What Does It All Mean? 1983-2006 Retrospective
by Steinski
Metascore
86

Universal acclaim - based on 18 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 15 out of 18
  2. Mixed: 3 out of 18
  3. Negative: 0 out of 18
  1. AllMusic
    90
    Rap music has rarely gotten more virtuosic and creative than it does here.
  2. Alternative Press
    80
    'The Motorcade Sped On,' a track that chops up funky beats with verteran newscaster Walter Cronkite reporting the death of President John F. Kennedy, is worth the price of admission alone. [July 2008, p.170]
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  3. Blender
    80
    Not all connect, but a bonus disc, the soon-vanished 2002 full-length Nothing to Fear, compensates. Buy this before it vanishes, too.
  5. cokemachineglow
    88
    They may not seem on-point at first, occasionally wandering into vaguely tangential realms like a professor who’s a few dropped chalks away from the retirement home, but eventually the genius of it settles in.
  6. Dusted Magazine
    80
    It's rare that historically important recordings are also essential listening, but this is such a case.
  7. MSN Consumer Guide (Robert Christgau)
    100
    Buy it while you can.
  8. Pitchfork
    87
    Nothing to Fear might be the surprise highlight of this collection, even accounting for all the classic stuff on the first disc.
  9. PopMatters
    80
    Luckily for us, Illegal Art has included with this set 2006’s Nothing to Fear a riveting journey by DJ that shows Steinski to be entering his second golden age.
  10. RapReviews.com
    85
    Simply put, it is an essential document of hip hop history, an interesting collection of sound art, and a lot of fun to listen to as well.
  11. Rolling Stone
    80
    Influence aside, what's just as impressive about this handsome anthology of barely legal rarities is how well tracks work as songs.
  12. Spin
    100
    Barring "Blade Runner," the best pop art by a former adman. [June 2008, p.119]
  13. Sputnikmusic
    90
    By listening to What Does It All Mean?, you're giving yourself a vital history lesson, a blast of fun, and above all, some 130 minutes of fantastic music.
  14. The A.V. Club
    100
    The Steinski myth has grown in the darkness of bootlegs, but this long-overdue release proves that the reality more than lives up to the legend.
  15. The New York Times
    80
    A reasonable first impulse is to try to identify all the sound sources; the inevitable second impulse is to marvel at how well he has chopped up and rearranged them into units of rhythm.
  16. The Wire
    90
    While Steinski's work with DeFranco aka Double Dee, is the most dazzling--precisely because it avoids the pitfalls of run of the mill culture jamming and guerrilla media tactics--Steinski's solo tracks certainly have their own pleasures, even if they are more straightforwardly textural than his collabotation with Double Dee. [June 2008, p.57]
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Awards & Rankings

11
#11 Best Album of 2008

User Reviews

All reviews »
User Score
8.1

Universal acclaim- based on 16 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 12 out of 16
  2. Mixed: 2 out of 16
  3. Negative: 2 out of 16
  1. ntretyuif.
    Jan 9, 2009
    10
    This will be in the hip hop hall of fame its classic sample based hip hop which birthed the golden age of hip hop.
  2. MikeJ.
    Oct 7, 2008
    3
    Music for reviewers. They've heard everything there is to hear, and they're fucking bored of all of it. So the only thing they can Music for reviewers. They've heard everything there is to hear, and they're fucking bored of all of it. So the only thing they can enjoy is a compilation of everything they've heard, which to them is "unique". To the rest of us it's boring. This is why you have great music like Nine Inch Nails and Tool getting average reviews and this getting praised out of existence.… Full Review »
  3. MycroftW.
    Sep 20, 2008
    9
    Worth your dollar for the Lessons alone. Grab it!
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