Guru: In Memory of… The Illest Brother

I get teased by the younger heads in the office, cus I listen to some ole underground boom bap shit they know nothing about. I’m proud of that. I’m proud that I grew up in an era where MCs really said something of importance in their rhymes.

Guru, of all MCs, was nothing but substance. Most rappers today feel like they can only speak about negativity on up-tempo clubby tracks but if you look back, Gangstarr had cats dancin to ‘Manifest’. That’s a knowledge of self rhyme (catch up niggas), peep how the heads are dancing their hearts out in that video.

Guru showed you he could rhyme about anything you deem proper and still rock a party. ‘When others rhyme with no reason I be breezing/their mics I cease them and try them for treason’. That’s the mental state of an MC, but that of a grown man as well.

Seems like the rap game has turned to the mentally young, not just in age, but in status. Most of the rappers in the golden era seemed older than their ages. You could never tell that Kane and Rakim just cracked their early 20s spittin’ scrolls and scriptures that transcend time. Guru was the same. There are only a few rappers that I listen to during times of deep introspection; Guru is easily in my top 3.

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Reason being, he felt like an older brother with the jewels of life that would shine light on your situation, ‘My Advice To You’, is the perfect example of that.