 'Endtroducing' was a whole ten years ago, hard to believe really, seeing as it’s still is as fresh and new as the day it was released whenever I listen to it. It’s a great album. One of my favourite hip hop albums around. The prospect of hearing ‘The Outsider’, Shadow’s long awaited third album, filled me with glee and anticipation. After hearing good things about his Wireless Festival performance (which I managed to miss due to the overflowing tent I met when I raced across the site after The Flaming Lips finished) my anticipation grew to exploding point! What a disappointment.
It starts out promising. The intro makes you expect something of momentum is about to happen, a solemn soliloquy taken from the book of the same name. I start to get excited. Then the next track comes. What the hell is this? Some second rate RnB rubbish. What happened? It sounds like something you’d here in a hotel lobby. Bland and inoffensive. Maybe this track was done on an off day. Maybe the next one will be better I hope. This easter I went to stay with my French exchange in France. In the car he would constantly play the worst American hip hop and RnB imaginable. You know the type. You here clips of it when you accidentally turn on Kiss when you’re scanning through looking for MTV2 before hurridly changing the channel when you realise what you’ve done. It’s as bad as that. No joke. ‘The Outsider’ could have been so great, we could have got what we’d all been waiting for. Instead we get this. On first listen it sounds like a dodgy mainstream hip hop album. It sounds like any chart RnB or hip hop act, it could actually be a Ja Rule album or something. If that was bad enough he even collaborates with the bloke from fucking Kasabian on one track. As much as I love ‘Endtroducing’ this is terrible. WHY SHADOW?! WHY?! Matthew Harris |
| Coding: Darren Burrows