DJ Premier, a guy from Texas, has been a person of seminal influence on NY's late 80ies and early 90ies Hip-Hop-Scene, along with The Guru, the MC that died too young in 2010, son of the first African-American judge or so, from Boston. As GangStarr, they have contributed enormously to intelligent, poitically aware, musically and lyrics-wise sophisticated hip-hop, being the spear-head of the cool hip-hop movement, later on lead by the Guru and Jazzmatazz. Not long after that, the genre began to decline aesthetically, we have to admit. When those guys introduced these cool samples from the swing-era on the basis of funky beats, this was the golden era of hip-hop, word! DJ Premier is known for putting together cool beats, moody loops, stunning samples and excellent as well as exact scratches. As a first example of that art of collage, we bring in "Just to Get a Rep", considered to be the masterpiece of Gang Starr by some; it is a fine example of street lyrics, telling a somewhat "authentic" story from the streets of NY in those days, not just posing and boasting about being a gangsta or something ridiculous and dangerous like that:
The video was shot by Fab 5 Freddy, here is an interview with him about how the story goes: click on that!
As you can learn from that interview, GangStarr were very successful in building and pushing their NY-Posse, among them guys you can see in the video to "Just to Get a Rep", like Jeru the Damaja and Lil' Dap. Jeru the Damaja's first album is normally rated among the top Hip-Hop albums of all times, and it is definitely right to do that and DJ Premier, who did most of the producing work (which means, he made the loops, the beats, the scratches and all of that) has to be credited on that one; here is Jungle Music from "The Sun Rises in the East":
Lil' Dap was to be one of the guys in Group Home later on; here is "Suspended in Time" from their debut album. This is also to be credited to DJ Premier, who has produced the track. It is followed by the "instrumental" version, to give you some sort of feeling for the work of DJ Premier:
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