The musical mongrel of ’96

I only listened to three bands in 1996: the Beatles, the Bee Gees, and Tears for Fears, and only on out-of-town trips with the family. I turned six that year, and whenever my family and I would find ourselves stuck in the car for hours on the way to Subic or coming back from Baguio, music from one of these three bands would find itself inserted into the CD player. I don’t remember listening to music at any other time, or to any other music.

I knew my cousin had something called a Walkman, but I was indifferent. Ten years later, after I abandoned Limewire in favor of torrent downloads, I was on the prowl for some hip-hop. I had grown tired of listening to Eminem and the like, and I wanted to know what else was out there. A recommendation came my way: check out DJ Shadow, he’s what you want to listen to if you’re interested in mainstream’s opposite. I checked my favorite torrent site, Isohunt, and downloaded his most seeded album.

That album was “Endtroducing…” and it was released in 1996. So this is what was just coming out while I was listening to Ticket To Ride and Everybody Wants To Rule The World. I loaded it into my fifth-gen iPod and turned on my dock. A few songs in, I thought to myself: this isn’t hip-hop. Maybe a bit, but not really. But I didn’t care. It was strange, but I liked it. Not bad for a 10-year-old album.

“I’ve been Endtroduced,” I wrote on my newly created Facebook profile. My music-savvy cousin Ethan commented back. It seemed he already was familiar with it (of course), and he approved. Later I found out the album was composed almost entirely of samples (sound snippets taken from songs, films, or TV shows) with a drum machine filling in the beats. In other words, a real mongrel of an album. An audio Frankenstein. Everything you hear has been cut and pasted from somewhere else, other than the drums.

Today, I listened to it again, for the first time in years. Instead of an old iPod speaker dock or Apple’s lousy ear buds, I heard it through my full-size limited-edition Beyerdynamic headphones. This time, my source material was properly encoded at a good bit rate, which means a higher quality of playback. The pirates have gotten better in the past few years. I hit play just as the sun was going down.

I was wrong in 2006. “Endtroducing…” is hip-hop. However, this is hip-hop having psychedelic lucid dreams after tumbling down a very long rabbit hole. Hip-hop after meeting a fakir in rural India, or living among monks in the mountains of Tibet. Hip-hop abducted by aliens and genetically reengineered, like a glove turned inside out.

There are no lyrics on this album. To enjoy it, you’ve got to like the sound of drums. Otherwise you will probably get a headache. The beats are raw, in stark contrast to the polished, sometimes otherworldly samples that accompany them. Every track is an experience, whether it be taking a walk down the garden of earthly delights or dancing wildly around a fire in the middle of night with the rest of the painted tribe. Steering a pirate ship through a storm. Running from a sinister, unseen beast. Suddenly getting abducted by aliens. On every track, the beat tells a story of its own. The rhythms of the drums are intense one moment, calm the next, having fun in the third, foreboding and deliberate in the fourth. Ever changing, but always complex.

These are drumbeats for the thinking man. They are thought provoking, but the thoughts called forth into existence take the shape of the beats themselves. It is a thriller of an album, with mystical eeriness surfacing here and comical mundanity popping up there — you never really know what you’re going to hear next. Just when you’ve forgotten it’s hip-hop, it reminds you it is. Then it changes colors again. Bass lines writhe and synthesizers sing like sirens to the swagger of drums.

Someone sings a line or two then falls silent. Dark chanting, quiet at first, slowly steps to the sound stage’s foreground. Samples used on earlier tracks find themselves woven into later ones like reoccurring dreams. Or nightmares. This isn’t an album for children. I liked it a lot in 2006, but now I appreciate it much better.

It is not without irony. One track is titled Why Hip-Hop Sucks In ‘96. It is 44 seconds long, and unlike the rest of the album, the beat is simple and predictable. On its own it isn’t a bad beat, albeit typical of the hip-hop of the era, but compared with the other tracks’ richness it is dull and lacking life. A sample from a rap song briefly rings out: “It’s the money.” It is a 44-second commentary on the sad state of gangster rap and commercial music in general; ultimately such music is boring, don’t waste your time.

I would recommend this album to those seeking to expand an eclectic collection of music, whether or not hip-hop’s something that interests them. Take some time off and just listen to the album; don’t let it play in the background while you do other things. It would be a waste. Oh, and make sure you like drums.