Court battles, sage-burning rituals and finding 'closure.' Nine years after the death of Gang Starr rapper Guru, DJ Premier tells us about the long road to releasing the group's first album in 16 years
In 2016, Mosher sold 30 unreleased Guru vocal tracks to Premier for an undisclosed sum, laying the groundwork for. The album sounds like a time capsule: a record that could’ve been released immediately afteror any subsequent year. It’s a new gift for fans of Premier’s boom-bap production that dominated the sample-heavy, New York-centric strain of hip-hop that peaked in the mid-to-late 1990s.
Oh, man. That was one of the best things I ever heard or say to people because I know the impact that Guru and I had on the world. And I’ve always – just as a fan myself — have wanted another Gang Starr album to exist just because I know our process and what we had as far as the unreleased material. Once we got the vocals, the first thing I needed to do is bless the room. So I took out his ashes and I did a clockwise circle around the ashes where the smoke billows around it three times. Then I do it counter-clockwise three times. Then I do top to bottom and side to side three times. Then I kiss the bag [containing Guru’s ashes].
No, I totally emulated it, like the same way we always did it: 100 percent. I go in with that attitude that he’s in the room and that we’re doing it the way that we’ve always done our formula. The only difference this time is he always wrote to my tracks; this time, I had to write to his vocals. The formula never changed and it always worked for us. So I wanted that same approach to happen with this process.
My main focus was the excitement as a fan even though I’m in the group. Also the fans getting another album that’s produced by me because that’s what they want and that’s what they deserve. And then thirdly is that his son eats off of this because he was nine years old [when Guru died].]. You can’t get away with stuff like that when you’re on the level that I am. My name is too big to even get away with something of that magnitude without being in trouble.
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