RIP Guru, Keith Elam

I wanted to take a minute and write about Guru's influence on me. Coming from a sheltered musical family, it wasn't until I went to high school in the city did I hear of Gang Starr. In 1998 I was exposed to the music that I have been passionate about for the rest of my life. I went to a chartered school in Wilmington, Delaware with a mix of kids from every background. I made friends that lived in the projects down the street and friends that lived in multi-million dollar mansions. Every generation has their "cliques". These cliques were usually determined by the clothes you wear, the music you listen to, and the activities you did after school. The high school I went to had a dress code, so we were pretty much all dressed the same. I came to high school as a skateboarder with an almost empty music palette. The radio only played alternative rock or mainstream hip hop/R&B. The internet was accessible in most homes by now with broadband. The combination of all these things made a perfect culture for me to be impressionable by great music.

My friends shared their music with me via cassette tape until I got a CD player in 1999. I first heard Gang Starr in the skate video Shorty's Fulfill the Dream on VHS. I recorded the audio of Above the Clouds with all the skateboarding sounds to a cassette and shared it with my friends. Then one of my buddies went on a downloading rampage and got most of the Gang Starr recordings at that time. I was just getting in to hip hop at that time and I am so thankful to have had Guru as one of the first MCs that I loved. It had been unfair to the rest of the hip hop world that I had Gang Starr as my first impression of what hip hop should be like. It's kind of like your first girlfriend/boyfriend; you always compare what comes after to the first. There has been some good hip hop since, but no one has been able to touch Guru and DJ Premier.

Guru was educated, which is a huge deal for me. Uneducated lyricists are garbage and try to get by with witty rhymes. Guru spoke the truth. He spoke on relevant topics. He didn't just rap about how much money he has, or how he was gonna kill you if you step to him, or how many hoes he's been with. His words are timeless and his rhymes paint a picture. Rappers and MCs have come and gone, but Guru has remained. I've only been in the scene for a little over a decade but he owned it for over twenty years.

I wonder if he ever realized how many people he touched with his words? I can say that his words spoke to me from his microphone in the studio across the cassette tape to the magnets that moved the diaphragm of the speakers pushing the vibrations of his words into my ears that affected who I am.

Thank you, Guru. Peace.

Above the crowds, above the clouds where the sounds are original
Infinite skills create miracles
Warrior spiritual -- above the clouds
reigning down, holdin it down