DJ Shadow (feat. Lateef & Turf Talk)
Amoeba Records
September 21, 2006

Review by Jake Thomas

You know you have some serious love for an artist when you’ll skip out of work early to see them play a free afternoon show. I arrived to Amoeba with a little bit of time to partake in one of my all-time favorite activities: digging through the bargain bin. It just so happens that by doing partaking of this cheapskate activity, coupled with my slightly taller-than-average height, put me in a fantastic position to watch the man of the hour, DJ Shadow, spin his records and watch the matching video screen that was synced up with the music.

Like always, the man was a maestro on the decks, performing a mish-mash of some of best tracks over the years, splicing them together in mind boggling ways…I have a ton of live DJ Shadow bootlegs, and never have I heard two shows that were even close to the same. And despite the limitations of watching a DJ perform, with him it somehow works (the visuals do help though).

I would have been more than happy with a full set of just Shadow doing his thing, but he had some tricks up his sleeve - guest stars! First up was Lateef, a long-time collaborator of Shadows and fellow member of Solesides. He rapped his part to the track “Enuff”, a duet with Q-Tip featured on Shadow’s new album “The Outsider”; this segued into one of my personal favorite-of-all-time hip-hop songs that he put out some years back called “Lady Don’t Tek No”; the duo then moved onto “Mashin’ on the Motorway” from Shadow’s previous record The Private Press. The whole thing was fantastic in every regard, and even for a free weird afternoon crowd they seemed super into it.

But Shadow wasn’t finished just yet – he closed out the set by bringing on the young up-n-comer Turf Talk, best known for his work in the burgeoning “hyphy” movement. He performed his short section from the track “3 Freaks” (also from Shadow’s new album) to finish out the show. The crew then supposedly trucked over to the city to do another (different) set at Amoeba in SF, which I would have also gone to had I not been leaving the city. It was all well worth skipping out of work early for, and I’d do it again any time for DJ Shadow.


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Read our previous DJ Shadow review:
November 24, 2002 @ The Warfield


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