For an album that is ostensibly an enduring love letter to the art of crate digging, it’s entirely fitting that Endtroducing’s cover was shot in a record shop – DJ Shadow’s local store, Rare Records in Sacramento. Shadow suggested to Irish photographer Brian Cross, aka B+, that they head to the shop for the shoot and he captured the cover image on his manual-focus Fuji 617.
While the blurred motion could be seen as representing the digger’s voracious appetite for vinyl, the whole thing was a happy accident, including the feline guest appearance (pictured on the left-hand side of the gatefold): “We measured the focus really quickly because of the cat and we measured in feet when it’s set for metres,” said Cross. “That’s why the foreground is out of focus. It was honestly a total mistake.” The fully-engrossed record hunters on the cover are Shadow’s hip-hop buddies: Tom Shimura (Asia Born), Xavier Mosley (Chief Xcel) and Benji B.