DJ Shadow Quotes

I was sort of like a kid in a candy store, realizing it was fun making beats without the perceived burden that every track I did had to be a some progressive sample masterpiece. It was nice to blow off steam and work on those songs. For me, that’s what 'The Outsider' was about in general: forget everything, I’m just gonna follow my own music, and make the music I want to make.

Cutting and pasting is the essence of what hip-hop culture is all about for me. It's about drawing from what's around you, and subverting it and decontextualizing it.

I always managed to fly a bit below the radar, but high enough to avoid colliding into anything.

I still consider myself a consumer of music more than anything else.

I don't care if I get kicked out of every rich kid club on the planet. I will never sacrifice my integrity as a DJ...ever.

When I make music, it takes me two hours to get into the flow. To me it's like tapping into some kind of subconscious frequency: I just have to turn everything else off, open up part of myself, expose my fears and try to work through it in the music that I'm making.

So, in addition to being a full-time father of two and everything else in life, it isn't so much that I'm sitting around plotting an album. I just kinda follow my muse and wherever my interests lie, and at some point I decide, "Right. It's been a while, time to figure out how to get serious and make some music."

My core values are still the same about music, and my work ethic, and what I want to represent to people.

When I'm looking for DJ sets and stuff to drop, I look for music that I feel is gonna get the reaction I want from the crowd.

I've always feel like it's been my place to offer an alternative.

Frequently, when I'm compared to someone, I'm like, "Is that really what people think I sound like?"

I don't hate what I love. I love what I love and I hate what I hate.

The music that I have always liked has always been more rooted in anger or sadness or alienation or any of those inspirational factors that drove rock'n'roll, gospel, and blues. I tend not to value a more pop aesthetic.

Anything that sparks some eight-year-old's interest in music or DJing is great.

I personally feel the need to experience life and new music and ideas before I can sit down and start writing music again.

The reason why it is that strong, and why HipHop is so inbred, is that there is a very structured wheel, a very definable system on how to get paid in HipHop. Busta Rhymes is someone who took that road and sure enough got paid. As long people like him are allowed to continue to do that it wont change. There is a very specific sound and a very specific attitude, and it changes every year, but as long as you stay in there and keep doing it, and keep narrowing your scope, dressing the rigt ways etc. you get paid.

My main thing is constantly looking forward and trying to make music that I couldn't have made at any other time.

As for my store, most artists' sites send you to a third-party storefront like iTunes, whereas we're disseminating it ourselves. I was always uncomfortable with the thought of sending somebody who came to my site to buy something to some other store. It just occurred to me, "Why can't we do this?"

I couldn't make a real drum'n'bass or dubstep record to save my life. But I can be influenced by them in small ways.

When I play that music live nowadays, there's a lot of things I feel I'd like to do - even things I don't think the audience is aware of, like layering subs underneath the kicks, and layering crisp hats underneath the muddy, trashy hats of the '90s. If I tried to play the music as it was next to my contemporary music, it just sounds like you're closing up half of the sonic spectrum.

I would agree with you that there's 90% imitation and 10% innovation. That's true of any genre.

I've tried to tell people that the reason I don't really get excited over good press is that I don't want to get agitated over bad press. I don't wanna get too high on good press, too low on bad press. It's just not a healthy way to engage with my own feelings about my music.

When I'm representing my music live I think of it very much in a rock band sense. When I first started doing festivals in the 90s there really weren't other DJs playing the stages I was playing. So I felt I was being afforded an opportunity to kind of make a statement about what DJ music can be live. In the 90s, if you were a DJ you were in the dance tent, and you were playing house music and techno music. There was no such thing as a DJ - a solo DJ - on a stage, after a rock band and before another rock band: that just didn't happen.

I always consider every album to be a snapshot.

If I have a chance to positively impact how the populace views DJs, then I'm going to try to do my part to nudge things in the right direction.