Gang Starr |
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Mon. June 23.2003 11:13 AM EDT |
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Gang Starr: Triumph of the SkillsOne of hip-hop’s most imaginative teams reunites for a blast of old school smarts and "reality rap." by C. Bottomley |
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Gang Starr (Publicity) |
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Hip-hop hasn’t always been about dancing in da club with your bling bling on. Back in the day MCs used the music’s unique lingo of beats and rhymes to wax articulate on a number of subjects. Public Enemy’s Chuck D famously dubbed rap “the black CNN.”
Gang Starr took the notion even further. They dared to call it art. With a brace of ‘90s classics - including Step into the Arena and Daily Operation - they lived up to that claim. Guru was an MC from Boston with a bone-dry voice, unafraid to drop words like “intellect.” On “Execution of a Chump” he dissected ghetto life like an illmatic Margaret Mead. His delivery commanded your attention. His words spoke for themselves. His partner DJ Premier was on the cut in a different way. The Texas turntablist stacked his wheels of steel with lost 45s and jazz records, scratching them into cutting-edge beats that only Guru was sharp enough to rhyme over. Gang Starr discs may have been lacking in sales, but they generated loads of respect. Jazz musicians Herbie Hancock and Branford Marsalis worked with Guru on his Jazzamatazz discs, and he has partnered with pals as diverse as Macy Gray and Isaac Hayes. Premier, meanwhile, developed a lucrative side venture supplying platinum beats for some of New York’s greatest MCs, appearing on albums by Notorious B.I.G., Nas, and Jay-Z. After a few years of downtime, the pair have reunited. Their new album, The Ownerz bypasses the last 20 years of hip-hop, zeroing in on the fundamentals: head-nodding beats, virtuoso scratching, and a knowledge of street life that utterly energizes the west side stories of “Sabotage.” The crew sounds fresher than ever, and when Snoop Dogg reps on the somber “In This Life …,” you know it’s time the rest of the world started paying attention. As comfortable with each other as a throwback jersey, and confident that they’re coming back harder than ever, Guru and Premier sat down with VH1 to talk about the current state of hip-hop, their quest for the perfect beat, and how anything, even a flushing toilet, can be put to rhythmic use. VH1: The beat on the title track is wild. Is it hard to rhyme over it? Guru: Premier’s able to give me stuff that he couldn’t give other people. The people who hire him are going to a tailor. He makes them a suit of beats. When we do our stuff, he might have an idea that’s a little different, but he knows I can handle it. We have a formula. We start with the titles first. Then he makes the beats to fit the titles. Then he leads me into the studio or gives me a CD; I ride around with it. Then I do the vocal. He even has me listen to the scratches and hooks to make sure they’re tight. [Watch Clip] DJ Premier: I like the fact that Guru will write on the spot. He says he’ll take it home and write it, but he likes to write right there in the studio. He says, “I got one verse, let me lay that down.” It’s not just music and lyrics, it’s music and lyrics. VH1: What happens when you got a guest like Snoop in the studio? Do you tailor it to him? DJP: Every time. G: With the collabos, when I heard the beats without any voices on them, it was like I heard the other person’s voice on it. “Who Got Gunz,” with Fat Joe and M.O.P., could be a track that Premier did for Fat Joe or for myself or for M.O.P. You could hear all of our flows on it. It’s so tight because everyone was inspired. VH1: So Premier, what was the first record you ever made a beat from? DJP: Back then it was stabs. We’d take one little sound from a song and make a beat from it. U.T.F.O.’s “Roxanne, Roxanne,” was just one stab. I was more into drumbeats because the hip-hop I was brought up on had a lot of hard pounding, like Run-D.M.C. in 1981. That’s why I like the Clipse’s “Grindin’.” They brought it back to the drumbeat. That, and the way they apply their lyrics make an effective song. Now everyone feels like it’s got to be soulful and musical. It waters down the flava of what hip-hop sounds like. [Watch Clip] VH1: Hip-hop has changed since your last album together, 1998’s Moment of Truth. For good or bad? DJP: Bad. G: Some good and a lot bad. VH1: What’s good? G: The good part is the way it has spawned a lot of entrepreneurs. The independents are showing the majors how to market and promote. Rappers don’t have to be from New York or L.A. anymore. Nelly came from St. Louis and David Banner from Mississippi. I like that because it shows that you can really succeed independently by doing your own marketing and promotions. You can get your neighborhood and local radio behind you and sell 250,000 in your own area. VH1: And the bad? DJP: Once the money started kicking, they were like, “Forget the music. Now it’s all about how to clock the paper.” Money is the priority and music comes second. You got to put music first because that’s what built the paper. If you’re going to do music the passion has to come before the income, and the income is your reward for putting the passion first. Nobody is putting the passion first now, and it sounds like it. VH1: Do you two bring out the best in each other? G: When we do Gang Starr, it’s like coming home. If we were forcing something or if it was fake, we wouldn’t do it. We’re such perfectionists. Our worst fear is doing something whack and falling off. VH1: Does the DJ have any say in the MC’s lyrical content? G: It’s not like I’m just the word man and he’s the beat man. We cross over into each other’s territory. There are times when he’ll suggest titles and subject matter to me. Sometimes I’ll go to him about a beat. Like Moment of Truth’s “You Know My Steez.” I wanted to scratch Method Man’s [line from “Step By Step”] “You know my steez.” Premier added other stuff, which he always does. DJP: People have approached me about certain things Guru may have said on a record, and I can say, “Oh no, he meant this and this and this,” because he’s speaking for both of us. I’ve got to agree with what he’s writing down because I don’t want to stand behind something that I don’t really feel. VH1: For what track on The Ownerz did you have to work hardest on the lyrics? G: “The Ownerz” was one of the oldest ones, but I came back to it and wanted to change just one word, because I had already used that word in another rhyme. I don’t like being redundant like that. DJP: If he’s bothered by something he’s not going to let me live it down until he changes it, otherwise he’ll spazz out. He wanted to change “reparations” to “vindications.” I was about to mix the album and he was like, “I’m going to come in and change that word.” G: “Deadly Habits” was hard. “Skills” was really just flow. Once I got into the beat, that thing really flowed. Sometimes I might do one take, sometimes we have to punch a lot. Premier’s like my coach. He’s a DJ, so he knows when it’s right. He’s definitely the ears. I’m the second set of ears but he’s the first set. VH1: Is “jazz rap” a label that stuck to you guys? How do you describe your sound? G: Our music, if you want to call it anything, is reality rap. It’s New York hip-hop in its purest, timeless form. We got songs that you could play in any era. We never liked the jazz rap title. If we had accepted label, we wouldn’t be here talking to you guys. DJP: Digable Planets and Us3 and all of that … G: It’s all gone. Sometimes the media gives hip-hop a label so it can be understood to others outside the culture. The problem is that anything classified as gangster rap or conscious rap or jazz rap, doesn’t really go like that. We could take the sound of someone’s pager going off or the toilet flushing to make a Gang Starr track. We were from that era where everybody started digging into crates and finding jazz records, because it was like, where’s hip-hop going? Everybody was sampling ‘70s funk or James Brown. So the next natural thing was to find jazz records. VH1: So have you ever sampled the toilet flushing? DJP: No, but I might have to do that soon! Look at 50 Cent’s “Heat.” It’s just the sound of cocking a gun and shooting it and a stab. Mmm-pow! It’s unique, and that’s one of the hottest joints on his album. G: On Notorious B.I.G.’s “Ten Crack Commandments” Premier was just scratching the loop. The Ownerz’s “Same Team, No Games” is like that. It makes you want to go back and get a big old boom box and carry it around because it’s just a raw beat with a couple of stabs. We keep it simple, no extra frills. Our songs are head-jerkers. They’re not necessarily ones that you want to get all sweaty on the dance floor, but you’ll be in your car [nodding your head] for sure. That’s what we do. [Watch Clip] |
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