Gang Starr was my favorite rap group. They were the best hip-hop duo, period. Others had bigger impacts (Run-DMC and OutKast, perhaps) but Guru and Premier were better for longer. Their second, third and fourth albums were landmarks but their last two albums were probably, front-to-back, their strongest. And it was never just about the beats. I didn’t know what a producer did when I bought Step In The Arena. I just dug the whole package, and the focal point of it all was Guru. Only those too dim to pick up on the wisdom the man was dispensing in his lyrics ever griped about his allegedly monotone delivery. I can’t say I spent any time with his post-Gang Starr/Solar-era output, but I never found any song I did hear with him on it to be dull.

Back when most of the music I was listening to was goofy and immature (Fu-Schnickens, Leaders of the New School) or abrasively violent (late NWA, Tim Dog) dude was one of the first rappers who made me stop and think about what he was saying—an older, wiser voice which I could relate to and, as corny as it sounds, model myself after as a person. Honor among men was always the prevailing theme in his lyrics, and, for many, it rubbed off. Even a track as seemingly flippant as “Ex Girl to the Next Girl” hipped me to life in its own way. Rakim always sounded wise to me, and Chuck D awed me with the intensity of his content, but as a pre-teen White kid who didn’t know Clarence 13X from Stokely Carmichael, I couldn’t grasp their lyrics on that level at that time. Guru’s words have always made 100-percent, complete sense to me, from when I was a 10-year-old boy to a 31-year-old man.

Alvin Blanco compiled Guru’s complete videography over at his site. I’m sure others did, too, but he’s a good guy. Spend some time there.