DJ Shadow Quotes

#1. Any good album title has multiple meanings, and I like choosing titles where I find myself repeating it, almost like a mantra.

DJ Shadow

#2. The conventional wisdom of fandom is that you must give your fans anything they want. But I've never felt that that's a healthy attitude - and that comes from being a Star Wars fan.

DJ Shadow

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

DJ Shadow

#4. When I think about the stuff I turned down it's kind of insane.

DJ Shadow

#5. 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.

DJ Shadow

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

DJ Shadow

#7. I would rather have 10 people working on a record that are really committed and believe in it and love it, than 50 people who have no idea who I am or what I'm for.

DJ Shadow

#8. To be honest, I didn't really get into making music to be an album artist.

DJ Shadow

#9. I realized that people don't quite understand what I do when I was the new kid on the block and a lot of Hollywood was offering me fairly cheesy projects.

DJ Shadow

#10. In certain cases I don't want to sell tracks individually; I want to only sell the whole album. With simple things like that I just don't get any response [from iTunes]. I don't want to kill iTunes - I just want to offer my own retail experience in my own tiny corner of the Internet.

DJ Shadow

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

DJ Shadow

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

DJ Shadow

#13. Things go wrong when the people who control that world stop listening to their own instincts and start catering to their fan base.

DJ Shadow

#14. When I first pursued this with Universal, they had no idea what to do. But now that we've gone through the whole process and I've signed this 60-page document that says what we can and can't do, I suppose it will be a little bit easier for the next person.

DJ Shadow

#15. I'm not going to get on any anti-corporation soapbox to an extreme level.

DJ Shadow

#16. 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.

DJ Shadow

#17. I'm trying to satirize what it's like to be a recording artist in 2011. I realize that standing on a soap box and ranting and raving about my opinions on the digital age and its effect on music is only going to get you so far.

DJ Shadow

#18. There are a lot of music startups that don't have anything to do with anyone's love for music. It has to do with them having a glorious IPO and then retiring to the Bahamas somewhere. It's important to keep that in mind.

DJ Shadow

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

DJ Shadow

#20. Everything right now tends to be the same and very aggressive, and I think people are getting a little burned out on it.

DJ Shadow

#21. My problem with iTunes is that I don't have any say in how I'm represented on the site.

DJ Shadow

#22. You can be a great DJ and still be not very good at DJ Hero. And vice-versa: You can have never spun in your life on real turntables and be fine on DJ Hero.

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#23. If you think of any long-term artist that makes music throughout several decades, you would hope that it's autobiographical and a form of self-expression, and that's certainly how I approach my music.

DJ Shadow

#24. One of my favorite things that Yahoo does on a regular basis is this story: "Wealthiest Rap Artists." That's an example of the internet just perpetuating this myth that we're all just sitting around in these mansions like Steven Tyler, bopping around in our swimming pool. It's bullshit.

DJ Shadow

#25. I would much rather people kick and scream and tear their hair out and accuse me of all kinds of blasphemy, than just have no opinion whatsoever.

DJ Shadow

#26. 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.

DJ Shadow

#27. I got asked to remix a lot of movie themes, like Mission Impossible, which other people ended up doing quite well. But it was just never my thing.

DJ Shadow

#28. If I wanted to contribute to the hyphy movement, what good is it making a hyphy record that isn't embraced by that community?

DJ Shadow

#29. Just like on Guitar Hero, there are things that are similar and things that are not similar at all. When I first played DJ Hero, I wasn't very good. The control surface is similar in some ways to a turntable, but in other ways not at all the same.

DJ Shadow

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

DJ Shadow

#31. There's any number of DJs who have inspired me over the years. I don't actively go out in clubs, so I can't tell you if there's some hot new talent out there who everybody's aware of but I'm not.

DJ Shadow

#32. 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.

DJ Shadow

#33. 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.

DJ Shadow

#34. Like a lot of other DJs, I've been wondering when the first DJ game was going to happen. Somebody even pitched me on their own idea and I thought, "I'm not a video game startup; I don't know what I'm supposed to do with this."

DJ Shadow

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

DJ Shadow

#36. I always consider every album to be a snapshot.

DJ Shadow

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

DJ Shadow

#38. I tend to gravitate away from the more trendy Ibiza style of dance music. It's not me.

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

DJ Shadow

#40. 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.

DJ Shadow

#41. I was asked to do TV ads for Macintosh. Nowadays, I think anybody would jump at that but, at the time, it didn't feel appropriate for what I was trying to stand for.

DJ Shadow

#42. 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?"

DJ Shadow

#43. 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.

DJ Shadow

#44. People love drama, and if you aren't really interested in perpetuating that, it keeps you from exploding on a mainstream stage. I'm totally fine with that.

DJ Shadow

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

DJ Shadow

#46. Yeah, I do. HipHop was, though I would not say all, cause I try to keep myself open to other things, but nearly all I listend to for the last 14 years of my life.

DJ Shadow

#47. I remember when the big shift happened in 1996-97, when suddenly it dawned on the music community: 'We should license our music to commercials and sell out for all intents and purposes. It doesn't really matter.'

DJ Shadow

#48. I've always been compared to people. It's a revolving cast that comes and goes - obviously, sometimes people stay.

DJ Shadow