In 2011, DJ Shadow released The Less You Know, The Better, purportedly his last full-length album to prominently feature samples.
The Outsider also featured a single with Q-Tip (of A Tribe Called Quest), which led to Shadow’s first appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman.Ģ0 saw a tour throughout Europe and North America entitled “Live From The Shadowsphere.” Hailed for its visual innovations, the tour was cited by Beatport as one of the top 10 DJ shows of all time, and was capped off by two memorable performances at the Coachella Festival, one of which featured a surprise cameo by Zack De La Rocha. In 2006 he released another long awaited full-length album The Outsider, which featured rising Bay Area Hyphy rappers including Keak Da Sneak and E-40.
Nearly six years after his debut production album, the proper follow-up, The Private Press, was released in June 2002, again to considerable acclaim. Later that year, Shadow produced tracks for the debut album by U.N.K.L.E., a long-time Mo’ Wax production team that gained superstar guests including Thom Yorke (of Radiohead), Richard Ashcroft (of the Verve), Mike D (of the Beastie Boys), and others. Preemptive Strike, a compilation of early singles, followed in early 1998. The album has frequently been lauded as one of the most important works of the last 50 years, landing on countless “Best Of The ‘90s” lists and polls, including Rolling Stone and NME. Shadow’s first full-length, Endtroducing…., was released on the label in late 1996 to immense critical acclaim in Britain and America. In 1993, Shadow pressed his 17-minute beat-head symphony “Entropy.” His tracks spread widely through the DJ-strong hip-hop underground, eventually reaching James Lavelle of Mo’ Wax. Concurrently, Shadow provided beats and scratches for Bay Area rapper Paris and was featured on his second album. Shadow was featured in the magazine’s “Unsigned Hype” column in 1991, and Klein signed him to a production deal with Hollywood BASIC records. Hooking up with Davis’ few b-boys (including eventual Solesides artists Blackalicious and Lyrics Born) through the college radio station, Shadow began releasing the Hip-Hop Reconstruction mix tapes in 1991, eventually catching the attention of The Source magazine and Dave Funkenklein. (Gilfoyle and Dinesh in particular have a spot-on rat-a-tat rhythm of sexually-infused insults.) It should come as no surprise Ross has the experience needed to replicate how “Silicon Valley” satirizes its subjects via ruthless mimicry, but he’s also clearly a huge fan of the show, considering how well he taps into each character’s unique mentality.Check out the end credit songs from season 4:ĭ – Josh “DJ Shadow” Davis had already been experimenting with making beats and breaks on a four-track recorder while he was in high school in the Nor-Cal college town of Davis, but it was during university that he co-founded his own Solesides label as an outlet for his original tracks. The screenwriting newcomer picks up right where Season 2 left off - with Pied Piper founder Richard (Thomas Middleditch) winning his court case for control of the program’s intellectual property, but then getting fired by the company’s new controlling investor, Laurie Bream (Suzanne Cryer) - and pumps out 31 pages of pretty well-constructed, tonally fitting and often sharply funny comedic insight.
READ MORE: ‘House of Cards’ Creator Beau Willimon On Which Shows Started The Golden Age of Television A long-term resident of Northern California’s tech empire, Ross took it upon himself to pump out a spec script for Mike Judge’s award-winning HBO comedy… and it’s actually pretty funny. It’s been well-chronicled just how accurately “ Silicon Valley” portrays Silicon Valley, but now we’ve seen a whole new level of self-parody, courtesy of Firefox founder Blake Ross.