I am a fan. I love the artform and I love Guru be he gay or straight. Why? Well, the memories and the good times and I hope that he can get through whatever it is that he is going through. My Guru Gay post has had millions of hits and searches and it troubles me. What is it they hope to find here? Solar reaming Guru? There is nothing to see, just my idle speculation and I feel dirty for putting it out there but I’m not the only one putting two and two together and coming up with bullshit. Anyway, the music. That’s what got us here. That’s what binds. Nice copy of Words I Manifest came up today on Discogs cheapy cheapy so I did the decent thing. Longer and rawer than the album cut, the 12” remix is an essential item in the collection of any Gang Starr aficionado which is what I am evidenced by my vinyl collection – every single release apart from the first two right up to Moment of Truth. I’m a fan.
Been meaning to write this since November of last year but maybe now is the time – the eve of the red shirted hoards descending on Bangkok with the next 24 hours. Thailand is on the brink – the brink of self-destruction. Thaksin Shinawatra the ousted Prime Minister of Thailand, democratically elected natch, is not going to let it go. The Red Shirts, the country folk, are with him. Our diver and Nanny are redshirts. We are Yellow Shirts – the yellow shirts being the supporters of the establishment which means the King, the Monarchy (and associated hangers on) and the controlling government. In essence the Yellow Shirts are Bangkok and the Red Shirts are the rest of Thailand. The Red’s are the working class and mad as hell and you can see their point. A democratically elected leader simply ousted by a coup putting the Bangkok elite back in control. Bangkok felt that Thaksin Shinawatra was going way too far, selling the countries assets, and had to be got before things went too far. But rules are rules and the Yellows, the Reds perceive, broke those rules. The Yellows are no slow pokes and closed down the airport late in 2008 with protests which crippled the airport and cost gazillions of Baht per day in exports and tourism. This instigated new elections which resulted in yellow-shirted heartthrob Abhisit Vejjajiva winning. Since that election the Reds have staged their own demos but each one has been subtly snuffed out. The protests tomorrow promise to be a whole new ball game. The nervous residents of Bangkok are boarding up the windows and stockpiling food as hundreds of thousands of Red shirted country folk descend upon the capital en masse and better organized.
Please remember I have NOTHING to base the following presumptions on but man, the more I think about it the more it makes sense. Gang Starr. The most legendary hip hop groups of all time disband for reasons unclear. Just stopped. DJ Premier and Guru part on an acrimonious basis yet Premo’s stock soars whilst Guru retreats. Guru hooks up with a stranger, an unknown young looking dude called Solar. This is how they hooked up in their own words…
Um…Met via ‘mutual’ friends….they just hit it off…they start kicking it….uh huh. The above YouTube clip reminds me of a Pet Shop Boys interview. Anyway, from the Halcyon Gangstarr days ‘super producer’ Solar and Guru make music together like this:
Yep, that’s a new ‘club’ angle right there.
Guru’s new, er, Guru controls all aspects of Guru’s output like some weird Svengali figure. Years pass. Guru gets tattoos. Guru starts roiding up and rumours about cocaine and alcohol abuse grow. Solar and Guru travel to Europe a lot. Guru has a heart attack. Nobody can see Guru apart from Solar who controls Guru’s Twitter account and all Guru’s affairs. Guru’s family members come out and attack Solar for keeping the MC from seeing his folks. Premo, and everyone, is blocked from seeing his homeboy laying in a coma.
It’s early days re: Guru’s health but this is all sounding fishy and if anyone that has the power over Guru’s affairs like Solar does is normally called a wife or a civil partner. OK, so what? What if he is Gay? Well, cool, but tracks like this take on a whole noew meaning…
So here I am blogging via a mobile as it seems this stuff works at long last. One of the things about a blog is finding the time to sit down and type this shit like people used to write letters back in the day. Its old. Mobile technology has now allowed me to update this site whilst waiting for my son to fall asleep at night. So where were we?
Stunts Blunts and Hip Hop is where. Back, twenty years ago Fuck What You Heard came out on Mercury records. Using a lovely John Handy baseline it featured the best producer on the mic Diamond D who is now a seminal figure on the rap atlas thanks to his first album Stunts Blunts and Hip Hop. Now, this being the 90′s all eyes were on CD’s as the future with vinyl having only years to live. Record execs pictured the future was small and silver rather than big and black so as a kick start to this some albums were not released on vinyl with Stunts, Blunts and Hip Hop being one. In the UK I couldn’t even find a CD version and had to settle for owning just the one Diamond D record for the last decade or two.
Last May, whilst in London, I managed to get a copy of Sally and and via Discogs a Best Kept Secret 12″ but the real holy grail is the album. It transpires that a limited ammount were pressed up as promos and it is one of these babies I am fiending for. Ever since I started building my collection up again after my firesale when we left London for HK I have seen half a dozen on Ebay and Discogs over the last year but couldn’t bring myself to part with the money (150 dollars minimum) but since the Bahrain dinar is so strong and my children are young enough not to require school fees I feel now is the time to strike lest I torment myslef for all eternity. I have emailed collectors on Discogs (which makes me feel a little dirty and cheap but needs must) and I’ll await to see what gwarn. Wish me luck or sell me your copy.
