After photos amongst the aircon exhausted on the roof of Island Records old – and much loved – West London home, in 2002 DJ Shadow shared over noodles ten tracks he could not live without in early 2002… Originally published in Q Magazine, Where To Get It (WTGI) was the mag’s shorthand for what album each song was on. This is a slightly longer transcript than printed…

Mystikal – Bouncing Back

“While I was down in Miami recently I was listening to a lot of the pirate radio stations down there that play jam pony style Djaying – they talk on beat and take out the record – and they played this and a track called Pussy Crooks which made me buy the album. He’s from Louisiana, so  it’s a dirty South rap,  kind of comedic but super aggressive. He’s done a lot of guest appearances including on Snoop Dogg’s records.”

WTGI: Mystikal Tarantula (Jive)

Radiohead – Amnesiac 

“This was probably my favourite new contemporary album of last year, I thought particularly in America where it went to number one I thought it was such a huge victory for non-conventional music. To me Radiohead are constantly stretching you to the breaking point but you don’t break and I think the best groups now their fans want to be challenged. I listened to this a lot in my car while I was working on my latest album Private Press. At the time I was just about to get married, and I was mixing the key tracks of the new album, so driving between the two and listening to Amnesiac was just good therapy music for me. It eased me out of whatever stress I was going through.”

WTGI: Amnesiac (Parlophone) 

Different Parts (Joe Tessler) – Why

“Over the course of the last four years I’ve slowly found myself gravitating towards garage rock from the mid-60s and the compilation this is on a good example of the turning point between garage and psychedelic. Funk 45s over the last few years has become such a rich man’s game – it’s so competitive and it’s almost a commodity now so I decided I didn’t need the world’s best funk record collection – that I started buying garage 45s by accident, I’d get them home thinking they were funk records and discovering they weren’t, but these songs are great, there as good as anything I’ve heard ever.”

WTGI: Psychedelic Crown Beats Vol 2 (Akarma)

Mannie Fresh – Cash Money Instrumentals 

“I brought my first Mannie Fresh record of his 15 years ago, he did a novelty song called Freddy’s Back playing on Nightmare On Elm Street, and it’s really inspiring to me that a producer can be at the top of his game years later. He’s so prolific he could do a whole album in a week, they don’t all hit but the ones that do are really cool, and this is a good way to listen to his production for what it is, the beats and just let the beats rocks for a while.”

WTGI Cash Money Instrumentals (Cash Money)

Roots Manuva – Witness One Hope

“I first got into hit by hearing the 45 on the Product Placement tour, the dub on the b-side is really dope and it’s fun listening to that so I decided it was time to open the CD that I’d been sent months previously, but hadn’t got around to listening. I don’t know if he’d be into something like this, but to me his the British Mos Def, I don’t know if he’d take that as a compliment or not but I mean it as one.” 

WTGI: Run Come Save Me (Big Dada)

Muro – Pan Rhythm 107

“Muro is a rapper, producer and DJ and he’s the like the godfather of a lot of contemporary Japanese hip hop and this song with the American rapper Freddy Fox and it’s as dope as anything I heard this year hip hop-wise and no one in America knows about it. I like to pick up a lot of instrumental stuff while I’m there, you can’t really play the rap in a club, it’s so foreign sounding people would just stop unfortunately, but in this case it’s a great song, the beats are hard, it’s not any wimpy stuff, it’s real hip hop.”

WTGI: (Toys Factory) 

Jurassic 5 – Quality Control 

“I was recently traded some show vinyl – the pressings made up specially for performing – with Cut Chemist from the band. We’re both show vinyl collectors, I’ve also got the used Beastie Boy’s Ill Communication tour vinyl. The reason I mention this one is there’s a instrumental on there of a song that was going to go on the album but didn’t and it’s just dope. I’ve got it on one of my home made compilation CDs and whenever it comes up I turn up that little bit.”

WTGI: “There’s very few show vinyl made that I’ve never found it on my own, I’ve been given it by there actual DJ” says Shadow, so unless your friends with Jurassic 5 a regular copy of Quality Control (Interscope) will have to suffice.

Blackalicious – Make You Feel That Way

“Blackalicious are part of my crew back home – we all just did a cameo in the video for this track just to lend support . There was a time when I lived with X [Chief Xcel] who’s half of Blackalicious and this is like family, but in the last three year’s everyone’s careers have taken them in so many different directions, so it’s interesting to see how people’s music tastes have gone off. It’s definitely a record I could never make, there’s a lot of R&B singing on it, which I like to hear but I could never do.” 

WTGI: Blackalicious – Blazing Arrow (MCA)   

James Brown – In The Jungle Groove 

“It’s kind of lame but it one of my favourite albums of all time. It’s a collection from 1986 and it’s got a couple unrealsed songs on there and lots of things he originally put out as 45 only where they’ve included the whole eight minute jam. James Brown has always been my favoured artists so I had to buy this again on CD, because my wife recently got me a CD changer for my car, it’s good driving music, good everything music.”

WTGI: In The Jungle Groove (Urban)

Sonny Hopson – Mighty Burner 

“It’s so exciting it makes radio today sound dog shit, just Hopson playing soul and funk for an hour. I went to see Radiohead play last June and I know them quite well so I went to see them afterwards and Colin Greenwood popped this CD in – this is a very obscure thing remember – and I went ‘Holly shit you guys have this, you are hip!’ and Thom Yorke was like, Damn right we’re are.”  

WTGI: Sonny Hopson – Mighty Burner (Philly Archive)