L*Roneous Da'Versifier - "L'Chemy" b/w "Implosion" (Ocean Floor Records, 1997)
Endtroducing… was never a big seller in the United States—it peaked at number 37 on the Billboard Top Heatseekers chart well after its November 1996 release—but it and the singles that led up to it had a seismic impact on hip-hop that is still being felt today. Its greatest effect was kicking off instrumental hip-hop, a subgenre that brewed for a decade before exploding in the wake of J Dilla’s death, but it also set the stage for a production methodology that hadn’t really existed much before DJ Shadow started releasing singles. All of the songs leading up to and on Endtroducing… were not simply loops in the style of the great DJ Premier or Pete Rock. DJ Shadow structured his beats like songs, building and transforming throughout their runtimes and constructed from countless samples from different songs. This production approach can be heard in El-P’s work on The Cold Vein and Fantastic Damage, in Dan the Automator’s work on Deltron 3030 and Dr. Octagonecologyst, and in countless other underground rap classics from the late nineties to the present.
DJ
Zeph is one of the great unsung producers to take DJ Shadow’s lessons to heart.
On L*Roneous Da’Versifier’s
first single “L’Chemy” b/w “Implosion,” Zeph worked very much in the lane that
DJ Shadow carved out with Endtroducing…
Zeph is a master at suggesting mood and environment in his beats. These two
songs, and indeed the whole of Imaginarium,
L*Roneous’ debut album that Zeph produced, simulate the feel of urban nights,
with a bit of futurism thrown in for good measure. If Paul Pope’s 100% is ever adapted into a movie, Zeph
should do the score.
