199 words about Gang Starr's One Of The Best Yet

Moments of truth.

Guru died in 2010 but One Of The Best Yet is about how he didn’t. DJ Premier procured Guru’s locked-away verses by necessary means, put Guru’s ashes on the boards, and made the beats to let the verses speak. Guru’s trademark monotone here is alive. Strange because as a descriptor “lively” usually talks about energy, hype, glee clubs and 6ix9ine. The thing about Guru was that his voice and his rapping was just unmovable reality. Posthumously, it feels even more real. He sounds so tired on “So Many Rappers,” like he can’t even be bothered to be clever about all the damn rappers out there. Man, if that’s not the truth. Man, if it isn’t like Guru’s in the room, just talking shit. Anyways, here’s a record for the morning and the night, of awakening and remembrance. It inhabits every mode, at once, of how we process things and how we enjoy them and how we kick it and how we cope. It is not an epilogue for Gang Starr but just another chapter in the legacy. And when Guru spits beatitude on the shimmer of “Bless the Mic,” you can’t seem to remember that he’s gone.