Sometimes interviews can be a bit hairy. Timezones, telephone lines, traffic and schedules can all conspire to make things difficult for all involved. Such was my interview with Guru. Instead of the 15 minute chat from a hotel room, I had a 5 minute chat about Jazzmatazz 4 with both Guru and his new partner in crime Solar as they travelled in a taxi on the way to another interview. Not the most ideal situation to ask someone you’ve been a fan of you years everything you wanted to know.
So, I concentrated on Jazzmatazz volume 4. The Jazmatazz series was launched 14 years ago as Guru (which stands for Gifted Unlimited Rhymes Universal) teamed up with jazz greats Lonnie Liston Smith, Branford Marsalis, Ronny Jordan, Donald Byrd and Roy Ayers to produce the one of the first fusions of jazz and hiphop. Also featured on the album was French rapper MC Solaar and N’Dea Davenport of the Brand New Heavies, and it broke new ground in the hiphop scene. It crossed boundaries and introduced jazz to hiphoppers and hiphop to jazz listeners.
However, it’s been a number of years since the last iteration. “This has been an ongoing project,” Guru states, “but I wanted to put it on the back burner for a minute, finish up some other projects from my previous works, then hook up with Solar and get things up and running.” The Solar he is referring isn’t the French MC Solaar, but a New York producer who has stepped in the hard to fill shoes of DJ Premier, Guru’s ex partner in the now defunct Gangstarr.
Unlike previous releases in the series, there aren’t as many big names from either the jazz scene or the hiphop world. “We wanted a balance with the legends and contemporary, and of course the new up and coming artists,” Guru explains. “We wanted to balance it out and give something for everybody.” This is partly because the influence of the Jazzmatazz series is so wide reaching, being if not the father of many music genres like Acid Jazz and Neo Soul, then certainly a big fatherly figure in their lives. These styles can be seen as old and stale, where as Guru says “with us, we’re the originators so we can push ourselves and do our own thing, we decide the direction, because Jazzmatazz defines itself.”
Guru has been praised so much for his lyrical flow and delivery. “It’s all about taking experiences and making them universal through my writing,” he explains. “So my repertoire as Guru I filter my experiences – whether I’m talking about my rap skills or society or the industry or romance, it’s the thing I do, and now I’ve partnered with Solar he’s pushed me to new heights. It’s the tracks he makes that influence me to do what I do, and he hit me with some of the greatest music I’ve heard so it pushed me to new heights.”
He continues to lavish praise on Solar. “This work I feel is a lot more cohesive,” Guru continues. “I’ve teamed up with one of the hottest producers from New York and he’s brought a huge musical knowledge to the Jazzmatazz odyssey and taken it further in the sonic landscape, and conceptually with the song writing. He has a lot of ideas that he brings to the table song writing wise, so allows me to concentrate on lyrics and concepts and pushes me and the other artists to do the best work they’ve ever done.”
I quickly get a chance to ask Solar one question, so I ask if he thinks it’s fair that he’s compared to DJ Premier. “As a black man coming from America fairness isn’t something we see a whole lot of,” he says. “As far as my talent is concerned I feel my talent speaks for itself. I think Premier is a genius and one of the greatest talents to ever touch a drum machine, but then there’s all these people who buy the album and come to the shows and see me do what I do, and like it.” And I guess no one can argue with that.