Moment of Truth - by Solar

Moment of Truth The Guru Gang Starr Story

By Solar

Copyright © 2018 Solar Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals. I have tried to recreate events, locales and conversations from my memories of them. In order to maintain their anonymity in some instances I have changed the names of individuals and places, I may have changed some identifying characteristics and details such as physical properties, occupations and places of residence.

Cover Illustration Copyright © 2018 by Cover design by.

Book design and production All rights reserved.

ISBN: ISBN-13:

CONTENTS

2

Introduction: Battle

Code of the Streets

17

Step in the Arena

39

Mass Appeal

Take It Personal

72

Outro: ​Take a Rest

106 150

i scography: ​Who's Gonna Take 207 Weight?

I​NTRODUCTION “B​ATTLE​”

It was a year of watching the battle up close. Instead of a fight focused on the disease, it was also taking place around Guru while he slept. By the time I got the call, “You need to come to the hospital,” my nerves were already tight. The ten-minute drive to the hospital’s ICU seemed like hours with me dreading worse news waiting there.

To add to the drama, my car radio was airing the crazy and conspiratorial rumors floating around the situation, which I was in no condition to defend against. Guru certainly wasn’t. Not once he went into a coma, after a year-long fight with cancer so aggressive that it came out of nowhere and finished up fast.

Instead of playing his music, the radio was playing into the lies and gossip like: “​Guru and Solar had a violent and abusive relationship​…” “​Circumstances around Guru’s death were suspicious, and that’s why he got sick out of nowhere… ​ ” “​Solar is keeping Guru’s family away from him​…” “​Guru is in bad shape, unkempt, and nobody is taking care of him​…” “​Solar forged Guru’s signature and took over everything to steal his music… ​ ” And other outrageous and salacious rumors. Guru decided, when he was beginning treatment, that he would have to address professional issues with

ex-partnerships and other matters that had turned negative. He never planned for anybody to swing so low. By the time the rumors got worse, he had already slipped into a coma, and anything he felt needed addressing if things got worse, we covered in advance legally. I decided to keep the negative action away from him as he got sicker, knowing he needed to focus on healing. Only later, was I able to unpack some of the nonsense circulating.

Talk that I not only abused him, but forced Guru to tour instead of seeking medical help. That I took over control of his social media and personal email communications. That I was deeply in debt and so was hijacking his music. It was all a tirade of insults and accusations that made a bad situation worse. Was there time to defend us both right there in the thick of it? Not really. It was enough to wrap my head around one of my best friends dying.

None of the people pointing the fingers knew half of Guru’s story. They knew his music, they knew what they thought was his personality, but few understood his evolution over the years. They didn’t stick around to watch him put down the bottle, and the heavy partying that went with it, or become a vegetarian. They missed a critical juncture during their years of estrangement from him that made it look to me like they didn’t know the man in his last years. Not like those of us there every day.

The key family members who could say they knew him were not the ones

spreading the rumors. Instead, the ones he had virtually no contact with in his last years, which surfaced after the fact, were the primary cause of much of that talk.

It’s been over seven years since that time, and while the finger pointing has let up, the effects of it still linger. It hangs around any Google search about Guru’s life and death and adds a stink to an otherwise incredible trajectory of a genius rap star. In reintroducing to this generation the impact and importance of his musical catalog, these untrue bits of history clog up the flow of information about him, and his truth isn’t told. I want the fans to get behind his rise to fame, our true relationship, and the music that came out of it in his last days. I do realize this means marching through some old bullshit to get to the clearing.

Boston born as Keith Elam, Guru—Gifted Unlimited Rhymes Universal—and his talents made him into an acclaimed rapper and producer, named by The Source as #30 of Top 50 Lyricists of All Time just for a start. Respected for both the work he accomplished as the founder of Gang Starr, and his own critically successful solo projects like the Jazzmatazz Volumes, he was by all rights a star in the game. His lyrical gift spoke to an entire hip-hop generation, that would have heard even greater music from him had the worst of disasters not hit. Now he was a sick man, vilified in the media and unable to speak at all.

At the heart of the rumors, you could find a few of Guru’s estranged family members who took their griefs to the media to stir up outright lies. This looks bad

from any point of view because family should be a part of the medicine that helps a sick man heal. Why would I prevent that? What would I have gained from isolating him? I was a medical proxy, appointed by him, and I was too busy processing what all I needed to do next if his condition turned worse.

In responding to my friend as he had asked me to, I took care of his business. I knew I had to call his father and speak to him, which I did. All of it ended up as fruitless efforts, as it turned into the worst day anybody could imagine. I knew I could lose somebody who was like family to me—a true brother—and that he was in dire straits. Plus, the weight of the very thing that I was entrusted to take care of—his legacy—was now being put into a negative light.

All of that was something I had no experience dealing with at the time. I possessed no knowledge of how to tell the other side of the story against a scandal-hungry media machine. Certainly not to the hip-hop media, which was so negatively obsessed with the gossip side, to put it mildly. This situation was like giving them the dirty food you feed a pig. The very thing that they thrived on is what those rumormongers cooked up for them.

Whatever I had to say about taking care of a brother I loved as he battled a horrible disease, or how two friends were just trying to hold their heads like men do in a terrible situation like that, was ignored. The lies and the filth became the order of the day even before Guru even went into his coma.

Once it got truly malicious, and once he started worsening, I did keep all that nasty drama away from him but never his friends, family, or anyone else that wanted to see him at that time, despite their lies to the contrary.

At the hospital, standing over Guru's bed in the ICU unit, what was going through my mind the most is how much his legacy meant to him. In his better days, when writing his life story out, we were both optimistic that it was going to be a story of him beating the cancer and one he told himself. When it came down to the worst-case scenario, he knew it would at least be me writing it. “If you end up telling my story, it means I didn’t make it,” he said point blank one day. He gave me what he wanted to say like a message in a bottle that I had to deliver, regardless.

I knew I would have to tell it as it was told to me and as I witnessed it. Even with tears in my eyes I thought that his legacy couldn’t die with the man, or in a sea of lies. This was an arrangement we had in place for a year, with me as his legal proxy with the hospitals and doctors. As sole CEO of 7 Grand Entertainment and everything we’d built together over the years, my role was discussed and we were clear. This was from when he was first diagnosed. We agreed that this would be the best way. Any family or friends who surfaced afterward would have to be questioned as to where they were when he got the news, when he did the chemo when he had the surgery, and when he knew he would need a proxy in the first

place. Before the coma. The first day the bad news dropped when he was in his right, but frightened mind… who did he call?

Long before he got so debilitated, why did he not appoint them specifically, legally, and without a doubt in anyone’s mind before considering me? Me, an interloper in their eyes I guess, had no rights to this position, but a judge would later decide otherwise. It’s how I’m able to tell this story freely.

Obviously, such talk was reckless and very detrimental to Guru’s peace and ability to heal, so I started filtering a lot of it before he slipped into the coma. It certainly weighed on me that this whole media situation was something that I was going to have to deal with at some point on my own. At the same time dealing with the reality that more than likely my friend was not going to make it. All this also sat on my heart even while all the talk was going down.

In the back of my mind, I hoped that he could win his battle but listening to the doctors and the nurses, it didn't seem very promising and looking at him certainly didn't. While in the intensive care unit, he was indeed in bad shape. Nobody was risking infection to cut toenails or trim facial hair; nobody was concerned with any of that, they were still trying to save his life.

While he healed, something neither of us could foresee was the people who would start attacking me because Guru left me in charge of everything. Some people were obviously very unhappy with that, and willing go to any lengths to

derail me, even at the cost of Guru's reputation and musical legacy. Their objective seemed mainly to prevent me from carrying out what he asked me to do, and this book is a big part of fulfilling that.

My role that day after the phone call from the hospital was as Guru's appointed health care proxy. The person who he put in charge of things so he could focus on wellness. One of the people who had been there from some of the heights of his musical career through the lows of his drinking and diagnosis. From struggling through treatment on into those times when he couldn't make decisions. When he was well enough after his diagnosis and just sitting around worried about money, we went on the road so he could stay motivated.

The stretches between treatment, the period after he was diagnosed, and before he got worse, he wanted nothing more than to keep bringing the music. He needed the love of his fans in those days. When I read how Charlie Murphy, Clarence Clemmons, and many others kept working up to their last days, I look back and understand it even better. He knew that I supported whatever he wanted.

Every time he had hospitalizations or anything seriously going on with the doctors, that was my role for him so he could focus on his life. You ask your homie whose been in the thick of it throughout to do that for you, and suddenly you’re both gay? The need for the negative has overpowered a great musical legacy far too long, and his name and his son’s name don’t deserve it.

Some were looking for a negative in the situation maybe because they weren't called in for this role. If he had wanted it different, I would have never been there.

The simplest way to look at it is how these lies were directed at a man who was not able to defend himself. I have never seen that happen to any other artist with his level of fame, ever. That once a man was gone they could continue to defame him with reckless rumors. Every accusation raised was unfounded and unsubstantiated at all levels, yet I know that every man deserves a moment of truth.

The fact that Guru’s legacy would be mired in all that muck, not to mention my reputation, was not something he could predict, but he sensed enough to forewarn me and verbally discuss problems to come in writing. Thus, the now infamous letter that was Guru’s final word on certain matters. It was his posthumous statement, because of the conversation about if he didn’t make it, that we had when he was well enough to consider the ramifications. If I would be the last man standing in the battle, then I needed some ammunition. Not just his words, but all the legal documents that supported and eventually armed me for the fight. When his statement was released, instead of liberating us both from the drama and the haters, it ignited another maelstrom with me in the middle. Read on the air with Sway, on the highest viewed MTV NEWS episode of that year.

Guru’s letter said,

"​I do not wish my ex-DJ to have anything to do with my name likeness, events tributes, etc. connected in any way to my situation including any use of my name or circumstance for any reason and I have instructed my lawyers to enforce this. I had nothing to do with him in life for over seven years and wanted nothing to do with him in death. Solar has my life story and is well informed on my family situation, as well as the real reason for separating from my ex-DJ.​ "

The cowardly haters and rumormongers, instead of addressing the facts or credibility of the contents of the letter, replaced it with nonsensical insults, such as: “That’s some bullshit; Solar is hip-hop’s greatest villain.” On some non-credible and sleazy hip-hop website, that nobody paid attention to but underground weirdos. But somehow now these sites set the tone for my career and Guru’s life and legacy—ridiculous.

I just said my peace. When I tried to use the media to try to deliver my truth, on outlets such as HipHop.com, XXL or The Source or MTV, it was lost in the sea of whack sites delivering what people wanted out of the story—titillation. I couldn’t give them that, but I could finish delivering the message he sent. If it were set to be a rumble in the jungle, then my ability to knock out the lies would need spiritual courage to protect me in the ring in the fight of my life.

Behind Gur’s unfinished chapters of life hangs mysteries and questions that

sound like the background of a thriller. Everything from what were the circumstances behind Gang Starr breaking up to murders around the Gang Starr camp, and police investigations into what Guru knew about it, even murder attempts on his own life. I can only raise more questions in some areas, and lay down the facts I know in others.

It had been a long battle. The man who fought it the hardest died unaware that his legacy as a musician, and as a man would be threatened even after his death.

He would need others to battle the effect of fading into obscurity as just another bygone hip-hop Maestro—RIP homie, gone too soon. He put out a massive volume of music just to defy obscurity, and he told his story in his lyrics, in his interviews, and to his friends and brothers, like me. This brings it all together for his fans.

These events set up the next chapters of my life with an indication that it was going to be hard, and in fact, I was feeling like Muhammad Ali facing a crowd of George Foremans—with no gloves. Time, and the need for justice means you go on and fight anyway. Whether or not Guru died in a sea of controversy, he did so with a prolific catalog of life-changing music that even this new generation can grow from. This book sets the stage for both his life story and his lyrical messages to be heard as his final moment of truth.

To Read more please visit : ​https://www.amazon.com/Moment-Truth-Solar/dp/1721048456