Audio Guru
Jazzmatazz Vol. 4

Guru is no stranger to hip-hop heads. Alongside DJ Premier, he released seven Gang Starr albums between 1989 and 2003 and earned a devoted following around the world, thanks in part to his signature voice -- a mellow monotone that is unmistakably his own. In addition to the group records, he created Jazzmatazz, an ongoing series that finds him collaborating with many key figures in the worlds of jazz and R&B. Over the past few years, he's branched out even further, working almost exclusively with self-described super-producer Solar, dropping his first solo effort, and launching his own independent label, 7 Grand Records. MP3.com got a chance to chop it up with the two of them in-between tour dates as they continue to promote Jazzmatazz Vol. 4.

MP3: So first of all, how are you guys doing today? Guru: Good, good. Yourself? Doing well, thanks for asking. All right. Yeah, we just got back from a nice little run in Colorado in the mountains. Some sold-out gigs, particularly Aspen at the Belly Up, and we did Vail, Breckenridge, Boulder, and Durango. Nice. You guys did a full US tour as well as overseas for this, right? Solar: Yes, we did. We started, like, in May 2007. Excellent. So I wanted to talk about the album and the process of putting it together. I mean, this is the fourth edition of Jazzmatazz, but it's got obviously a different producer and sort of a new direction. I mean, I guess my first question would be, with an idea that's in its fourth incarnation, how do you still keep it fresh and keep it moving? You get down with the super-producer Solar. You get a partner like Solar. That's the ingredient right there. That's the main ingredient with a capital M. But what I would say is that Jazzmatazz has always been a timeless concept. So I put it on the back burner saying that I was going go come back to it.

And Solar and I, we met over six years ago, introduced by a mutual friend, and we hit it off beyond the music. We were instant fast friends and started hanging out and getting in trouble and all that good stuff. I was expressing a lot of my frustrations about the industry and creativity being stifled by A&Rs and execs that ain't from the culture and so forth. And he was like...one night in particular I was going off and he was trying to have a good time and I was complaining. And he was like, "You know, listen. Start your own label if it's that's bad. You're an icon." I was like, "Hmm." You know, I hollered back at him a few days later and said, "Yeah, I want to do this." And he was like, "Well good luck." And I was like, "No, I want you to get down with me." So he decided to join me, and we put it together. Our first joint that we put out in 2005 was called Guru Version 7.0: The Street Scriptures. And we had B Real, we had Styles P, Jean Grae, Talib Kweli, Jaguar Wright, and Doo Wop.

And that album, when we toured that album worldwide, everybody was asking, "When are you going to do another Jazzmatazz?" So that's where we felt the demand. And that album was successful in that it was slept on but it went into the Top 10 highest-selling independent releases of 2005. We got a single in the Top 20 on [radio station] HOT97 here, which is unheard of for an independent. Yeah, that's hard to do for indie. Yeah, beyond that, all radio in 2005, that summer was all...anything Dirty South was on the radio. It was like trying to get anything from New York on the radio was impossible. And we was in a much smaller situation than we are now with Koch and Sony and Universal. So it was really like a very proud thing for us to do before the track got ripped off. And that situation and us making that noise and doing over 100,000 units even with a small distribution network enabled us to get the bigger network, as Solar just spoke of, for Jazzmatazz 4. So here we are now with Jazzmatazz 4 in stores, and we've got the mix CD, the raw companion coming out toward the end of February. Now, I wanted to ask, you've got a lot of jazz pioneers on it and cats that have been sampled a lot but not necessarily collaborated with in the past in other hip-hop records. And then you've also got different emcees on it and different singers on it. Are the people that you work with...are those cats that you already had a relationship with or people that you just came at, like, as a fan and said, "Hey, I respect your work. Would you like to get involved with this?" How did that come together? Both. And I would say that it's all about who fits the concept. Jazzmatazz represents the art of collaboration. So as opposed to somebody saying, "Oh, we're going to get this guy on," and it's an A&R decision or a company decision that this person sold millions of records and we're going to get some of his audience or whatever, or her audience, it's the opposite of that. It's about who fits. So Solar and I, we reached out to everyone, and everyone showed us love, initially love for the legacy of Jazzmatazz and the stature of the concept of the project. And then, once Solar sent them the tracks, they even got more open and they hollered back like, "Yo, when can we start doing this? When can we book time? Let's pop this off." Everybody was enthusiastic about it, and everybody gave 100 percent plus. Nice. And now when you're putting the tracks together, when you were recording the album...these days especially, a lot of people are just sort of like, "I'll e-mail you a track, you record it and send it back." Were you guys actually up in the studio with everybody working together on stuff or what? Mostly. And then in the ones that we weren't, it was only because of scheduling because they were on tour or something like that. Yeah. We had managed to actually physically meet with everybody and discuss the album at one point or another. Right on. And now for the live show, do you guys perform with a touring band or do you have the different guests come out and join you when they're available or when you're in their cities or how does that work? Solar is the music director so I'll let him answer... How would you break that down? We did them both. You know, we have a touring band that I put together, which I believe is the first time in hip-hop that you have an international band. It was handpicked by myself and Guru from all over. Musicians from all over the planet Earth. And when we're touring the world, yes, if one of the artists are in town and available, then they come in and they guest with us. But for the most part, people generally are coming to see Guru and Solar. And it's incredible, though, what Solar has done in the aspect of live sound and just the whole sonic value of the Jazzmatazz show. It's like classics after classics. And he's reworked things and he's produced just one of the most incredible shows on the planet. So I'm bigging him up right now because it's necessary. It's definitely crucial, because, I mean, I think the biggest complaint with live hip-hop is that it's always...like, the sound always sucks. It's always some dude barking at the sound man. Oh, I know, absolutely. I think that that was Solar's thinking in that we've got to take this to new sonic heights. I think also what it is, is that the people enjoy the street credibility or the street cred of the sound. I don't think you've had a producer with the level of...like you said, like on the mix CD, you hear me at my underground best, so to speak. You really hear me pounding out really rough beats. But they're still polished in their own way, you know what I mean. And I think the same thing translates when you hear us live with the bands and so on is that you're hearing music that does have the drum programming, and the beats are so dope, but at the same time you're getting this level of musicianship above that that just takes the whole thing to the next level. No doubt. And speaking of the whole band thing and like a band with a DJ, we...you know, that's us. We're the originators of that. We originated that. Now what do you guys have on deck in terms of...obviously 7 Grand is the new label. It's all just you two, right? You two are running the whole label? That's right. CEO and president, yes indeed. That's what's up. Are you developing new artists? Are you working on individual solo albums or more collabos? What's on deck for the coming year? All of the above. But I'll let the guy break that down for you. OK. Well we've got an album coming out by K-Born and High Power that will be out in the spring. So I'm putting the finishing touches on their album. I'm in the process of signing a new group now, and then we also have my album coming later in the year, 5000 Degrees & Burning, as well as, of course, the mix CD, which isn't the typical mix CD because it's going to really...the marketing is so out there that it's on another level. So it's really an album. It's the first Jazzmatazz that's really featuring underground artists and is designed to be for the heads without the kind of high-brow, high-intellectual capacity of the straight Jazzmatazz records.

So I think that's going to be a good look for the young heads out there, and I think there's a lot of young dudes that just want to access good hip-hop again and don't want to just hear lyrics that are about nothing. This new album, these young spitters on there, they're spitting incredibly complex lyrics. You've got a completely in-depth...you know what I mean, like, they're really rapping. And I think that it's a nice talent to get to 'Crank Dat,' you know what I mean, on these other songs. I'm not knocking those guys, don't get me wrong. You know, that music has a place on cell phones and so forth, but we're talking about real music. We're talking about real music with real dope intense lyrics. And these kids are not being compensated. They're not going to be millionaires driving Lamborghinis. But they're spitting these hot lyrics because they love music and they love hip-hop, and 7 Grand is here to support them. Now would you say, I mean, dealing with all the BS and the politics that goes along with being on a major and then going independent, with the independent scene you've got...the creative control is all yours, but the flip side of that is you've got to really grind it out harder in terms of doing the PR and everything. Oh, boy. I'll just call it what it is: You've got to be broke. You've got to be broke. You've got to be broke. You've got to be broke and pissed the f*** off all the time. Right. I mean, would you say that that balances out for you, that it's totally worth the actual amount of work that you've got to do. Yeah. Yes, because at the end of the day we see...we're visionaries and I would say that it's important, it's necessary to the growth of hip-hop as it was designed to be, divinely designed to be. If no one's going to step up and bring forth creative intelligent leadership in the game, it's out of here. Totally. It's not going to be here anymore. So 7 Grand represents that. Well I think the comment 'hip-hop is dead'...we say it's not dead, it's just been kidnapped. They've got it duct-taped and tied up in the basement somewhere so we're coming to get it. That's right. We got the GPS on the cell phone. We're ready to lock it in. Now I wanted to ask Guru specifically, you've been doing this for a long time. You're a legendary veteran in the game. Nowadays, hip-hop is more popular and more mainstream than ever, but like you're saying, there's a lot of real just "here today gone tomorrow" cats that's out there. As somebody with, like, almost 20 years in this, what kind of advice would you give to all of these young kids that, like, all they want to do is rap, they're just, "I want to be a rapper"? What kind of advice would you give? Be honest with yourself about it. Make sure that your stuff is original because to have longevity...longevity only comes to original artists. The other fly-by-night artists, those are the other dudes. So those two things -- surround yourself with good people that aren't just "yes" people, and network and really dedicate yourself to be about it. And it takes...Solar often says this, that it can't be something that you just do from time to time and expect to get over with it. This has got to be something that you live. I hear you. And how about you, Solar? More and more kids want to be producers now, and they've got all the computer programs and stuff that's making it a lot easier for anybody to get into that. What kind of guidance would you give to the young up-and-coming beat makers and whatnot? I mean, be creative is the mainstay, you know what I mean. Do your own thing, and what I've seen that I think that would impress me is that when I hear a beat maker, somebody that's working on his tracks, that he's trying to represent what's going on with his rappers, you know what I mean. When I'm on MySpace, I get a lot of cats hitting me and a lot of tracks I listen to and it's like they don't even listen to their artists. It's like they're both trying to be something else, like everything they're doing is just a lower-quality or a lower-priced version of what's out there as opposed to just being creative.

Even though we came up with the Street Scriptures, which was an independent album, it's not low quality even though I was striving to do something different that the world ever heard before, but I knew that I wanted to do it in a way that would represent what Guru was trying to accomplish. So rather, Guru was a superstar working with B Real and Talib and Jean Grae. Jean Grae was pretty much new, but, I mean, I looked at each artist individually and didn't look at their stature and made sure that they got the sound that would represent them. Yeah. I mean, everything went hand in hand. The whole idea is, for the young producers out there and the young beat makers, is to be creative and be individual in what you're doing. Guru, I've got to ask just because the people want to know, will there ever be another Gang Starr record or is that just off the table? I believe that this probably makes the 11,000th time I've answered this in the last year. [laughs] I'm sure. So the people already should know, but I'll answer it again. I'm not focusing on that right now. It's all about what's going on and what's important right now and what the demand for is... 7 Grand Records. Guru and Solar, 7 Grand, Jazzmatazz, and what we've got popping. I mean, our shows are sold out. Our MySpace numbers are up to almost 700,000. So things are popping off, man, and it's important that we stay focused on the future and where hip-hop is supposed to be going. I mean, that was a great era. It was legendary, but people grow. I mean, you're not driving the same car you drove five, six years ago. I know you're not. Right. So you're not wearing the same gear either. Sure. So it's about growth, and all my favorite artists were able to do it. Fortunately, I've partnered with the super-producer Solar, who has what it takes to give me the tacks that I need to take it to the next level and the vision to bring this company into the future and to help to bring hip-hop into the future. Right on. Well hey, thanks a lot for taking the time out to talk to me. I appreciate it. Thank you, Brolin. We appreciate it. Oh, man, thank you and thanks for the insightful questions and your interest and time too. No doubt, man. Keep making that good music and take care. All right, Bro. Thanks, you too.