The Shadow Knows

"But my opinion on this has always been that I know what the roots of hip-hop are. I grew up on hip-hop, and I've never tried to pretend that I'm something I'm not. I've never really had a chip on my shoulder about it, so nobody ever really tries to knock it off. Even though I know that American society finds race extremely interesting, it's of no relevance to me."

Do race-baiting critiques prevent African-Americans into hip-hop from experiencing what Shadow has to offer? He doubts it. "I think a lot of journalists don't give enough credit to most hip-hop fans," he claims. "There's a few very vocal people within hip-hop who use rap as their own soapbox for whatever political agenda they have at the time. But most hip-hop listeners don't care. They only care if it sounds good. I mean, I don't remember ever thinking that Third Bass [a white rap act] wasn't as good as some other group for that reason. And not too many other people that I know think that way. So it's a media-generated situation--a macro issue where people like to use hip-hop as a mirror to reflect their own sort of biases."

Of course, Shadow has prejudices of his own--against musical complacency, for one thing. By embracing cliches, he could make himself very wealthy. But selling out isn't on his itinerary. "It would be really easy for me to say, 'Fuck, this is my one chance to make it; I should do every commercial thing that comes along.' But then I think about my heroes from other musical genres--people who've retained some sense of consistency and some sense of duty to themselves to continue to make good music. I've had the opportunity to meet a lot of these funk guys who recorded on dozens of different labels and never made it, and some of them are bitter. But most of them still like music, they're down-to-earth, and they still get out there and gig in their hometowns, wherever they may be. And I think, 'That's how I'd like to be.' All this other stuff is just chaos and noise."

Jeru the Damaja, with DJ Shadow. 9 p.m. Wednesday, April 9, Fox Theatre, 1135 13th Street, Boulder, $16.80, 443-3399 or 830-