Gang Starr keeps literate street poetry in hip-hop

They put out food for thought, not 'some fiction lifestyle'

To those of you who have been selling "bling-bling" pop and have the nerve to call it true hip-hop, DJ Premier and Guru - collectively known as Gang Starr - are back to even the score. The duo's new and seventh album is The Ownerz. Throughout the record, Guru verbally pimp-slaps hip-hop imposters over Premier's jazz-inspired beats. It's time for something real, something with heart, the rapper says. It's time for the OGs (that's "original gangstas") to snatch back what they started.

Calling from a Manhattan studio, Guru, 38, says, "There's this whole misconception that hip-hop culture was started by a bunch of young cats. The culture was started by grown men - cats 35, 45 and older. These young cats should be bowing down and be glad that there are some older cats out here to give the game more flavor."

For more than a decade, Guru and 35-year-old Premier (his real name is Christopher Martin and he's stuck in production mode and can't chat) have been melding literate street poetry with measured, head-nodding beats. In his unmistakable creamy monotone, Guru (born Keith Elam) delivers clever lines that explore relationships, twists in American politics, the need for artistic integrity in hip-hop.

"The concept of The Ownerz involves how people are renting and leasing hip-hop," Guru explains. "At this point in the game, there's a lot of people exploiting it and calling the [stuff] they're doing hip-hop even though their music is watered down. Premier and I call it `tinkerbell' rap. It's not the real stuff."

Like Betty Carter was in the jazz field, Guru is a purist. His flow and Premier's tailor-made beats stick to the hard, sharp flavor of original hip-hop - the spare beats and insistent bass lines interspersed with scratches and smartly sampled sound bites. It's raw and sonically rich, rippling with jazzy horns or a spliced funk-guitar line. Since hip-hop has become so mainstream in the past five years or so, the music (what makes the charts and goes platinum, anyway) has largely become cartoonish, its edge nonexistent.

But Gang Starr has garnered some commercial success with its tunnel vision. The duo's last album, 1998's Moment of Truth, went gold. And The Ownerz debuted in the Top 20 earlier this month.