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Endtroducing vs Donuts

FatbackFatback 6,746 Posts
edited April 2008 in Strut Central
I like these kind of albums while I'm riding my bike. It seems that Endtroducing is the constantly rode for hip hop instrumental album. Shit I even spelled it wrong and the correction came up in google spell check. Anyways, I didn't jump for Donuts when it first came out. That's just me. I need things to settle and marinate. Now I can it's the best instrumental hip hop record I've ever heard.
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  Comments

  • catalistcatalist 1,373 Posts
    The two albums are quite different, it really would come down to personal preference and not which one is "better" than the other.

    Endtroducing is more heavily layered and sequenced/arranged with samples and donuts is made up of more tracks, shorter in length and more focused on the gritty beats and the heavy chopping. I'll ride for both , though Donuts has had much more play lately. Shit, I forget where I put my copy of Endtroducing..
  • Guantanamo_JonesGuantanamo_Jones 177 Posts
    entroducing is a great album no doubt... but donuts is 100 percent pure soul... it is something i can feel in me. entroducing is more of a "oh thats cool, i wonder how he put that together?" type of thing.
  • 1219197712191977 323 Posts
    Comparing apples to oranges?
  • kalakala 3,362 Posts
    i think doughnuts is more timeless and sounds like good music and endtro is a good "instrumental hip hop "album with 2-3 excellent tracks

    endtro didn't hold up as well as I thought it would ....over 12 years

    donughts has more subtle depth
  • DuderonomyDuderonomy Haut de la Garenne 7,793 Posts

    After the dumb'n'bass terds post, this has redeemed you in my eyes - there is hope for you yet! I will make a mix of good dumb'n'bass, and once you've let it marinate for a while, you might like it.

    I like Donuts, but could live with less siren.
  • drewnicedrewnice 5,465 Posts
    Donuts is today's Endtroducing. Ain't no vs. about it.
  • nessness 249 Posts
    something i can feel in me.

  • minneapminneap 541 Posts
    The two albums are quite different

    both albums depend on my mood for the most part. donuts gets play during the day out skating and doin whatever it is i do whereas endtroducing probably gets more play at night or if it's cold/rainy. i had some shit goin on when i first heard endtroducing so it kinda brings me back to all that bullshit.
  • JuniorJunior 4,853 Posts
    I still haven't given Donuts that many plays though a couple of friends of mine have been raving about it for months and it's bumped up on my to-listen-to list. I suspect it's an album that rewards the more and more you listen to it and not one that will reward a quick skip through.

    It's pretty much impossible for me to listen to Endtroducing the way I did when it first came out due to how much it's now been played to death by BBC programmes over her. Pretty much any trailer for a documentary about warzones will feature either long stem or napalm brain and just the other day they even had Organ Donor playing over the end of Traffic Cops.*

    I do however remember how much my face melted when I first got home and put it on. I know it's not fashionable to show the love these days but can't think of that many albums that have knocked me sideways the same since. Sounded entirely different to anything out there at the time for me at least.

    *Disclaimer I was waiting for The Apprentice which was on afterwards - i do not and never will condone the watching of Traffic Cops.
  • verb606verb606 2,518 Posts
    The two albums are quite different, it really would come down to personal preference and not which one is "better" than the other.

    Endtroducing is more heavily layered and sequenced/arranged with samples and donuts is made up of more tracks, shorter in length and more focused on the gritty beats and the heavy chopping. I'll ride for both , though Donuts has had much more play lately. Shit, I forget where I put my copy of Endtroducing..


    That's exactly what I was about to say. They are both great examples of the uses/possibilities of samples, however. If I was teaching a class on that, I would present both albums together on some compare and contrast shit.
  • JectWonJectWon (@_@) 1,654 Posts
    something i can feel in me.


    Props. Gotta respect someone who sees an opportunity and jumps on it with the subtle demonstration of taste we see here.
  • batmonbatmon 27,574 Posts
    Ill get back to u in 12 years to see how well Donuts is holding up.
  • GenePontecorvoGenePontecorvo 5,612 Posts
    This thread makes me feel old, and it was started by an old dude.
  • FatbackFatback 6,746 Posts

    redeemed you in my eyes - there is hope for you yet!



    i throw away your record collection every week.
  • kalakala 3,362 Posts


    And it's a bit callous to say, but I'm suspicious that it wouldn't have gotten the love that it did if it hadn't been for the events of the day it came out.




    if i said this ,toys would be screaming for ban/"fuck you kala i have no respect for you" etc

    oi vey
  • DocMcCoyDocMcCoy "Go and laugh in your own country!" 5,917 Posts
    I think they're both very different records, and I like them both for different reasons. I always saw Endtroducing (and Shadow's earlier solo stuff in general) as being closer to mid-period Pink Floyd, albeit retooled via the medium of dollarbincommon. In fact, the first time I heard In/Flux, which I still think is his masterpiece, I said to one of my boys that, if James Lavelle could get the stoners into this, him and Shadow would clean up. Donuts is more like a next-level beat tape/mixtape, and is a more exciting listen in some ways, as it really sounds as if Dilla was just playing it all live on the MPC in places. At the same time, though, Shadow flew a lot of the shit on In/Flux in by hand, and I admire the fact that he clearly gives a lot of thought to the structure of his shit in terms of the musical sense it makes, whereas the energy of Donuts seems to have come from Dilla grabbing a bunch of records and just banging it out, although there's obviously much more going on than just that.
  • DuderonomyDuderonomy Haut de la Garenne 7,793 Posts

    redeemed you in my eyes - there is hope for you yet!



    i throw away your record collection every week.

    Cool! Where?
  • kalakala 3,362 Posts
    I think they're both very different records, and I like them both for different reasons. I always saw Endtroducing (and Shadow's earlier solo stuff in general) as being closer to mid-period Pink Floyd, albeit retooled via the medium of dollarbincommon. In fact, the first time I heard In/Flux, which I still think is his masterpiece, I said to one of my boys that, if James Lavelle could get the stoners into this, him and Shadow would clean up. Donuts is more like a next-level beat tape/mixtape, and is a more exciting listen in some ways, as it really sounds as if Dilla was just playing it all live on the MPC in places. At the same time, though, Shadow flew a lot of the shit on In/Flux in by hand, and I admire the fact that he clearly gives a lot of thought to the structure of his shit in terms of the musical sense it makes, whereas the energy of Donuts seems to have come from Dilla grabbing a bunch of records and just banging it out, although there's obviously much more going on than just that.

    yeah didn't do the whole thing on one of those small battery op roland samplers like mad lib always use and some 45s?
  • FatbackFatback 6,746 Posts
    Endtroducing is tired after all these years, and that may or may not be a testament to its quality. In any case, Junior's right that it's not fashionable these days to give it love.

    Dilla is rightfully an icon, and I love Donuts and it's listenable over and over. But I feel that Shadow accomplished more with Endtroducing. Really, making 5 minute sample based songs is a lot more challenging to make interesting than a long string of 1.5-2 minute songs.

    Cue objection: who cares how hard/easy it is to make if it sounds good? Well, Donuts is really a bunch of (fantastic) sketches of songs more than they really are songs.

    And it's a bit callous to say, but I'm suspicious that it wouldn't have gotten the love that it did if it hadn't been for the events of the day it came out.

    Which one am I more likely to put on the stereo next? Donuts, hands down. Shadow is tired.

    I thought about that too. While Shadow would build these suites and that seems like a more complex compositional structure, I think Donuts comes together in the same way. (Even thought they are technically a bunch of little songs.) In the end, Donuts has more going on both technically and aesthetically.

    But I'm just an old dude with an expensive Blue Note fetish. What do I know?
  • Guantanamo_JonesGuantanamo_Jones 177 Posts
    I think they're both very different records, and I like them both for different reasons. I always saw Endtroducing (and Shadow's earlier solo stuff in general) as being closer to mid-period Pink Floyd, albeit retooled via the medium of dollarbincommon. In fact, the first time I heard In/Flux, which I still think is his masterpiece, I said to one of my boys that, if James Lavelle could get the stoners into this, him and Shadow would clean up. Donuts is more like a next-level beat tape/mixtape, and is a more exciting listen in some ways, as it really sounds as if Dilla was just playing it all live on the MPC in places. At the same time, though, Shadow flew a lot of the shit on In/Flux in by hand, and I admire the fact that he clearly gives a lot of thought to the structure of his shit in terms of the musical sense it makes, whereas the energy of Donuts seems to have come from Dilla grabbing a bunch of records and just banging it out, although there's obviously much more going on than just that.

    yeah didn't do the whole thing on one of those small battery op roland samplers like mad lib always use and some 45s?

    i thought i heard that dill pot a lot of donuts together in garage band while he was in the hospital...

    one quality that both albums share is that their respective sounds are very consistent all the way through
  • HarveyCanalHarveyCanal "a distraction from my main thesis." 13,234 Posts
    When Donuts came out, we had my wife's oldest brother and his wife staying with us for a few days on a visit from Atlanta. One of those days, I had come home with the Donuts cd as I was going to review it for the newspaper and we began listening to it together. My brother-in-law's wife, who was right around 50 years old at that time, became extremely intrigued by it...recognizing a lot of samples from it...and wound up asking us to play it multiple times over the course of her stay.

    Point being, Donuts contains a breezy soul quality that is completely lacking from Shadow's more trip-hop-oriented album. Everything about Endtroducing is so darned deliberate and well, nerdy that it's the equivalent of rubbing a plastic pocket protector against your ear until blood starts oozing out. Actually, it's not that bad...but hell no, it hasn't stood up against the test of time. That look-at-me-I'm-melancholy-in-a-cinematic-way vibe just doesn't cut it nowadays.
  • djkingottodjkingotto 1,704 Posts


    And it's a bit callous to say, but I'm suspicious that it wouldn't have gotten the love that it did if it hadn't been for the events of the day it came out.

    did i miss something? what happened the day it came out other than it coming out?

    i bought donuts the day it came out. i put it in the cd player in my truck, listened and was unimpressed. but i didn't take it out of the cd player for over a week. donuts is the best inst hip hop album.

    i got a promo copy of endtroducing when it came out. put it on the turntable and listened to it. took it off and put it on the shelve where it stayed to this day. i really, really couldn't stand to listen to that boring crap.


    harvey said it better.
  • deejdeej 5,125 Posts
    both of these are way overrated
  • batmonbatmon 27,574 Posts
    both of these are way overrated


  • FatbackFatback 6,746 Posts
    both of these are way overrated

    Fine. How about a record like Donuts, but better. I'm interested. Thanks.
  • HarveyCanalHarveyCanal "a distraction from my main thesis." 13,234 Posts
    both of these are way overrated

    Yeah, they're no C&C Music Factory.
  • deejdeej 5,125 Posts
    serious music > fun music

    ALWAYS
  • white_teawhite_tea 3,262 Posts
    Coincidentally, I was listening to Donuts for the first time in a while last night. The first time I heard it, I loved it. I'd like to say the tragic events surrounding the album don't effect my listening experience, but I'd be lying. That said, I am going to echo some of the other posts here and I say "I feel it" -- some of the tracks are just nice beats but some of them are soulful and touching in a way that very few other instrumentals, or music of any kind, are. I'd take this over Entroducing in a heartbeat.

    I love DJ Shadow's record too. Not so much as on that record, but on Shadow's later albums, I really appreciated the well-thought-out badness. Shadow put a lot of time and energy making some prog-rock instrumental hip-hop shit that doesn't really work but I still appreciate it somehow. I still love tracks like "What Does Your Soul Look Like" and "Midnight in a Perfect World" from Entroducing -- they are deep cuts that envelop you in the sound, but Dilla manages to evoke a deeper feeling in a 2-minute chop.
  • spelunkspelunk 3,400 Posts
    They're both unique styles from great producers whose styles have been jacked so hard that it makes their own work harder to listen to.

    But try as they might, no one has been able to match the sounds on either one of those records.

    I'll take the Private Press over Endtroducing.
  • troublemantroubleman 1,928 Posts
    both of these are way overrated

    There it is! Finally, the SOULSTRUT review of everything
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