Music Features

Slideshow: History of Guru and Gang Starr

A collection of videos, photos, music and more from our archives

By CHRIS FARAONE | May 24, 2010

READ: "The Father and the Sun," by Chris Faraone

There have been many poignant Guru tributes since the legendary rapper passed earlier this year. But in researching the life of Keith Elam, the Phoenix unearthed far more about his early days in Boston – and those of the Gang Starr family – than we ever dreamed was documented. And the more we found, the more we realized that we had to share the goods with Guru's fans. As such, here is our salute – in photo, audio, video, and writing – to a Roxbury legend and the vast Gang Starr legacy he left behind. Many thanks to the crate diggers and amateur archivists who helped make this happen, and to Guru's friends and collaborators who spent hours cruising down memory lane with us.

READ:Guru's Guru, How a mysterious Svengali dominated Guru's final days. By Chris Faraone

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Ghost stories
For all of the excitement that surrounded Wilco on the Maine State Pier or Sufjan Stevens at Port City Music Hall or the various sold-out Ray LaMontagne shows of the past year, there is no question that last Sunday's Phish show at the Cumberland County Civic Center was the biggest thing to hit our fair city in a very long time.
Winged migration
Since their start in the middle of the decade, Brown Bird have been one of the region's go-to chamber-folk outfits, with a couple of dark and stormy albums earning them a following in various nooks of New England. The release of their latest album, The Devil Dancing , feels like both an ending and a new beginning.
Injustice for all
Scott Sturgeon loses his train of thought a couple of times during this interview. He's loopy from jet lag — which is unavoidable after a 20-hour flight from New Zealand (halfway around the planet from his non-residency at a squatted apartment building in New York City), where he's just finished a tour with his claim-to-fame band, Leftover Crack.
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Ghost stories
For all of the excitement that surrounded Wilco on the Maine State Pier or Sufjan Stevens at Port City Music Hall or the various sold-out Ray LaMontagne shows of the past year, there is no question that last Sunday's Phish show at the Cumberland County Civic Center was the biggest thing to hit our fair city in a very long time.
Winged migration
Since their start in the middle of the decade, Brown Bird have been one of the region's go-to chamber-folk outfits, with a couple of dark and stormy albums earning them a following in various nooks of New England. The release of their latest album, The Devil Dancing , feels like both an ending and a new beginning.
Injustice for all
Scott Sturgeon loses his train of thought a couple of times during this interview. He's loopy from jet lag — which is unavoidable after a 20-hour flight from New Zealand (halfway around the planet from his non-residency at a squatted apartment building in New York City), where he's just finished a tour with his claim-to-fame band, Leftover Crack.
Wanting more
After its triumphant traversal of the complete Béla Bartók string quartets at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the Borromeo Quartet was back for a free 20th- and 21st-century program at Jordan Hall, leading off with an accomplished recent piece by the 24-year-old Egyptian composer Mohammed Fairuz, Lamentation and Satire.
Group hug
Things aren’t always what they’re called — we know that flying fish don’t fly and starfish aren’t even fish.
Local heroes, ’09 edition
The Rhode Island music community flourished in 2009, with new full-lengths from the Coming Weak, California Smile, and the pride of Cranston West and official big-leaguers Monty Are I, who released Break Through the Silence in September.
Local flavor
Local journalist and acclaimed hip-hop scribe Andrew Martin has corralled a flavorful roster of Rhody-based rap talent on the Ocean State Sampler , 10 exclusive tracks available for free download.
Beyond Dilla and Dipset
With a semi-sober face I'll claim that hip-hop in 2010 might deliver more than just posthumous Dilla discs, Dipset mixtapes, and a new ignoramus coke rapper whom critics pretend rhymes in triple-entendres.
John Harbison plus 10
Classical music in Boston is so rich, having to pick 10 special events for this winter preview is more like one-tenth of the performances I'm actually looking forward to.
Shout it out!
Sharks Come Cruisin' founder Mark Lambert is a Warwick native with a penchant for reworking and penning sea shanties from centuries past, often revised with rollicking punk flare — all thanks to the golden pipes of Quint, the shark-obsessed skipper in Jaws .
Punk wreck
Guitar punk rock has a long and, frankly, dull history.
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