The Outsider (Album)

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The Outsider
Studio album by DJ Shadow

Publication
(s)

September 15, 2006

Label (s) Island / Universal

Format (s)

CD

Genre (s)

Hip hop

Title (number)

16

running time

70:58 min

production

DJ Shadow

chronology
The Private Press (2002) The Outsider -

The Outsider is the third studio album by the American music producer DJ Shadow . It marks a drastic change to Shadow's previous works and was mostly received negatively by fans and critics.

style

With The Outsider, Shadow wanted to produce an album that, due to its otherness, would not have to be compared with his debut album Endtroducing ..... , as was the case with its predecessor The Private Press . To do this, he experimented with the most diverse musical styles on the album and largely renounced his trademark, the sampling of old records . Instead, he included many musical instruments in the production, which would have given him more freedom in arranging the pieces. The musical palette includes soul and funk ( This Time (I'm Gonna Try It My Way) ), blues ( Broken Levee Blues ), punk ( Artifact ), indie rock ( The Tiger ), trip-hop ( Erase You ) , Spoken Word ( What Have I Done ), Pop Music ( You Made It ) and more styles. With six tracks, the majority of the album consists of Hyphy pieces, a style similar to crunk , which DJ Shadow explained as follows:

“I just sat down to make a record that reflected what I like and the type of music that I care about. Being from and living in the Bay Area , I sort of fell in to listening to Hyphy stuff, and it's the most potent type of rap that the Bay Area has come up with since the early 90s. "

Synonymous with the different styles, The Outsider includes an extensive and very diverse list of guest singers. Only three of the 15 titles are instrumentals .

Track list

  1. Outsider Intro - 2:20
  2. This Time (I'm Gonna Try It My Way) - 3:05
  3. 3 freaks (featuring Keak da Sneak and Turf Talk) - 3:49
  4. Droop-E Drop - 0:18
  5. Turf Dancing (featuring The Federation and Animaniaks) - 4:35
  6. Keep Em Close (featuring Nump) - 3:05
  7. Seein Thangs (featuring David Banner ) - 3:40
  8. Broken Levee Blues - 2:07
  9. Artifact (instrumental) - 2:55
  10. Backstage Girl (featuring Phonte Coleman ) - 7:21
  11. Triplicate / Something Happened That Day - 3:43
  12. The Tiger (featuring Sergio Pizzorno and Christopher Karloff ) - 5:23
  13. Erase You (featuring Chris James) - 6:57
  14. What Have I Done (featuring Christina Carter) - 5:24
  15. You Made It (featuring Chris James) - 2:47
  16. Enuff (featuring Q-Tip and Lateef the Truth Speaker) - 4:28
  17. Dats My Part (featuring E-40 ) - 4:04
  18. 3 Freaks (Droop-E Remix) (featuring Mistah FAB, Turf Talk and Keak da Sneak) - 4:34

reception

The Outsider was rated very differently, with the album being compared again and again with Shadow's previous works, especially Endtroducing ...... Even before the album was released, the single 3 Freaks and the stylistically suggestive change of direction caused loud criticism, to which Shadow reacted irritably. The based on 33 reviews Metascore of The Outsider is 62%. Mostly the lack of homogeneity of the individual pieces was the focus.

The e-zine laut.de highlighted individual tracks on the album, but criticized the “stylistic diversity”, which could also be described as “incomplete and arbitrary”. Most of the guest singers and the large number of " 0815 -Raptitel [n]" were also criticized and the album was rated two out of five points. All in all, “current chart rap” doesn't sound any different from The Outsider .

The music producer and journalist Falk Schacht gave the hip-hop magazine Juice a much higher rating. He described the music as "very, very good" and many songs as the "best that the respective genres have to offer." Out of respect for DJ Shadow, to break with the conventions and expectations of the music industry and fans, Schacht rated the album with five out of six “crowns”.

The All Music Guide saw the productions on The Outsider as the most peculiar in Shadow's career, but praised it for not “ Endtroducing, Pt. 2 ”and gave the album 3.5 out of five points.

The Outsider is a carefully crafted, artistically elusive mess - far more scattershot than even his first UNKLE record ( Psyence Fiction ), but much more interesting for its excellent productions.

In commercial terms, The Outsider was a failure. In the Billboard 200 it only reached 77th place and only survived two weeks in the charts. In Australia, the album ranked 44th for a week. It could not even place itself in the German album charts .

Konami used the instrumental piece Artifact for the soundtrack of the video game Pro Evolution Soccer 2010 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c "DJ Shadow: What became of the other man from UNKLE" , September 13, 2006
  2. ↑ Intro.de : Several reviews of the album  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.intro.de  
  3. ↑ laut.de : "DJ Shadow: Scandal during the interview with laut.de" , September 29, 2006
  4. ↑ Metacritic : Collected Reviews of The Outsider
  5. ↑ laut.de: Review of the album
  6. ^ Juice , September 2006 edition, page 99
  7. ↑ All Music Guide : Review of The Outsider
  8. ↑ The Outsider in the US charts
  9. ↑ The Outsider in the Australian charts