New Gangstarr Interview - Primo discussing Dre's canning of his tracks..

[Jome]

Gangstarr: The Prequel:



Since 1988, Gangstarr, the elite DJ/rapper duo of Premier and Guru, is the group everybody loves to love. Out of ignorance, some who declare they rep hip-hop, may not be so familiar with the group. But in the rarest of forms, the group has managed to surf the raging waters of rap since 1987, churning out who’s banged out ageless music since the late 80’s. With the release of their seventh opus, The Ownerz, Preem and Guru have the keys to the house of hip-hop and they are only making a few copies.

AllHipHop.com: You two have been one of the longest running DJ/MC teams that hip-hop has ever seen – where others have fizzled, i.e. Kool G Rap & DJ Polo, Eric B. & Rakim – How do you manage to stay together?

Guru: Because we keep our vision on a bigger picture. We have disagreements but we deal with that like brothers and men. As far as what we do as a group, we know its important to keep it tight and we know that there’s others coming up underneath us so we need to be strong leaders. They need our guidance so we have to keep it tight.

AllHipHop: I was talking about Gangstarr and I mentioned that you don’t come out as much as other rappers, even though the people are screaming for more music.

Premiere: It’s all about timing. When its time, it’ll happen. A lot of artists that come out now, they recycle themselves and come right back out, with album after album after album. It's all good, especially if it's poppin,’ but if it's not poppin’ you can’t even play the whole album.

Guru: A lot of cats get greedy and try and milk the game once they get one hot record. Then the album’s not all that. Then us, we would like to come out a little quicker but a lot of it is business and being that we are from back in the day, we had to go through a lot with contracts and things. We’re not gonna come out if we’re not backed correctly. A lot of times, we got to put a record out and the record company changes the head of the staff or the CEO of the company will change the head of the urban department or the A&R’s. A lot of times that happens with us so with this new record [The Ownerz] we making sure we have the right people behind us. The right situation.

AllHipHop: Where do you fit into the industry now – the music is kind of wack.

Guru: We create our own market as far as that’s concerned. We’re not really stressing that. We have a crowd. We sell out shows so we have a core audience. We sell out shows without an album out. So those same people are gonna buy our stuff. So, from there, we’ll branch out to those that don’t know us. That’s the plan right now.

AllHipHop: What can people anticipate from Gangstarr this time out?

[Jome]

 Premiere: The Ownerz [is the name of the album]. We feel like people are renting hip-hop. Most people, like when they do hip-hop, its like when you borrow a car – you borrow it for a minute and you have to take it back. Then you go back to walking or catching the bus or the damn train. We own our sh*t so we have total control over what we pick, what we do and we know the history of the hip-hop game. If you don’t know the history, how long do you think it's gonna last? I’m 35 years old, I still crack a joint and I still love the game. I still respect the game. Nobody can push craftsmanship to you. We’re a focused group and we don’t bow down to pressure.

Guru: We don’t mind the pressure, the doubters or the haters, because they just make us stronger.

AllHipHop: I don’t know anybody that hates you dudes.

Premiere & Guru: Everybody got haters.

Premiere: Everybody not gonna like you – who cares – just don’t come in my face with it.

Guru: Well, the single is called “Skillz.” It's already getting burn on the radio and mix shows. It's one of the most up tempo joints we ever did. Soon as I heard the beat, I was like, “That’s the one.” Preemo gave me the track and I went and spit the next day. The video is hot. We don’t got a lot of cameos in it. It’s not a lot of T&A. There’s only like one girl in the whole thing. Straight rugged. We don’t gotta do that. We got a lot of special guests on the album – Fat Joe, Snoop, Jadakiss, The Militia –Bumpy and Big Suge, MOP, the NYG’s.

AllHipHop: I heard of the NYG’s recently.

Premiere: Yeah, they on my label. The label’s called Year Round. We just starting from the beginning. It's like everybody’s messing up the game so, I’m going to start from the beginning with 12-inches and then talk to the CD’s. We just building the buzz and getting this thing popping again. Back to the raw again and they [NYG’s] are real raw cats.

AllHipHop: Are you glad that MOP made it to The Roc?

Guru: For Sure! They been working on that for a while.

Premiere: Yeah, because Dash been wanting to do that since the Firing Squad album. Things didn’t work out business-wise so things came to the surface. He was chasing them for a while. That’s a beautiful thing, because they are hip-hop artists and I know they are gonna get that push. Their album is incredible. They got like 40 joints and they picked the best ones.

AllHipHop: What’s Gangstarr’s take on the Benzino and Eminem beef, especially since you, Guru, are from Boston?

Premiere: It's not really beef. It’s a battle. The main thing is this, as long as ya’ll keep it on wax and keep it to the battle level, whoever wins, wins and whoever loses, loses. If ya’ll taking it to the level where ya’ll wanna start throwing blows and wanna hurt each other – get out the hip-hop game. We got enough drama out there. Don’t mess it up by trying to body cats over rap. Right now, Eminem’s winning. Ray, you better get another pen out, bro.

[Jome]

AllHipHop: After Em’s reply, Benzino started to mention that Em’s daughter wasn’t safe going to the candy store or something to that effect.

Premiere: See, that’s personal. You shouldn’t have to get personal.

Guru: The thing with that battling shit, we don’t get involved with that, let other cats do that. When I talk about emcees, I put emcees in a category and I use with creativity that make the fists weary. I don’t have the time to put somebody’s name in my stuff because my stuff is too important. I’m not one of those type of rhymers. Oh, by the way, I rep Ray [Benzino] because Ray is from Boston. [laughs]

AllHipHop: You guys have been in the game for years, since “Manifest” so what’s your key to success?

Premiere: Our creativity is based on the level of support. You got people in football like Jerry Rice that’s still doing it after all these years. People that’s still in the game and with us, it’s the same thing. If you love the sport, you will still be able to get your ticket to see Gangstarr. We love the sport so we still play it properly. We don’t misuse the artform, plus we know our history.

Guru: We’re fans of the music, too. So we buy everybody’s sh*t. We got that same fervor, that same hunger that we had when we first came in. I call him now and say, “Did you hear that song on ‘such and such’s’ album? [Track] number 7.” You know we still do that same shit. I repeat some of the lyrics that we like and all that.

AllHipHop: Why is hip-hop becoming so stale?

Premiere: Because the labels are allowing garbage to be signed. They trying to take it over like they did rock and R&B. They trying to water it down and turn it into something else that’s not hip-hop and that’s what it is – "Something else." It's another type. of sh*t that you are hearing now. We do hip-hop. It takes artists like us and artists that are pure like Rakim and others of that sort to put out the raw, to take it back to the essence. If nobody’s doing it then we can’t complain. Even though the labels are trying to take it away from us, you can’t take it with out a fight.

Guru: You need to get up on those DJ Premiere mix tapes. He be playing that raw. Not necessarily that single that the label’s trying to promote but that album cut that’s hot to def.

AllHipHop: Not trying to start any sort of a beef, but I heard that Dre rejected all of your beats for Rakim’s album, Preem.

Premiere: Yeah, that’s true. No buss. As a matter of fact, I just spoke to Rakim. Peace to him. We gonna put our heads together and see. They never put any vocals to anything so I don’t know how they judge over there [at Aftermath], but we gonna put it down, lay some vocals and see how we wanna get it popped off. It doesn’t matter because I know what we are doing is right.

Allhiphop: How do you both stay passionate about hip-hop?

Premiere: You don’t want to see something that you love die so we love it. I don’t wanna see it pass away. It's sick now. It's in the hospital, but we gonna get well got damn it.

Guru: We gonna hit it with the antibiotics.

[Twentytwofifty]

Primo: Right now, Eminem’s winning. Ray, you better get another pen out, bro.

LMAO, that's from a legend.  Get outta hip-hop Ray, you're not welcome.

[jeromechickenbone]

damn i can't wait for this album. gang starr always stays true to hip hop. i don't know what to think about dre rejecting primo's beats for rakim though. does this mean that up to this point none of primo's beats have been ok'd? i hope that we have at least 3-4 primo beats on there. to me, this album would definetly be lacking something if there were no primo beats.

[=[Euthanasia]=]

does this mean that up to this point none of primo's beats have been ok'd? i hope that we have at least 3-4 primo beats on there. to me, this album would definetly be lacking something if there were no primo beats.

It sounds to me like he's still working on beats for Ra so i'm pretty sure we'll get atleast one joint produced by him, i'd personally like to see more though.

[On The Edge of Insanity]

Dope interview.

Out of those beats than Dre rejected for Rakim's album, I heard that one of them was the beat Xzibit used for "What A Mess", cause he was in the studio when the joints were being played and liked the beat so contacted Premo and got the track for his album. Obviously Dre is the execuetive producer and shit on Rakim's album and therefore wants to have more control over the sound of the album, but the album won't be the same without at least 3-4 Premo productions on there. Personally I would rather have seen a whole Rakim album produced by Premo, but I suppose Dr Dre will have to do.

[jeromechickenbone]

to me, dre is the greatest producer of all time, and i know this album is gonna be great. but if primo isn't on there a few times, i'm gonna feel let down. however, i wouldn't mind if dre tried somethin a little different and went for a more grimey production style on this album. dre doesn't really do that, so i think it'd be dope if he tried somethin like that.

[.:Hercy Buggz:.]

Props for that interview man!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[CharlieBrown]

Dope interview.

Out of those beats than Dre rejected for Rakim's album, I heard that one of them was the beat Xzibit used for "What A Mess", cause he was in the studio when the joints were being played and liked the beat so contacted Premo and got the track for his album. Obviously Dre is the execuetive producer and shit on Rakim's album and therefore wants to have more control over the sound of the album, but the album won't be the same without at least 3-4 Premo productions on there. Personally I would rather have seen a whole Rakim album produced by Premo, but I suppose Dr Dre will have to do.

If thats true then i'm glad Dre rejected all of Premo's beats as i want Oh My God to be groundbreaking and i don't consider What A Mess to be anything special from Premo, just an average beat for him.

[.:Hercy Buggz:.]

just heard Skillz that shit is Hot!!!!!

[LyRiCaL_G]

what a mess was vergin on wack! dunno why ppl felt is soo much, i know why dre rejected that one! much luv to dre for that!

[On The Edge of Insanity]

What A Mess wasn't wack, that was probably the best track on Xzibit's whole album.

[jeromechickenbone]

wow. i can't remember listening to hardly any primo beats and label them wack. but thats me. i thought what a mess was a great fuckin beat. easily one of the best on M vs M. it blew all of dre's production out the water on that cd.

[=[Euthanasia]=]

What A Mess wasn't wack, that was probably the best track on Xzibit's whole album.

I agree. Not only did I think it was the best beat on the whole album but it was also X's best performance lyrically and content wise imo.