Our Pathetic Age by DJ Shadow

It’s hard to believe that, despite having released his first album in 1996, Our Pathetic Age, DJ Shadow’s double-album epic from this year, is only his sixth studio album. Each of those six albums have been fantastic, starting with the groundbreaking Endtroducing....., the album that woke everyone to the potential of sampling and songbuilding. Since that seminal release, Shadow, whose real name is Josh Davis, has been building soundscapes and championing underground, has-been, and up-and-coming hip hop artists with great aplomb.

Our Pathetic Age is not a perfect album, but as it’s a double-length LP, it’s easy to set aside the imperfect to let the stellar shine. The album is split into two distinct halves, the first of which is fully instrumental, and the second the more predictable Shadow-type album. The Mountain Will Fall, Shadow’s 2016 album (#9 that year), saw him doubling down on his ability to take his great ear for beats and cadence and pairing that with well-known hip hop artists like Run the Jewels. RTJ reappears on the second half of Our Pathetic Age, along with a litany of other big hip hop names, such as Nas, Ghostface Killah, Raekwon, Gift of Gab and Leteef the Truthspeaker.

The video above, for “Rocket Fuel,” has Shadow teaming up with De La Soul. It’s a great song, and an even better video (directed by Sam Pilling, who also directed the great video I featured in my 2016 The Mountain Will Fall review). The song’s lyrics are top of the line, as written by the De La Soul crew. “People wanna know where Mase, Pos, and Dave went” goes the song. “Still here, still in your ear.” Later on in the song, the second verse has a mind-blowing rhyme that I can’t get out of my head:

Aced all quizzes, A-plussed the final
Vocals we align, we move it all simul-
-taneously over joints we rock
We earned thirty years, so you can say that we got
Three turns, live off the board, unlike you and your chessmen
We install doubt in you and your yes-men

That rhyming of “final” with the first two syllables of “simultaneously” and managing to keep the rhyme going is so so great. Check out this new album by DJ Shadow. You can set the first half aside, I won’t think anything less of you. But pay attention to the second half. It’s as great as anything Shadow has released to date, and you won’t be disappointed.

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22. Juice B Crypts by Battles
23. Pony by Orville Peck
24. Hyperspace by Beck
25. Eraserland by Strand of Oaks
26. Dogrel by Fontaines DC
27. You’re the Man by Marvin Gaye
28. Big Wows by Stealing Sheep
29. 1000 gecs by 100 gecs
30. In the Morse Code of Brake Lights by The New Pornographers
31. Radiant Dawn by Operators

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