Out of the Shadow

In the process, however, Shadow has "burned down the house Endtroducing built with a hyphy blowtorch," noted the U.K.'s Spine Magazine.

Not only is The Outsider Shadow's most accessible album to date, but it's easily his most extroverted, and also his most risky. Its success hinges on whether he'll gain enough listeners among conventional rap fans to offset the loss of some of his cultlike following, "people who feel they have ownership of what I do," as he says. So far, early reviews are mixed; Endtroducing fans tend to either compulsively hate it or tentatively proffer faint praise for the production quality while dissing the raps, while other critics have complained about its seeming lack of thematic consistency. "The Outsider suggests that DJ Shadow is now simply doing too much," opined Rolling Stone.

Indeed, it's quite possible that no one but Shadow would have the balls to incorporate everything from psychedelic garage-rock to Albert King-esque electric blues to post-Katrina Southern crunk to uptempo, conscious hip hop to hardcore turf music and, yes, trippy instrumental beatscapes.

On The Outsider, Shadow explains his intent was "to defy perception a little bit" by making a record that was entirely different than what he'd become known for, but still represented him. Although he'd accumulated enough credibility in the music industry to get almost anybody on his project, "I didn't want it to be a superstar cavalcade," he says. To that end, he enlisted a group of relative unknowns — with the exception, perhaps, of N.Y.C. legend Q-Tip and Bay Area legend E-40 — and attempted to make "something totally unique to their body of work and my body of work."

At the time The Outsider's hyphy songs were recorded, the Bay Area-originated subgenre had yet to experience the mainstream breakthrough that happened in 2006, when E-40's breakout hit "Tell Me When to Go" conquered MTV and commercial radio — making Shadow seem more like a Nostradamuslike prognosticator than a trendy bandwagon-jumper. The point of working with artists like the Federation, Keak Da Sneak, and E-40, Count says, was to make listeners think, "OK, this is taking it to the next level of hyphy."

Hyphy does indeed take an evolutionary step forward on "Keep 'Em Close," in which Alameda's Nump shows a lyrical depth not previously apparent on his own songs, like 2005's radio hit "I Gott Grapes." On the track, Nump comes off like a ghetto Jim Thompson, telling a twisted, wickedly ironic tale of criminality and paranoia set in the grimy underbelly of the Yay Area that name-checks the Fruitvale BART station and "Vietnamese patnas" in San Jose.

Working closely with Shadow, Nump says, inspired him to elevate his game and experiment with a more conceptual lyrical style. "Shadow brought that out in me and helped me to do it more. That track right there ("Keep 'Em Close"), it's solid, I love it. It's like a movie."

The Outsider's opening intro, written by Shadow and voiced by Oliver Tobias (in full Laurence Olivier mode), also has cinematic qualities. The Sci-Fi ChannelÐready narrative is set "in the twilight of time," when "humanity's at a crossroads." Just when things are at their bleakest, a mysterious figure emerges: "A being without a name, faceless and obscure" who is "part presence, part idea." The narrative serves to further Shadow's mystique, presenting him as an iconoclastic, esoteric rebel, whose unorthodox methodology creates its own mythology. The two-minute track, whose vocal is backed by an increasingly ominous beat, may be somewhat self-indulgent (and possibly tongue-in-cheek), but it gets its point across: Shadow is an aural illusionist who not only blurs fantasy and reality through his art, but can change the very way music is perceived by the listener forever.

Though Shadow can be calculating, deliberate, and methodical at times, it would be a mistake to assume he's a dour, overly serious dude with no sense of humor. He's more than willing to laugh at himself, and while his enigmatic image might seem contrived to those who don't know him, he's still getting used to the idea that he's become a pop culture icon. When asked who the "real" DJ Shadow is, he pauses for a long, reflective moment, than says innocently, "I think I care a lot about music." In that sense, he hasn't changed a bit since his pause-tape days 20 years ago, though the circumstances surrounding him have. Though he's affiliated with the biggest record label on the planet (Universal), he's maintained his indie ethic. "I don't need a limo," he adds.

"There's no turning back now," Shadow wrote in his online tour diary after describing watching kids in Barcelona singing the words of "I Gott Grapes." Shadow not only took his hyphy homies with him overseas, but did it on his own dime, paying for flights, per diems, and tour accommodations. It was worth it, he says, to help local Bay Area folks get a leg up in Europe, even if it resulted in less dough at the end of the day for him. "What they do with [hyphy] from now on is on them," he says — he's done his part to spread the movement.