In the United Kingdom, where DJ Shadow had already established himself as a rising act, Endtroducing received praise from music journalists at the time of its release, and reached the top 20 of the UK Albums Chart. It took considerably longer for Endtroducing to find success in the United States. After promoting the album and returning to his hometown of Davis, California, DJ Shadow devoted his time to creating new music. During this period, interest in Endtroducing began to build among the American music press, and it peaked at number 37 on the US Billboard Heatseekers Albums chart.
As a high school student, DJ Shadow experimented with creating music from samples using a four-track recorder, inspired by sample-based music such as It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back (1988) by the hip hop group Public Enemy. He began his music career in 1989 as a disc jockey for the University of California, Davis campus radio station KDVS. His KDVS work impressed A&R representative Dave "Funken" Klein, who signed him to the Hollywood Basic label to produce music and remixes. DJ Shadow's output for Hollywood Basic, including the 1993 single "Entropy" and his work with the SoleSides crew, brought him to the attention of English musician James Lavelle, who signed DJ Shadow to his Mo' Wax label.
DJ Shadow began production on Endtroducing in 1994 in his California apartment, before moving to the Glue Factory, the San Francisco home studio of his colleague Dan the Automator. Shadow strove to create an entirely sample-based album. His setup was minimal, with only three main pieces of equipment: an Akai MPC60 MKII sampler, a Technics SL-1200 turntable and an Alesis ADAT tape recorder. He used the MPC60 MKII for almost all composition. DJ Shadow bought it in 1992 at the suggestion of DJ Stretch Armstrong, who recommended it as a more advanced alternative to the "industry standard" sampler at the time, the E-mu SP-1200; according to DJ Shadow, the SP-1200 "had been around for like four years, the sound was well established, and it had some real audio limitations in terms of the bit rate and stuff".
DJ Shadow sampled vinyl albums and singles accumulated from his trips to Rare Records, a record shop in his native Sacramento, where he spent several hours each day searching for music. His routine is depicted in the 2001 documentary film Scratch. The Endtroducing album cover is a photograph taken at Rare Records by B Plus, showing producer Chief Xcel and rapper Lyrics Born (the latter wearing a wig), who like DJ Shadow were members of the SoleSides collective. ABB Records founder Beni B (wearing a baseball cap) is also seen in the full version of the photograph, which appears in the album's liner notes.
Endtroducing samples music of various genres, including jazz, funk, and psychedelia, as well as films and interviews. DJ Shadow programmed, chopped, and layered samples to create tracks. He opted to sample more obscure selections, making it a rule to avoid sampling popular material. Though he also used samples of prominent artists such as Björk and Metallica, DJ Shadow said that "if I use something obvious, it's usually only to break my own rules." Minor vocal contributions were provided by Lyrics Born and another SoleSides member, rapper Gift of Gab, as well as DJ Shadow's then-girlfriend Lisa Haugen. He finished recording Endtroducing in early 1996
DJ Shadow described his albums as "really varied", and said of Endtroducing: "I feel like 'Organ Donor' sounds nothing like 'The Number Song' which sounds nothing like 'Midnight' and on and on." He said he was often depressed during the production of the album and that his "feelings of self-doubt and self-esteem come through in the music."
Endtroducing opened by "Best Foot Forward", a sound collage of record scratches and hip hop vocal samples. "Building Steam with a Grain of Salt" was built around a looped piano line sampled from Jeremy Storch's "I Feel a New Shadow", with various other musical elements entering throughout the track, including samples of an interview with drummer George Marsh, a women's choir, bass fills, electronically altered drum kicks, and funk guitar. "The Number Song" used multiple drum breaks and vocal samples of count-offs."Changeling" deviated from the previous uptempo tracks, incorporating new-age sounds and gradually building toward a "sublimely spacey" coda. It segues into the first of three "transmission" interludes placed throughout the album, each featuring a sample from the 1987 John Carpenter film Prince of Darkness. "What Does Your Soul Look Like (Part 4)" layered wordless chants over a looped bass groove, creating what Paste's Mark Richardson described it as an "uneasy" techno soundscape. Track six ws an untitled interlude featuring a man reciting a monologue about a woman and her sisters over a funk backing.
The two-part "Stem/Long Stem" began the second half of Endtroducing. a "suite of often melancholy music, a piece that consistently refuses to be pigeonholed into any musical style." The first half, "Stem", placed strings against a recurring sequence of erratic drum beats, before giving way to the more ethereal "Long Stem", followed by "Transmission 2". "Mutual Slump" featured "dreamy" female spoken vocals and prominent samples of Björk's "Possibly Maybe". The sparse "Organ Donor" juxtaposed an organ solo and a drum break. "Why Hip Hop Sucks in '96" was a brief interlude featuring a repeating G-funk-esque beat, over which a voice shouts "It's the money". DJ Shadow composed the track to express his dissatisfaction with the state of commercial hip hop music in the mid-1990s.
"Midnight in a Perfect World" mixed a soulful vocal line with a slow drum beat. It sampled the bassline from Pekka Pohjola's "The Madness Subsides", as well as elements of David Axelrod's piano composition "The Human Abstract". "Napalm Brain/Scatter Brain" progressed slowly, starting with a bassline and a drum loop, then gradually increasing in tempo as additional instrumentation enters the mix. The track eventually reached its climax and deconstructs itself, leaving a single string sample playing by its conclusion. Endtroducing ended "on an up note" with "What Does Your Soul Look Like (Part 1 – Blue Sky Revisit)", which was anchored by warm saxophone and keyboard hooks. A third and final "transmission" closes the album with the spoken words "It is happening again", sampled from the David Lynch television series Twin Peaks.
Songs like "Midnight In A Perfect World", & "Napalm Brain/Scatter Brain" would later appear on DJ Shadow's other release Camel Bobsled Race. While "The Number Song" & "Organ Donor" would also later appear again in DJ Shadow's other release Brainfreeze.
