happen to love my job. I’m not looking for an escape, from it or my family or anything else. Overall, I’m happy. And I still engage with technology, but I don’t look to it for salvation.
Yeah, I was talking to RJD2 last year, and he said he’s not an early adopter because he doesn’t want to be an unpaid beta tester.
DJ Shadow: [Laughs] That’s a very good way of putting it. It’s frankly not my area of interest. My area of interest is music. I buy CDs, MP3s, vinyl, cassettes, even 8-tracks! I don’t discriminate by format. Getting back to your question, the way I walk the tightrope is that I use the internet, and try to avoid letting it use me.
A must-have tech gadget totally misses the musical point of 2001: A Space Odyssey’s monolithic inspiration on the clever cover art for DJ Shadow’s single “I Gotta Rokk.”
Artist Tony Papesh on DJ Shadow’s Self-Critical Satire:
“Josh is one of the most interesting people I have met, a high-profile musician who is passionate about cartoons and comics. When we first started talking about The Less You Know, the Better, almost instantly he began referencing strips like Krazy Kat, Bloom County and Calvin and Hobbes as inspiration for the characters. Not only in terms of their artistic style, but also their destructive yet playful attitude.
“The project was unique in that it was a takeover instead of a simple ad campaign. The characters tagged his site with graffiti, scribbled out billboards and poked fun at his album covers. It was great to see an artist have such a sense of humor about their work. There were a few times where I had to ask, ‘Do you really want me to write this stuff about your music?’ But as the project began to mature, it almost became second nature to associate seeing his face with scribbles over it. I can happily say that I have lived the dream of getting paid to publicly insult my boss.”
How do you think the internet and the industry have used each other, so to speak? I’m talking specifically about how it affects your commerce, rather than your art.
DJ Shadow: Well, that’s a pretty … I don’t want to say loaded question, but a question that would probably require a two-hour dissertation! [Laughs] I think there was a time where the capabilities of the internet pretty much restricted you to generating awareness and interest. Then it became, “Hey, I can actually talk to you!” Which was cool; I remember when I did my first internet chat in real time, about 13 years ago on a fan site, and it seemed quite a new adventure.
But we all have to face reality, and the reality is that when peer-to-peer file sharing became possible and prolific, it removed music sales from the equation. That was like taking the foundation out from under the house. And I think I have a unique perspective on this, given how my career has evolved alongside the internet. Yes, it has opened up many opportunities. But the fact that internet sensations still have to sign with a major to get to the next level speaks volumes about what the internet still can and cannot do. You can be Soulja Boy and become an overnight sensation on YouTube, or however you work your hustle online, but eventually you have to get signed. I have no interest in propagandizing for the majors or dropping a lopsided knock on the internet – I’m just stating what the reality is for any recording artist.
What about the sucker punch that the contracting economy has landed on the devolution of the industry and the evolution of the internet? El-P once told me that the first thing that goes out the window in recessions and depressions is the idea that people should pay for art of any kind.
DJ Shadow: It disincentivizes some people. I’ll give you a real-world example, not a hypothetical. There are rappers that I worked with in the past who no longer rap, because why would you? It doesn’t make any money. Some of them have gone back to ways of earning a living that are a lot less productive. To me, that is a damn shame. If the Beatles were not making a living, would they have made The White Album? What makes me laugh is people who say that artists are supposed to suffer and starve for their art, cut their ears off like Van Gogh or something. It’s such a ridiculous perspective. And it’s disingenuous as well, especially when those people are paying $400 for a cellphone every six months.
But I think this will eventually all get figured out. I don’t think any legal system on the planet is going to let Hollywood perish. If you apply the same rules and laws to music, we’ll see what happens. But it’s very difficult for any artist to talk about any of this stuff on the record, because no one wants to get painted with the Metallica brush. It’s such a weird irony. What is supposed to be such a democratizing force, at least in terms of music, has shouted down any argument to that effect. The idea that artists are into their art for the sake of their own wealth is a page that needs to be turned.
They’re just tired of you having all those houses in the Hamptons, Josh!
DJ Shadow: [Laughs] That’s funny. But people don’t see that the new boss is indeed the same as the old boss, to paraphrase the Who. People have this utopian view of college kids setting up peer-to-peer operations in their basement, because they really, really love music. But they don’t have perspective on those actual operations or what they’re in the business for.
Let’s talk about the tunes. It’s great to hear Posdnous from De La Soul on “Stay the Course.” I think he’s one of the most underrated rappers of all time.
DJ Shadow: Yeah, having worked before with Q-Tip and Kool G Rap, I have this master list of my favorite emcees of all time. Pos is certainly one of my favorites, if not the overall favorite. Buhloone Mindstate, especially his verses on “I Am I Be,” is some of the best hip-hop of all time. And I also think he’s perennially the most underrated emcee of all time.
He brought a completely unique sensibility to rap.
DJ Shadow: I always liked how he would go out of his way to set himself apart from trends. The entire flow of 3 Feet High and Rising’s “Plug Tunin” was unique, and so was their overall style. I love De La Soul Is Dead’s “Peas Porridge,” where he rhymes Don’t watch/Don’t watch/Don’t watch/A lot of basketball. It’s such an odd thing to put in a rhyme, but everything about him just speaks against stereotype. The reason I wanted to work with him on this record is that I find myself missing people who are actual people rather than caricatures, especially in hip-hop. When we were talking about the track, I told him how much I miss messages in rap that had to do with a shared experience. We talked about the term “maintain,” which was a cliché in the ’90s, but is really missing today in hip-hop.
My favorite is Fuck being hard/Posdnous is complicated, from Buhloone Mindstate’s “In the Woods.”
DJ Shadow: Yeah, that’s a great lyric.
And that was in the early ’90s. Being complicated today seems anathema to the genre.
DJ Shadow: I think that’s also why Rakim is still rightly heralded as a genius, especially when it came to dropping science and lyrics with multiple meanings and interpretations. In those respects, Eric B & Rakim’s first three albums are such gems. I think Pos has a lot of the same qualities. He’s speaking from a completely different point of view than the rest of hip-hop.
Did he tell you anything about when the next De La Soul album will drop? It’s been a while.
DJ Shadow: They tour a lot. They seem to be on the road a good eight or nine months out of the year. And I hate to loop back to the negative, but I think making records these days is a loss leader for most artists. If you’re established and well-loved, as they are, you can literally tour every corner of the world, every year. I’m sure they have something in the works.
Which tunes on the new record jumped right into being?
DJ Shadow: “I’m Excited” with Afrikan Boy (above), which was the last song that I did. And I find that I often do this with last songs, as I did with “Organ Donor” on Endtroducing, which is to make a middle finger to the rest of the record. Because at that point I’m tired of working my ass off and sweating every little split second. So I make something in a day-and-a-half that totally gets all my emotions out, something cathartic that I can have fun with. That’s what “I’m Excited” is. It’s something I made after meticulously and laboriously wrapping up the other songs. It was like, “Fuck it, let’s just have some fun.”
Some songs, especially the metalhead-friendly “Border Crossing” and the psychedelia of “Enemy Lines,” feel like heavy instrumental jams, although I’m probably only hearing densely mixed samples, correct?
DJ Shadow: Yeah, it’s almost all samples. All of the guitars in “Warning Call,” “Border Crossing” and “Enemy Lines” are 100 percent samples. I’m glad you brought “Border Crossing” up, because that and “Run for Your Life” are two instrumentals that I’m proudest of, in terms of my whole catalog. They’re made in a way that samples are not supposed to even enter your mind. I’m not quoting, and I’m not trying to do a lot of fancy programming, although to get it to sound real does require a lot of finesse. That kind of work makes me proud of what I do, and I think it makes my peers feel the same way as well.
Speaking of programming finesse, I loved “I Gotta Rokk” (below). Did you have fun crate-digging on that one?
DJ Shadow: Yeah. I do think there some fun moments on the light end of the record, and that song was definitely fun to make. That and “Redeemed” jump out at me as songs I didn’t think I’d really finish. The different elements involved were so challenging. I never thought I could make both of them work, because all the samples are tiny, disparate snippets that were practically impossible to bring together. It took thousands of small moves. There was no magic component that sealed everything up. I had to nudge them into being for what seemed like forever.
This article appeared at WIRED