February 29, 2020

Guru "Gang Starr Mix Freestyles" (2005)


It's not all that noteworthy, but this is only my second leap year post (on this site). Back in 2016, I shared my brother One Be Lo's new album (at the time), The Original B.O.R.N. O.N.E.S., which is still a solid album, dig that up! This year? I was gonna do a post about Ja Rule, who celebrates his born day today, but I wasn't in the mood for that. So... I looked at my desktop screen, and on it was a file I'd downloaded from DJ Step One's website about Guru. Guru hosted a mix tape back in 2005 called The Official Gang Starr Mix CD, where he dropped a handful of exclusive freestyles. I owned that CD at the time and even included one of Guru's freestyles from it on my niche mixtape called FreeOfStyle in 2012. DJ Step One made one single MP3 out of all the individual freestyles on there, which I think is genius, and very much worth sharing/revisiting. Guru was a one-of-a-kind artist - his voice and the messages in his music were an integral part of my childhood. Click the tags, you'll see references time and again that Gang Starr is my favorite group of all-time, so it's no surprise DJ Premier and Guru pop up every couple of months on this site. I'm constantly revisiting the music and remembering memories where they were the soundtrack. Peep some tracks as elusive as 2/29...