Our Pathetic Age

Over the course of the last three decades, DJ Shadow has done plenty to change how we hear hip-hop and electronic music. On his sixth studio LP, the double-length Our Pathetic Age, he does it once more. “It’s not something I ever really thought about until it was suggested by a friend,” Shadow tells Apple Music. “It kept running around in my head, ‘What if I tried to do a double record?’ It became the goal.” The first half of the album features the genre-less, rule-breaking instrumentals he’s been making since his game-changing 1996 debut, Endtroducing...... In the second part, his beats tease the best out of a diverse group of rappers, including Nas, Pharoahe Monch and three Wu-Tang members, plus younger MCs such as Dave East, Loyle Carner and Wiki. “When I work with songwriters and vocalists, it’s a chance to open up a little bit and be influenced by the creative energy of someone else,” he explains. “I definitely miss—and was inspired by—the era of hip-hop where there was such a diversity in thoughts and ideas. I think that’s one of the reasons why, through the years, I’ve worked with so many different types of MCs and vocalists—because I like a little bit of everything.” Here, DJ Shadow talks us through some of Our Pathetic Age’s key tracks. Firestorm “When I sat down to start working on the record, I just wanted to do different things, try things I hadn't done before and take a few risks. I didn't tell anybody I was going to [make an entirely orchestral track]. I just started working; it was feeling good and fresh. When you've been making music for 30 years and you end up discovering a little vein or taking a direction that you've never really allowed yourself to take in the past, it's something to take note of. There was something really validating about it.” Rosie “I’ve been finding records recently from the early ’60s and late ’50s that are outside the normal parameter of time that I like to look around in—and I’ll find an unusual sound. The sample here ha