But sometime in the ’90s, it broke off and became its own twitchy, insular thing. (The album turns 20 tomorrow.) It had been a part of rap before rapping was a part of rap. DJing, of course, had been a vastly important part of hip-hop for decades before 1996, the year DJ Shadow released Endtroducing…. It’s more of a shock that it produced only one masterpiece.
Looking back a couple of decades, it’s not that much of a shock that turntablism produced a masterpiece.
