DJ Premier Revives The Legendary Gang Starr: 'Together We Bring The Best Dope'
When DJ Premier talks about his old partner, it's always in the present tense. "Guru knows it's gonna be good," he says with excitement about the new Gang Starr album One of the Best Yet, out today. It's the first album by the vaunted hip-hop duo in 16 years — and the first since the rapping half of the group died from cancer in April 2010. But listening to it, Guru feels alive and well, offering bar after bar about the state of hip-hop in 2019.
From the late '80s to early 2000s, the duo of Guru and Premier went on the sort of mythical run that most artists only dream of, putting out six albums of which at least half are hip-hop canon and the rest are dotted with gems. Gang Starr became emblematic of the formalist sound and ethos of golden-age rap in New York City: grimy samples, stone-faced rapping, knotty rhyme schemes, all bound together by a reverence for the pioneers of the genre. Even as the two pursued solo ventures — Guru with his jazz-rap Jazzmatazz series, Premier through production work for Nas, Jay-Z and other ascendant rappers of the time -- they stressed that these were creative release valves, and upheld their bond as Gang Starr.
But that bond seemed to end after the, when tension between the two reached a breaking point. Guru and Premier had squabbled over many things (money and Guru's drinking problem, most notably) for years, and Premier had threatened to leave the group at least once before. March 30, 2004 was the last time they spoke, though they never officially ended their contract as Gang Starr.
