I'll have more to write about this once I get done doing some of the work I actually have to do, but news of Guru's death was sad indeed. He represented and embodied a lot of what does and doesn't work about hip-hop. It means something, although I'm not totally sure what, that basically everyone I know who cares about hip-hop (including me, still, kind of) both loved him and was under no illusions whatsoever about him being a particularly gifted MC. For all his lyrical shortcomings, the guy absolutely realized his potential, and there are not many rappers working who seemed quite as honest and un-grandiose. On the other hand, he kept trying to foist Big Shug on the world. But that's easy enough to forgive.
Did you hear about the possibly fake death bed renouncing of Premier? I didn't know they had a big falling out, and it seems a little fishy to me. Yeah, he wasn't an awesome MC, but I did really like the stuff with Premier and the the first jazzmatazz is amazing. Sad!
ReplyDeleteYeah, I kind of touched on the weird letter in the thing I wrote for The Awl today about Guru (which I'm going to post in a minute) but it was a total sad wormhole and I tried not to read too much about it until I was done writing. The new collaborator seems super-dodgy, and his excuse that Guru somehow woke up, dictated the letter, and then slipped back into medically-induced coma would be an LOLler if it weren't also so gross. I honestly haven't been able to figure out if Guru and Premier really had a falling out, oddly.
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