Yo.

This is a blog about things. Music, movies, experiences, dogs, art, and other stuff. 1-2 posts a week, ranging from a couple of sentences to novella-length. I’ve had a bunch of books published, you can check my bio, but for right now I’m just blogging and liking it.

Sure Shot: Listening to Gang Starr's Discography in Order

I previously listened to and wrote about Sonic Youth's complete discography. Sonic Youth was a band that I admired from my teenage years but had, and maintained, a limited window into their discography. I had a lot of fun listening to their albums and EPs chronologically. I decided to revisit another artist's complete discography: The Guru, a beloved Brooklyn rapper from the late 80s into the 00s, as one half of the rap group Gang Starr and a solo artist.

I first heard Gang Starr when I was 12 years old. I probably heard them on either Hot 97 or MTV, and I have to imagine the first song of theirs that I heard was "Just to Get a Rep," and that was enough for me to reach into whatever cash supply I had at 12 and buy a copy of Step in the Arena.

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Interlude: I Call Bullshit, How Does a 12-Year-Old Make Money?

By working. I think I started working at Pegasus Video when I was 13, so the money probably wasn't coming from there. Pegasus was a local video store paying me cash under the table to work the front desk - a great gig for a kid. $5 an hour and no taxes? You couldn't beat it. But at 12, I was just doing odd jobs around the block. My neighbor Louie would always find some way to give the local kids $20 to do something. Folks took care of each other like that back then.

But, honestly, it could have just as easily been a cheaper bootlegged cassette. Those were not hard to get back then, and a lot of the tapes I owned were bootlegged. 

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Inception Interlude: Bootlegged?

Yeah, back when there were only physical media, folks had to bootleg stuff because it was impossible for a kid (or most adults) to buy everything they wanted to hear legally. If you liked a song you heard on the radio, you could tape it directly from the radio. We all had stacks of cassettes that were just two-hour rips of Hot 97, you could go to Sam Goody and pay up to $10 for the cassette, or you could go down to Fulton Street and see what the bootleggers had. The bootleggers had xerox copies of the liner notes and everything. It was great. 

Movies, too. Many folks don't realize that a VHS copy of a new, unreleased movie would cost something like $100. That's why video stores existed. The store would pay the $100 and rent it out to customers for $3. The folks of today cannot comprehend the experience of a family gathering around a cathode tube TV and watching a video camera recording of a movie. It's how I first saw Empire Strikes Back as a kid. I remember, "I am your father," followed by an audible gasp from the crowd.

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But also, my parents were good at getting me things I liked. My dad was a two-jobber, and my mom worked days, and they put all of that effort into getting me things like rap cassettes so I wouldn't get my ass kicked as much in junior high. God bless my parents.

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There will be many interludes for this piece and inception interludes, but mainly because it's very important to me that anyone reading this has a picture of the hip-hop scene in Brooklyn in the late 80s and early 90s. With my Sonic Youth piece, I disclaimed that I'm not a music critic or theorist; I just listen to a lot of music. Now I need to make a disclaimer that I'm not a hip-hop historian, and most of my scene setting will be as I remember it. And I remember a lot of it; hip-hop was a significant part of my youth and is a love I carry throughout my life.

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Interlude: Jason's Earliest Hip-Hop Memory

I was playing outside and saw some older kids across the street, break dancing on a cardboard box. They were probably terrible at it, just spinning on their asses, but to me, they were accomplishing incredible feats, and I wanted to learn more. The problem was I couldn't cross the street by myself. So I yelled up to my mom…

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Inception Interlude: C'Mon, Man…This is Seriously Bullshit! You're Outside By Yourself But Can't Cross The Street? 

I'm guessing this memory is around 1983, so I was probably around five years old. Back in the 80s, the block was as responsible for taking care of you as your parents were. We lived in small apartments, our parents all worked proper jobs, and there was so little to do inside - so the kids went out. There'd be someone outside on their stoop or looking out the window. The point is we knew our own, and we took care of our own. There were rules, of course, and in this case, I wasn't allowed to cross the street by myself. I also had houses I wasn't allowed to pass in both directions. So, as I was saying…

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I yelled up to my mom and asked her if I could cross the street. My mom would keep the window open on our third-story walk-up so she could hear me. She popped her head out the window, told me I could cross, and I went over to the kids who were break dancing. These older kids didn't want some little kid ogling over them; they wanted girls ogling over them, so they crossed the street with their cardboard box and their radio and continued without me. I yelled up at my mom, who allowed me to cross again. As far as I remember, this happened one more time before my mom, who understood what was happening, told me to come upstairs. But this is the earliest evidence I have of my fascination with hip-hop and hip-hop culture.

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Now, back to Gang Starr. In my opinion, they have a sound that captures Brooklyn hip-hop of the late 1980s and early 1990s. All the kids in my neighborhood knew them and loved them and Step In the Arena and their third album, Daily Operation, were passed around between everyone we knew and popped into every radio on every stoop. And those two albums, plus two additional tracks ("Mass Appeal" and "DWYCK"), represented the full extent of my Gang Starr/Guru discography knowledge. Until now!

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Interlude: Wait…Mass Appeal. Where Do I Know That From?
Hello, suburbanite. You know "Mass Appeal" from Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4.

You might also know about "DWYCK" or at least one or two lines from it. "DWYCK," featuring Nice & Smooth, was the song of the summer when it was released (in Brooklyn, at least), and a lot of us have maintained its status as song of the summer every year since. Please, if you haven't ever done it, bounce your head to it:

It has two lines that have at least SOMEWHAT permeated modern pop culture:

  1. "Lemonade was a popular drink, and it still is," which was such a fun line to rap back in the day that you'd see kids excitedly gathered around the radio just waiting to yell it out at the appropriate time. Twenty years later, following Beyonce's release of the album Lemonade, Jay-Z spits the same line on the remix to Fat Joe's "All The Way Up," a fantastic callback to the original song and his wife's album.

  2. "Ooh La La ah Oui Oui," another line we yelled with gusto around the block. That line was recently sampled by Run the Jewels on their song, "Ooh La La." They brought back Greg Nice for the video:

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A Primer On Gang Starr/Guru In Case You Don't Know About Them But, For Some Reason, You Want To Read This Article. Maybe You're My Wife.

Gang Starr was a two-person group formed in the late 1980s. DJ Premier (or Primo) was on the turntables and production, and Guru was the primary lyricist. Earlier in this piece, I claimed them as a Brooklyn sound, but Guru was actually from Boston and Premier from Houston - they came to NYC to make music together. They were innovators in lacing jazz tunes over tracks, giving their beats a richer feel with horns and keys. Their beats were also what hip-hop heads would call "hard as hell." Heavy bass at a mid-tempo BPM that you bop your head to; heavy bass that rattles every inch of your car. Guru released some solo albums, most notably the Jazzmatazz series, and several additional albums that DJ Premier didn't produce. Gang Starr officially stopped collaborating in 2003. Guru tragically died of a myeloma-related heart attack. There was significant scrutiny around his death, particularly as it concerned Guru's business partner -Solar- who allegedly pushed Guru to continue touring instead of seeking life-saving medical help, denied his family access to Guru on his deathbed, probably forged a letter from Guru releasing all material to Solar, and looted Guru's assets following his death. We'll get back to that whole mess but first, the music.

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The Listening

Between January 8th and January 14th, I listened to the following 14 studio albums by Gang Starr or Guru in order of release:

  1. No More Mr. Nice Guy (Gang Starr)

  2. Step in the Arena (Gang Starr)

  3. Daily Operation (Gang Starr)

  4. Guru's Jazzmatazz, Vol. 1 (Guru)

  5. Hard to Earn (Gang Starr)

  6. Guru's Jazzmatazz, Vol. 2: The New Reality (Guru)

  7. Moment of Truth (Gang Starr)

  8. Guru's Jazzmatazz, Vol. 3: Streetsoul (Guru)

  9. Baldhead Slick & da Click (Guru)

  10. The Ownerz (Gang Starr)

  11. Version 7.0: The Street Scriptures (Guru, with Solar as producer)

  12. Guru's Jazzmatazz, Vol. 4: The Hip Hop Jazz Messenger: Back to the Future (Guru, with Solar as producer)

  13. Guru 8.0: Lost and Found (Guru, with Solar as producer)

  14. One of the Best Yet (Gang Starr, posthumously)

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The Thoughts

I've never listened to No More Mr. Nice Guy, Gang Starr's first album, and I've never heard a single song from it. What was very surprising about it is that the beats weren't very hard, and the jazz samples were quite heavy on the horns and went across bars. Particularly on the song "Jazz Music," which I'm now quite fond of for both its lyrics and the complex beat. The song starts with,

The music started in the hearts and drums, from another land

Played for everyone, by sons, of the motherland

Sending out a message of peace, to everybody and

Came across the oceans in chains and shame

 It goes on to break down the history and importance of jazz music. Check it:

I was surprised by the song when I first hear it, because when I think of jazz in hip-hop I think about the Native Tongues click and, in particular, A Tribe Called Quest and, in particular, the album The Low End Theory, which came out two years after Gang Starr's "Jazz Music." The latter feels more reverent of jazz and its cultural importance, whereas The Low End Theory samples jazz tracks heavily but seems to treat jazz as more of a steppingstone to hip-hop, as we see in songs like "Excursions,"

Back in the days when I was a teenager

Before I had status and before I had a pager

You could find the Abstract listenin' to hip-hop

My pops used to say, it reminded him of Bebop

Or on "We Got the Jazz,"

To the music cause it's done just for the rhyme

Now I gotta scat and get mine, underline

The jazz, the what? The jazz can move that ass

Cause the Tribe originates that feeling of pizazz

I'm not making a comment on which group produced better jazzy beats - - I'll never say anything disparaging about my beloved A Tribe Called Quest - I'm just surprised how jazz-forward and pro-jazz this album was considering that A Tribe Called Quest is largely attributed with being the jazzy hip-hop group. 

Having said all that, I'm also surprised by how Guru never really collaborated or was part of Native Tongues, which seemed like a fit thematically, lyrically, and tonally.

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Interlude: What's the Native Tongues?

The Native Tongues was an NYC-based collective of rappers synonymous with East Coast conscientious rap. The collective comprised De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, The Jungle Brothers, and Black Sheep. I've seen lists that put other acts in Native Tongues, but I'm not buying it. One act I've never seen associated with any member of the Native Tongues was Gang Starr. I wonder if it's because of that Boston-to-Brooklyn thing. The members of Native Tongues were all proper New Yorkers, and I'm sure many NYC rappers didn't like a Bostonian coming to the city and repping a borough. 

New York City hip-hop carried a lot of borough pride back in the day - rappers repped the borough where they were born and raised. One of the earliest hip-hop beefs was centered on Marley Marl and MC Shan's track, "The Bridge," which claimed hip-hop started in Queens. The claim resulted in some back-and-forth with KRS-One of Boogie Down Productions, culminating in their song "The Bridge is Over," which solidified the Bronx as the birthplace of hip-hop and effectively ended Marley Marl's career.

"The Bridge is Over" has an iconic line that's been repurposed and reused many a time and defines the borough structure of hip-hop in the 1980s:

Manhattan keeps on making it, Brooklyn keeps on taking it

Bronx keeps creating it and Queens keeps on faking it

Notice Staten Island isn't in that rhyme; it'll take the Wu-Tang Clan to put Staten on the map.

I will be talking a lot more about The Native Tongues in later posts. I'd love to revisit the Tribe Called Quest discography, and, now that De La Soul's first six albums are finally coming to digital, I'm going to revisit and write a lot about them.

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I also noted that Gang Starr's debut album was released in 1989, a year I've always been very interested in from a hip-hop history perspective, primarily because it followed 1988.

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Interlude: 1988 in Hip-Hop

1988 is the year hip-hop broke out. As Vast Aire rapped on "A B-Boy's Alpha,"

The holiest of holies, hip-hop! It was '88

And even at the age of ten, phrases levitate

I'm not going to list all the groundbreaking albums that came out in '88; you can find a pretty good ranked list here. Instead, I'm going to talk about three albums that I find particularly important, but first, I'm going to call attention to the fact that '88 was when Yo! MTV Raps premiered. Yo! MTV Raps is a milestone moment in hip-hop because it helped to bring hip-hop culture from different scenes into our living rooms; it brought these unique sounds, looks, and lives to a broader audience. Before Yo! MTV Raps hip-hop culture was regional. There was rap from different cities on the radio, but the subcultures that make up local hip-hop scenes were walled off. 

Now, for the three seminal albums, in my opinion, you got:

  1. It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back by Public Enemy defined East Coast rap's sound and themes. Knowledge, understanding history, standing together - that's the path to freedom. These themes are laid over hard-as-hell beats. 

  2. Straight Out Of Compton by NWA defined West Coast rap's sound and themes. Violence comes from all sides. The police, your neighbors, and even your family are scrapping for a piece of something. These themes are laid over hard-as-hell beats.

  3. Critical Beatdown by Ultramagnetic MCs brought a unique sound, pitch, and cadence to the traditional hip-hop culture, the four pillars: MCing, DJing, graffiti, and break dancing. I could write an entirely separate piece on how Critical Beatdown is the shared ancestor of all underground rap. 

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The albums released in 1989 were primarily recorded in 1987 and 1988, so at the same time that hip-hop was changing forever, folks were still cutting albums in an attempt to define this burgeoning art form. The most impactful albums are the ones that followed a path laid out by the three albums listed above. Three Feet High and Rising by De La Soul felt like a successor to Critical Beatdown, and Unfinished Business by EPMD felt like a successor to It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back by Public Enemy. There were also some albums that I've always considered great but came either a few years too late (like LL Cool J's Walking With a Panther or Special Ed's Youngest in Charge) or were too ahead of their time (like the Beastie Boy's Paul's Boutique). After listening to No More Mr. Nice Guy, I'd put it in the "Just A Few Years Too Late" camp - it's just too "1987-bouncy plus jazz" for 1989. It didn't follow one of the paths from above. It needed to be harder.

That is not the case for Gang Starr's follow-up album, 1990's Step In The Arena. The horns got downgraded, and the beats got harder. The jazz samples were looped pianos and bass riffs. DJ Premier's production exploded on this album. It's hard to pick a single beat to call out, but let's listen to "Who's Gonna Take the Weight."

Is this beat the hardest ever made? Yes. It's an entirely chopped-up version of Maceo & the Mack's "Parrty." You can also hear many of the new themes Guru started bringing into his raps: personal responsibility, community, near militarism, and flashes of Nation of Islam ideology. It sounds like a Public Enemy song. Every bit of it. Gang Starr heard 1988 and picked a side.

1992 brought Daily Operation, which carries many of these themes forward, mixes in a little Five-Percenter ideology, and solidifies the Gang Starr vibe. And, thankfully, we still have these hard-as-hell beats. Check out "Take it Personal."

I also call out "Take It Personal" because it highlights another theme that's all over Guru's lyrics at this time: Gang Starr is real, and other rap groups sell out. Whereas the work that came out in 1988 broadcasted the sounds and the culture of different hip-hop scenes, it also exposed the fact that hip-hop could make money. Two incredibly impactful albums came out in 1990 that followed that path: Please Hammer Don't Hurt 'Em by MC Hammer and To The Extreme by Vanilla Ice. From 1990 on, many rappers started talking about how they weren't going to sell out, and they were talking about these two albums. 

Next up is Guru's first solo album, the first entry in his Jazzmatazz series. Jazzmatazz was a series of albums (four total) that were entirely produced and arranged by Guru, with him rapping over a live jazz band, each album having a feature from a jazz musician or an R&B singer. I liked these albums, and although there were other Gang Starr / Guru albums put out between them, I'll address them all as one series now. The first album in the series mostly painted a picture of city life: a song about New York, some romance songs, and some of that Guru positivity. I don't know enough about jazz musicians to get excited about the features, but it sounded nice - I bopped my head to it, for sure. The second album in the series had a similar feel to me. Thematically it focused more on family and the ills of street violence. Some names started creeping in on the features that I'm familiar with, like Chaka Khan and Kool Keith from the aforementioned Ultramagnetic MCs.

The third volume, however, is the great Guru album. It also happened to be the best-selling of the Jazzmatazz albums, and rightfully so. In addition to jazz musicians, Guru brought a lot of top-notch R&B singers. It was fun listening to it while running and being met with surprise after surprise as another familiar voice appeared on a track. Macy Gray, Erykah Badu, Kelis, Isaac Hayes, Herbie Hancock, The Roots, and more appear on this album. Looking back at the liner notes, I learned that the tracks had been produced by Guru - like previous Jazzmatazz songs - but Dr. Premier, The Neptunes, Badu, The Roots, and others acted as sole producers on different tracks. Volume 4 was also good, with some great features, but it didn't capture that Volume 3 vibe. Solar, the villain from earlier in this piece, also produced this album, making it harder to get into.

Gang Starr's Hard to Earn, released between Jazzmatazz Volumes 1 and 2, had my first couple of, "Uh oh," moments for me. The Guru, up to this point, was about knowledge, positivity, and community. He was speaking out against unnecessary violence. Hard to Earn mainly was all of that. And it had some bangers, including "DWYCK" and "Mass Appeal," which I already talked about. But you know what jumped out? And I hate doing this, I hate policing language in rap, a sure sign that I'm getting old, man, but this was the first album where Guru used the word 'bitch.' 

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Interlude: The Three Bitches of Hip-Hop

It is no secret that hip-hop has a love affair with the word 'bitch’, and for a long time, I did not care. The word rhymes well; it was part of the culture, etc. But, you know, times change. Opinions change. We grow up, and we learn. By my count, there are three uses of the word 'bitch’ in hip-hop culture, and I'm gonna talk about them in order of increasing discomfort.

  1. The Familial Bitch - In this case, bitch is used as a parallel to the friend form of the n-word. There's almost always a 'my' in front of it. 

  2. The Diminutive Bitch - Usually woman-to-woman or man-to-man, the diminutive bitch is meant to signify someone is effeminate, a snitch, not a good rapper, an asshole, etc.

  3. The Dissociative Bitch - Almost always man-to-woman, this version of the word casts a woman as an object that only exists for sex. It's the version of the term we hear most often in rap lyrics, and it's the one I'm least comfortable with. 

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I think Guru only uses the term once on Hard to Earn, but he used the dissociative bitch, and it's something that I have a hard time with in hip-hop at this point in my life, period. I hated hearing it from Guru. What's wild is that it feels like Guru doesn't use the dissociative bitch in Jazzmatazz Volume 2 or the next Gang Starr album, Moment of Truth, an album that I liked way more than I thought I would. It was hard, it had some incredible beats, and the lyrics were all on point. It features "You Know My Steez," one of my favorite Gang Starr songs. 

After this album was Jazzmatazz Volume 3, and in my mind, I'm like, "That uh-oh was nothing! You dummy, you fool. The Guru would never fall off like that."

And then came his solo album Baldhead Slick & da Click.

I wanted to fucking die listening to this album. I saw it coming, I knew it was coming, but it was so sad to hear. The album was such a mess - on one track, Guru would be rapping about how violence is never the answer and on another track, he's saying stuff like:

Anger management - yeah I probably need that

You feelin' my feedback, just stay down on your knees cat

You quiet, that's cuz you afraid of dyin'

Afraid of losin' yo head when my lead start flyin'

There's a song called "Pimp Shit," and it's what you'd imagine. Just dissociative bitches all over that track. And the thing is, I listen to so many rap albums like this, including way worse ones, but this is The Guru. Gifted Unlimited Rhymes Universal. Street knowledge. THOUGHTFUL. And now there's just so much violence and homophobia and misogyny. 

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Interlude: You Know What? You Listen to a lot of Hip-Hop that is So Much Worse. You're a Hypocrite.

Yeah, no shit. Kendrick Lamar is my absolute favorite rapper. Period, hands down. He uses the dissociative bitch all over his albums, including his most recent Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers, an album that is about the cycle of abuse in the black community, including abuse towards women. And I make excuses for it - he's playing a character on that album and exposing his emotional abuse toward his wife. By the time we get to "Mother I Sober," one of the most beautiful songs ever recorded, he's humbled. He's no longer a Big Stepper. But, also… it's not a FULL concept album. There are songs made for radio solely, like "N95" that are stuffed with dissociative bitches, and I LOVE that song. I'm a hypocrite.

In this whole piece, I typed the word "bitch” like it's no big thing, like it, itself, isn't a traumatic word for so many people. I'll type "n-word." If I went deeper into the homophobia in Baldhead Slick & Da Click I'd call attention to Guru's use of f—t or "the f-word." If I'm so against the dissociative bitch in rap lyrics, why am I using the word so much here?

I don't know! There's residual misogyny in all of us and I've only recently been coming to terms with the word "bitch," a word that I used to use up until somewhat recently! That I still let slip out sometimes and hate when I do. That I will most likely still rap in my car even though I've gotten great at subbing "buddy/buddies" for the n-word. I've taken the time to do the work on many words that are not mine. I got more work to do on this one. 

So I'm a hypocrite, yes. And hip-hop has a bad relationship with this word, the dissociative b-word and, honestly, the diminutive b-word, too. The familial b-word? That's not my context to comment on. But the other two? They need to be part of a greater discussion. This is coming from a longtime fan of hip-hop who still listens to most new albums and probably always will. 

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I talked about grown-rock or grown-rap on my Sonic Youth piece, which is just what I call it when a musician realizes they need to start singing/rapping about grown-up shit. Guru did a reverse grown-rap late career. He started rapping about dumb kid shit. It was hard to take in! The next album in the discography was Gang Starr's The Ownerz, which had some similar vibes, not as pronounced, but enough to make me not want to finish the rest of the discography.

But I did, and the primarily Solar-produced Version 7.0, Jazzmatazz Volume 4, and Guru 8.0 were actually kind of good, mostly back to Guru's original themes, with some decent production and a couple of cool features (like Talib Kwali and B Real on Version 7.0 and Blackalicious on Jazmatazz Volume 4). Solar is an interesting producer - I only know his work in these three albums - but he does some fun samples that ultimately sound like a bargain bin early Rock-a-fella Kanye West. R&B samples and vocals sped up, that kind of stuff. But he pulls some really fun samples. On Guru 8.0 he samples "The House of the Rising Sun" for the track "Lost and Found", and "These Are the Champions" on "Time After." Honestly, they're very fun samples, and I can't imagine how they cleared those rights.

I kind of wonder if Solar tempered Guru. DJ Premier and Guru worked so well together, making important music. When we get to Baldhead Slick & Da Click, it feels like this other force in Guru is starting to win. Maybe it's anger directed at the music industry. Maybe it's just the lack of props and flowers he deserved. But Baldhead and The Ownerz just felt darker. Along comes Solar, and we have the old Guru back. The shittiest thing is how Guru refers to DJ Premier as his "Ex-DJ" on these tracks, fully embracing this new guy who seems to have a calming influence on Guru but is maybe also encouraging Guru's outlook toward his old collaborators? DJ Premier was interviewed about Guru after the rapper's death. There's a pain there. He also addresses the rumors that Guru and Solar were in a relationship, about the level of deftness you'd expect from a 2010 interview with any rapper. 

But behind all this fine if not derivative album production from Solar, and a calmer and more peaceful presence from Guru, is this weird fact that people - including Guru's family and friends - blame Solar for his death. These accusations include forging documents, stealing the rights to Guru's music, holding unreleased Guru tracks hostage, and bleeding the estate. So on all of these late-career tracks, you hear Guru shouting out Solar, and, listening to it now, you know this guy is a complete piece of shit in a complicated and not fully understood shit-sandwich. 

In the end, I was happy to listen to this discography and revisit Guru, his music, and his complicated legacy. Step in the Arena and Jazzmatazz Volume 3 are my favorite albums of the listen; they'll be in regular rotation moving forward. Speaking of moving forward, I will tackle Nick Cave and the Bad Seed's discography next. Sign up for the newsletter below if you want these delivered to your box.

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Epilogue: One Of The Best Yet

Although technically part of the discography, given all of the messiness around Guru's death, I don't know where to place One of The Best Yet, an album released posthumously with previously recorded Guru rhymes, DJ Premier on production, and features from some incredible rappers. These albums always feel like cash grabs, but it's nice to hear Guru's son on a track and even nicer to hear Royce da 5'9" rap:

While the smoke is in the air, feel like voodoo's on the floor

'Cause we got the actual ashes of Guru on the boards

He's sittin' right inside an urn in the session

Lookin' down from Heaven to Gang Starr's current progression

Earnin' successes, his legacy get treated like four themes

Movin' forward then let his children eat off the proceeds

Things like that give you a sense that the money is lining the right pockets. I caught at least one dig at Solar when Freddie Foxxx rapped:

Yo, it's the gang Gang Starr across my chest

On Gu' and them, I never let Solar rest

The Guru tracks came from Solar, who sold them to DJ Premier. Solar was already forced to cede all of Guru's holdings to the estate, rightly so but still in murky ugliness. One thing's for sure, these weren't Gang Starr recordings, but they were released as a Gang Starr album. Artistic intent after death is just a mess.

So, in the end, one last fine sort-of Gang Starr album. RIP Guru. One of the best, still.

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Floating II: Nirvanic Boogaloo

Tweets I Would Have Tweeted

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