Death of an Era as Hip Hop Pioneer Guru of Gang Star dead at 43

(Today’s “hip hop / rap” music is betraying our community.)

The Syndicate made a call this morning to 901 G to acknowledge the passing of Dr. Dorothy Height who will be remembered in a forthcoming post, but we must  now take a moment to recognize the passing of the pioneer hip hop artist Guru.

As a high school freshmen The Syndicate was hipped to Gang Star by an older friend who let me hold his “Moment of Truth” audio cassette. I thumped it in my Sony Walkman as I woke and as I fell asleep. I ran through batteries on the strength of that tape alone.

When I look back at that time, the fall of 1998, I now realize they don’t make the come up like they used to. These kids with holes in their faces and tats on their hands and faces do not know how to think, speak, or live. Hip hop at one time was the father figure for young men and women in our communities who had no parents that could tell them through their music to chill out, wipe those tears, and get out here and MOB for yours to make good out of bad.

The death of Guru is symbolic of the death of hip hop to The Syndicate. I frankly don’t care that today’s music is straight garbage — all entertainment and no  thought — as I am a grown educated consumer. However, these youngsters out here robbing and mobbing and the studios kids who spend their nights at the city’s libraries until closing hour, because their broken home ain’t nothing to desire or return to, do not understand that today’s hip hop or rap is all cosmetic.

It can’t be explained. It has to be lived.

Guru was not a legend in his own mind like many of our city’s political and community “leaders”, he is a street legend in the mind and lives of those who walk and survive in these streets.

Most of today’s “artists” peddle an empty image of nihilism and hedonism to our communities and the people in them which . Guru, and his peers, uplift people and communities through their music

Putting out solo albums under the Jazzmataz name and a compilation album with Baldhead Slick & Da Click, Gifted Unlimited Rhymes Universal / God is Universal; he is the Ruler Universal will be missed. We’ll mourn you till we join you.

UPDATE:

Just got an email about a tribute to Guru at Liv (2001 11th St. NW) with a free midnight open DJ set. “Some of the best DJs in the city will all trade of on the 1’s and 2’s playing the things that move them from Guru’s classics.”