I've been in a 90s hip hop rut for the past couple years and I'm pulling myself out of it by making playlists of the original songs getting sampled (one great thing about good hip hop is that any given song or pair of songs tends to produce a pretty excellent playlist), and one thing I've discovered is that RJD2, a musician I was into in the mid-aughts during an instrumental hip hop phase, puts essentially zero effort into things; the best example I can think of there is "Bless The Telephone", which he "covered" from Labi Siffre in the funniest possible way.

Finding stuff like that will definitely give you a new appreciation for DJ Shadow (both, for what it's worth, were excellent live).

Also Labi Siffre: very good stuff.