Immediately after a raucous introductory horn section and drum fill, expecting the first selection to be something to snap your neck, Shadow goes left, repeating a section of the moody and mellow “Sad Sad Simba” by O’Donel Levy. It’s clear from the jump that the next ninety minutes will be anything but predictable. After letting the loop ride naked, he brings in some drums on top of it, and then uses another section of “Sad Sad Simba,” soon after returning to the original section.

At 2:57, Shadow speaks with his hands, scratching a “huh” from one record panned right and a “hah” from another panned left, making a head-knodding “huh-hah!” for several bars, and then bringing back the original music loop. Shadow has essentially arranged an instrumental song with the two loops serving as verse and chorus and the cuts as a bridge. He will do this throughout the tape, foreshadowing his ability to isolate and arrange samples in a way that would be so expressive in spite of the absence of lyrics. At 4:14 he cuts in MC Serch proclaiming “they makin’ mills, but what about the hood?” from “Portrait of the Artist as a Hood” by 3rd Bass, followed by a brief moment of silence which is punctured by a line from Big Daddy Kane’s “Mr. Pitiful”—“now I send this out to my brother Biz Markie.” It’s another tease that in a short time will make sense. Instead of hearing Biz, Shadow drops the droopy-but-funky “Get Thy Bearings” by Donovan. He alternates two sections of the song and then on top of it, at 5:25, adds some simple-but-slick wah-wah guitar cuts. Then at 6:03, Shadow drops Biz’s “I Told You,” which samples the Donovan record. Thematically, it’s the same record as the classic “The Vapors,” both pointing a finger at everyone who doubted that The Diabolical would make it in music.

At 7:57, after a quick snippet of a stoner saying “that’s some good shit,” Shadow drops “That’s the Way It Is” by Powerule, with drums sampled from U2’s “Bullet the Blue Sky” and music from Lenny Kravitz’ “Freedom Train.” At 9:22 Shadow leaves his mark on this song, taking the drum-less intro piece, playing it out and pulling it back, dissecting it with the crossfader. At 9:54, he raises the bar, taking the famous siren from Mantonix’s “King of the Beats,” alternating on the cross-fader between straight and syncopated 16th and 32nd notes and fading out with absurdly long sustained 32nd notes that sound digitally processed, but were not.

At 10:22 Shadow drops the drum break from Monk Higgins “One Man Band,” cutting on top of it the vocal intro from “Here Comes the Judge” by Shorty Long. After eight bars, Shadow goes straight into Lord Finesse’s “Fuck ‘Em,” another record aimed at the non-believers. He extends the instrumental section of the Finesse track, adds a psychedelic loop on top of it and then fades in the classic drums from Dexter Wansel’s “Theme from the Planets.” With the beat still going, at 14:00 we hear the fat, analog bass from Original Concept’s “Knowledge Me.” Twenty seconds later, very low in the mix, Shadow cuts in the drum solo from Queen’s funky “Dragon Attack” which leads into an Original Concept 808 snare fill, taking us into a record from Digital Undergound member Money B’s Raw Fusion, “Hip Hip Stylee Expression,” a quirky combination of pseudo-Jamaican chat and Bay Area synths. Over the final chorus, Shadow introduces, one after the other, up to five cutting elements, gradually increasing in volume like some kind of scratch symphony.

DJ Shadow performs on the Renegades Of Rhythm tour in 2014 | photo by Joe Conzo

At 17:02 Shadow loops up the funky flute loop from Herbie Hancock’s “Watermelon Man,” adding stabs and a fitting drum loop. The drums change at 17:51, a pitched down loop of Lightnin’ Rod’s “Sport,” laying the bed for some cuts—“who am I, DJ Shadow / Cut the beat up for me”—segueing smoothly into Sen Dog’s solo rap from Cypress Hill’s “Latin Lingo,” followed by “Manslaughter,” one of EPMD’s toughest offerings from their Def Jam debut, Business as Usual. Mixed in next is several un-looped bars from Grover Washington, Jr.’s “Hydra” where we get to hear the saxophonist do his thing, soloing until Shadow takes us into a Nice-N-Smooth instrumental tribute, starting at 23:25 with “Ooh Child” followed by the piano intro from “No Delayin’.” He brings in the drum loop originally sampled from “Hihache” by the Lafayette Afro Rock Band and starts chopping up the line “here is something you can’t understand!” followed by “DJ Shadow…I’m back!” Next up is Pete Rock & CL Smooth’s “Mecca and the Soul Brother” and Hijack’s “Style Wars,” before some more layering of subtle cuts that lead into more rap records, like the classic, politically incorrect, “Talk Like Sex” by Kool G. Rap, produced by Marley Marl.

At 35:37 Shadow drops a heavy rock drum break and uses it as the glue for several different rock elements that he arranges into a cohesive, continuous medley with cuts thrown on top. It fades out at 40:40, as if to suggest that with this section, he was making a statement, however open to interpretation that statement might be. Supporting this idea is the sound of a small crowd clapping at the start of the next section at 41:05. Underneath that clapping, Shadow brings in the funky 45 “I Gotta Stand for Something” by Professor and the Efficiency Experts. He fades it out at 44:00 and brings in another funky classic, “Hook & Sling” by Eddie Bo, which he also fades out to end the first side of the tape.

With the tape flipped, we hear the crackling of an old record and the voice, perhaps from a soundtrack, of a man laughing, then asking “who am I? I’m the record. Why, I can do anything. Oh, you don’t think so? Well I’ll prove it.” This is, of course, Shadow speaking to us. He drops a few more funny sound bites under the eerie sounds from the intro to ESG’s “UFO” and then at 46:22 layers the drums from “We Will Rock You” by Queen and “The Hand Clapping Song” by The Meters, while cutting up “like this” from the beginning of “La Di Da Di.”

At 47:14 Shadow brings in “Audience Pleasers” by Organized Konfusion, but before letting the rhymes come in, changes the music, over which he gives a turntable homage to the group and their label, Hollywood Basic, the entity started by Dave Funkenklein, also home to Raw Fusion and Lifer’s Group. It was the first label to recognize Shadow’s value as a producer. He finally drops Organized’s “The Rough Side of Town” at 48:40. After a Kool & The Gang excursion, Shadow continues the Hollywood Basic focus with Raw Fusion’s “Throw Your Hands In The Air” followed by his own remix of Lifers Group’s “Real Deal,” some more breaks, bits and pieces put together deftly, and finally, another Organized Konfusion classic “Prisoners of War,” augmented with so many layers of drums and cuts that it is, essentially, a remix.

At 58:06 Shadow breaks things up with “Maggot Brain” by Funkadelic—“Mother Earth is pregnant for the third time. For y’all have knocked her up…”—and hits us with the break from Isaac Hayes’ “Joy.” We hear more of the record, on top of which Shadow adds the “Bouncy Lady” break by Pleasure, followed by “I’m Gonna Love You Just a Little More Baby” by Barry White. When the piano section of the song comes in, Shadow starts cutting the acapella of Latee’s “Wake Up,” which he blends with White. He then combines elements of “Bubble Gum” by 9th Creation, Gil-Scott Heron, an Ice Cube skit, and Funk Inc., ending with a loop of “Godzilla” by Blue Oyster Cult.

He fades it out and then comes back with another naked drum loop and then reprises the loop from “Bubble Gum,” this time sped up significantly. After that fades out, Shadow takes another left turn, at 1:10:08 dropping the the folk-rock “A Horse with No Name” by America. He layers a beat on top of it, but to make it fit, instead of speeding it up, he drops the pitch in half, giving it that slow, droopy effect, way before drum-n-bass producers would in their productions, and over two decades before mainstream hip-hop and R&B producers would. He presents some more short musical passages, including a re-working of Wilson Pickett’s “Engine No. 9" at 1:12:38.

Shortly after 1:13:00 we hear the familiar sounds of “Back Door Man” by The Doors which is anchored by additional drums and peppered with subtle vocal cuts. At 1:14:47 Shadow drops Billy Squier’s “Big Beat” and shortly after adds the break from “Rock Music” by Jefferson Starship over a new rock guitar element, appropriately adding the vocal cut “it’s a rhythmic war.” It really does sound like drum battle.