DJ Shadow

 DJ Shadow, whose real name is Joshua Paul Davis, is an American DJ, songwriter, and record producer, born on June 29, 1972. He began experimenting with a four-track recorder while in high school in Davis, California. During his college years at the University of California, Davis, he worked as a disc jockey for the campus radio station KDVS. He explored the experimental hip-hop style associated with the London-based Mo' Wax record label, which influenced his genre-bending early singles, such as "In/Flux" and "Lost and Found (S.F.L.)", blending elements of funk, rock, hip hop, ambient, jazz, soul, and used-bin found records.

DJ Shadow contributed scratching and production work to Sleeping with the Enemy, the second release by rapper Paris, in 1992. In 1993, Shadow was a part of the creation of the Solesides underground hip-hop label, in conjunction with Blackalicious and Lyrics Born, and the first 12" release on this new imprint was titled "Entropy." Shadow continued to participate in releases on the Solesides label for years to come, until the label was disbanded in favor of Quannum Projects.

In 1996, Shadow's first full-length work, Endtroducing....., was released to critical acclaim. Endtroducing made the Guinness World Records book for "First Completely Sampled Album" in 2001, and in November 2006, Time magazine named it one of its "All-Time" 100 best albums. Later that year, he produced Psyence Fiction, the debut album by UNKLE, a long-time Mo' Wax production team.

Around 2000, Shadow produced the score for the documentary Dark Days, and he also starred in the 2001 movie Scratch, produced by Doug Pray, alongside Z-Trip, Grand Wizard Theodore, Mix Master Mike, and DJ Qbert. Nearly six years after his debut production album, his second album, The Private Press, was released in June 2002, and a remix of his track "Six Days" was produced and released. In 2005, he released a live album, Live! In Tune and on Time, which was recorded during a 2002 tour.