"IF I RULED THE BLOGOSPHERE" SUMMIT

     On April 3rd, 2010, a group of like-minded writers, bloggers, poets, emcees, producers, and hip hop heads participated in an exciting and vibrant summit, "If I Ruled The Blogosphere".  This dope collection of artists and viewers were able to share their views on hip hop culture and how the blogosphere is being utilized to the advantage of the Hip Hop Community.  This gathering was sponsered by Words Beats and Life, a Washington, DC-based hip hop organization designed to bring unity and a voice to the world of hip hop, especially the impressionable youth of the inner city.  I am very proud to be a new member of this budding organization, and I was definitely looking forward to having my 40 year-old voice heard, not only from a writing standpoint, but from the vantage point of a person that has seen hip hop grow and mature into the driving musical and cultural force it is today, be it positive and negative.  Unfortunately, circumstances that I will not discuss at this moment prevented me from experiencing this important event from a birds-eye view.  One thing I can safely say about myself as a man is that I take VERY seriously the preservation and advancement of a culture and movement I can proudly say molded me into the person and man I am today.  I was highly disappointed in missing the panel discussion and networking opportunity afforded by "If I Ruled The Blogosphere", a clever play on words conceptualized by Kurtis Blow and advanced by Nas.

     The panel for the April 3rd event consisted of a cross-section of individuals contributing to hip hop culture by various means.  Diverse personalities such as Oddisee, an underground emcee and producer from the DC region, Dallas Penn, part of the Internets Celebrities collective, FMWJ, originator of http://www.rappersiknow.com/, and Meka from 2Dopeboyz.  These individuals shared their thoughts, opinions, views, and voices pertaining to using the internet as a tool to network, market, and advertise.  Because hip hop has been a driving force in my existence for the better part of three decades (I know, I'm dating myself), I found, and find, this type of forum to be educational and vital to continued growth within the culture.  I say this because without dialogue and discourse inside the sometimes volatile hip hop world, the music and ideas will become stale and stagnant.  One of the true principals of hip hop, in my honest opinion, is to innovate and move forward, while still maintaining a connection to the past.  Blogs and internet presence are some keys to moving in a positive direction, because the current nature of the music industry is dictating change.  You can see it by the dwindling album sales, for the most part, on Billboard and Soundscan.  Not to say that music sales are the end all to the be all, but it is quite evident that artists need to look at other tools to advance their collective crafts. 

     Thanks to Words Beats and Life and the many individuals responsible for putting together a beautiful and informative summit.  Busboys and Poets, a popular District meeting place for poets, musicians, and progressive individuals, was the location for "If I Ruled The Blogosphere".  More examples of this type of communication and dialogue are needed in order to lay a solid groundwork for the future of documenting and advancing the culture.  Below you will find video links to the panel discussion.  Anyone interested in sharing their views and opinions, feel free to hit me back.  I will definitely respond and open the lanes of discussion about hip hop, poetry, politics, sex, relationships, whatever it may be.  KRS-One has often been quoted as saying that "HE IS HIP HOP", and I don't disagree one iota.  I feel the same way, because hip hop is not just music, beats, swagger, bravado, but a melting pot of everything that makes me the person that I am.  I welcome the opportunity to discuss, because at some point that discussion will be food for thought that will later become writing material.  Shout out to Vimeo for having this summit posted.

http://vimeo.com/11111388    PART 1



http://vimeo.com/11113408    PART 2


HipHop Bloggers "If I Ruled the Blogosphere." pt 2 from Words Beats & Life on Vimeo.



HipHop Bloggers "If I Ruled the Blogosphere." from Words Beats & Life on Vimeo.

IN-DEPTH LITTLE BROTHER INTERVIEW

THIS IS THE MOST COMPREHENSIVE INTERVIEW THUS FAR ABOUT THE RISE AND DEMISE OF THE LITTLE BROTHER BRAND.  THIS SHOULD SHED EVEN MORE LIGHT ON THE SITUATION INVOLVING ONE OF THE MOST WELL-RESPECTED AND REVERED ARTIST COLLECTIVES IN HIP HOP, AND IN MY OPINION, MUSIC IN GENERAL.  THE ARTICLE/INTERVIEW IS PULLED FROM INDYWEEK.COM.

http://www.indyweek.com/indyweek/little-brother-breaks-up/Content?oid=1396572



Little Brother breaks up



Friends, enemies and a lost moment for Triangle hip-hop


by Grayson Currin

Not long after their white GMC van crossed the eastern border of Vermont in late February, the windows became snow globes. The rapper Chaundon, driving since the crew of five left Cambridge, Mass., at 6 that morning, continued north, toward an afternoon show in Burlington. He couldn't see much, but in a span of 10 minutes he spotted two wrecks along Interstate 89. Taking heed, he dropped his speed, moved to the left lane and tightened his grip.




"We started to spin, from the left lane to the right lane, and then we hit the railing. After we hit, I'm like, 'Y'all all right? Y'all all right?'" he remembers. He had yet to consider that the van now sat perpendicular to interstate traffic, stranded outside of a small Vermont town called Randolph.



In the passenger seat, the rapper Joe Scudda finally awoke. Jozeemo, another rapper sitting behind Chaundon, was awake and alert. Beside Jozeemo, the crew's longtime manager and career multitasker, Big Dho, slept, as did Rapper Big Pooh, a founding member of Little Brother, the Triangle's best-selling music group of the last decade. For a moment, everything was calm.



That's when Chaundon peered past Scudda through the passenger window. He knew they were going to die.



"His eyes got about this big," remembers Scudda, making silver dollar shapes with his index fingers and thumbs. "He let out the scariest, most horror-movie scream I've ever heard: 'Oh shit, a truck!' I look out of the window, and there's an 18-wheeler. The grill just keeps getting bigger."



They lived, of course; the same slick roads that caused their spin slowed the oncoming 18-wheeler. Even though the grain truck hit them squarely on the rear door, the five tour mates sustained only minor injuries. Dho still experiences mysterious pain in his right arm, and Pooh temporarily wore a neck brace. They did the show that night and flew home.



But bigger than any gig or insurance premium, those 10 seconds in Vermont cemented those in the van as more than friends or fellow artists. They became, on impact, family.



"Jozee's forever good," sighs Big Dho on a Friday afternoon. "That nigga saved my life. Forever good."



Jozeemo, the crew's newcomer, recognized that the truck would likely crush the door where Dho was leaning his head. A mammoth champion battle rapper whose career was delayed by two years in federal prison for gun and gang charges, Jozeemo reached across the aisle and pulled the much larger man toward his chest. When the truck hit, Dho's skull rammed into Jozeemo's face, causing his teeth to julienne his cheeks. Blood poured down his face and across his clothes. The man who'd sent him money in jail, however, was safe.



For the past several years, Dho has managed his artists with the slogan "Loyalty is Royalty." It's scrawled on white boards in recording studios, and he claims it's his next tattoo. That mantra was steeled by bitter experience. During the last six years, disloyalty has corroded his crew, turning an army of artists that included up-and-coming hip-hop favorites Little Brother, 9th Wonder, L.E.G.A.C.Y., The Away Team and Joe Scudda into whimpering, fractured cartels that have largely slipped from public favor.



Big Dho is an appropriate nickname for Mischa Burgess, a 35-year-old divorced father of two. He uses almost every inch between the bench and the table of a Chili's bar-side booth, and his forearms—as thick as the average man's thighs and covered with tattooed images, slogans and area codes—lean heavily against the tile. But it's not only his size that fits the handle. For the better part of the last decade, it appeared that his company, a sprawling record label and management group called Hall of Justus, might turn Dho into a hip-hop kingpin. He had negotiated a major-label deal for his flagship group, Little Brother, and he had more than a dozen artists lined up for spotlight turns should Little Brother succeed.



Dho's emotions aren't insignificant, either. He boasts an infectious laugh, the sort of quick-paced, wide-grinned chuckle that charges a room. When he talks about the aunt who helped raise him and who began losing her battle with cancer as he drove Little Brother through the mountains of Washington state in 2003, he seems one memory away from tears. But he's also an authoritative businessman. In a bellow meant to shake the frame, he'll tell you why you're wrong, how long you've been that way and what you can do to make it right.



When he talks about Little Brother co-founder Patrick "9th Wonder" Douthit, that's the persona he takes. 9th served as the trio's producer from 2001 to 2007. Until last year, Dho insists he tried to remain friends with the Grammy-winning beat maker, even if their business relationship was done. But after the wreck, 9th Wonder called only Joe Scudda—well, almost.



Just before midnight, 9th Wonder tweeted for the 57th and final time that Wednesday: "@rapperbigpooh, @bigdho, @jozeemo, @joescudda and @chaundon get better fellas ... come back to NC safe and sound."



Dho's face clinches: "He twittered a message? Get the fuck outta here. That's what really killed my relationship with him. It's nothing now. It ain't no anger. I'm hurt. I'm a grown man. I can admit that."



He looks down at his cheeseburger and up again. As though the toil of the past decade hangs like weights from the corners of his mouth, he frowns: "It's not what I thought it was gonna be, man. I never woulda thought that it would be this way."



Last week, Little Brother issued Leftback, the album they're calling their final one. Instead of throwing a traditional hometown concert, the band—officially, the duo of Thomas "Rapper Big Pooh" Jones and Phonte Coleman—rented Dolce, a roomy, fashionably appointed club just off Raleigh's dancing-and-drinking epicenter of Glenwood Avenue. The night's $20 cover was just that—a cover. No one performed, and attendees didn't get a signed copy of the record unless they bought it earlier in the day.



The anemic crowd of about 100 mostly local, very well-dressed fans mingled on the dance club's lower level, shaking hands and exchanging stories beneath the kinetic hip-hop mix of DJ Flash, Little Brother's longtime touring deejay. No one really danced downstairs, and upstairs there was even less movement. The band's two-dozen VIP guests lounged on white couches or against the walls, gazing downstairs, waiting for the customers to turn the night into a legitimate party. When Phonte and Pooh arrived after midnight, the scene remained largely the same—a swirl of daps, hugs and congratulations.



Less than five years ago, Little Brother seemed to be one hit single away from stardom. They were already hip-hop and Internet famous, having innovatively used online message boards to find fans and a record deal. Defiantly vintage, 9th Wonder's sample-heavy, steady-snare beats nodded heads, while the chemistry between Phonte and Pooh gave old-school hip-hop lovers a lyrical option to the crunk music of the moment. In 2003, the best that Lil Jon could do was tell us to get low. Phonte, however, landed one of rap's best bits of blue-collar empathy: "Another day to face, I'm share cropping in this paper chase/ Take a deep breath and clear my database/ Beltline got me rushin' like Baryshnikov/ Pushin' 80 miles per hour to this call center."



And in a genre that often considers the live show a nuisance or afterthought, Little Brother concerts were ecstatic marathons with special guests and smart banter, all led by two husky dudes who generally seemed to be having the time of their life.



"There was no A Tribe Called Quest present. There was no Pete Rock present. That type of vibe wasn't present in hip-hop, and here's a group that's making it fresh," remembers Chapel Hill rapper Kaze. He rapped with Phonte before Little Brother existed, and he was the first person to pay 9th Wonder for a beat. "Phonte and Pooh gave you that Tribe back and forth, like Q-Tip and Phife Dawg, and 9th was reminiscent of the Pete Rock and DJ Premier thing. It made you feel like, 'This is classic. This is hip-hop.'"



But that single and that conquest never happened. Released Sept. 13, 2005, the group's major-label debut, The Minstrel Show, tanked. It sold 18,000 copies in its first week and barely more than 100,000 copies overall. By comparison, 50 Cent's 2005 album, The Massacre, sold 4.8 million copies. While their rise had been sudden—within two years, Little Brother moved from a Triangle posse sleeping on couches in a small Durham home to a movement getting large blocks of ink in the country's biggest music magazines—their descent was slow and torturous.



First, Phonte and Pooh fell out of favor—and out of touch—with 9th Wonder. They parted ways in 2007, the same year they left their major-label home. And tonight, in this dance club, where a bottle of water costs $5, Pooh and Phonte will finally leave each other, at least as Little Brother. Friends have been lost, and differences have been discovered. The climax came a month earlier in a Twitter battle between Phonte and 9th Wonder. Writing about 9th Wonder's departure from the group, Phonte told his ex-bandmate to "tell your side of it or shut the fuck up." It was a Saturday afternoon's pathetic entertainment. What once looked like a possible tidal shift in hip-hop had devolved into self-parody.



Any attempt to explain why Little Brother is breaking up in 2010 starts to feel like J.B. Bury's History of the Later Roman Empire. The Irish historian dismissed several classic models of how the world's greatest superpower had collapsed, eventually concluding that there really was no easy answer, only several complications and contingencies that contributed to a steady, distended decline. At least as far as anyone cares to admit, there was no central Little Brother scandal—no sexual drama, no financial fight, no deep-seated animus. No one can even agree on who quit or who was asked to quit, let alone exactly why.



"I didn't leave Little Brother. I was asked to leave," 9th Wonder said last year. He refused to be interviewed for this story, saying that the media had exacerbated—and maybe even caused—the breakup. "I was told, 'You do 9th Wonder, and we do L.B.' It wasn't, 'What's up, fellas? I ain't with it no more.'"



In any event, Little Brother fell to a series of pragmatic and philosophical differences that seem to trouble all bands. 9th Wonder couldn't tour or record late at night, though his trademark beats were keys to the group's success. Phonte and Pooh could tour without him, but sometimes they weren't sure that he even cared. Situations were mishandled, and feelings were sometimes mismanaged. Mostly, though, it seems that three friends stopped communicating their ambitions. Every wound festered.



"Goals change," says Pooh. "Sometimes you can make your individual goals work for the benefit of the whole group. Sometimes you can't. But you have to let us know where you're at all times mentally, or that's when the disconnect happens."



Before he was called 9th Wonder, Douthit, who transferred from North Carolina Central to North Carolina State in 1995, linked groups of Durham and Raleigh hip-hop upstarts. Together, they formed the Justus League, an inclusive alliance of about two-dozen people who wanted to build a scene in their own backyard. They would host shows, throw battles and make records. In most cases, music was the strongest, if not the only bond between them.



"Pretty much, it was, 'This group of people perform in this dorm room, so that's going to be a crew.' There was no other thought put into it," remembers Cesar Comanche, who co-founded and named the Justus League in 1999 during a phone call with Douthit. "You were around people when you were putting on a show or recording. When your encounters are limited to those kinds of things, you don't know each other as people."



That's one of the reasons Little Brother was different. Fitting for its playfully fraternal name, Little Brother was, first and foremost, a trio of friends. Douthit and Jones were sports-obsessed cutups, while Coleman and Douthit were both North Carolinians from rural towns, addicted to music history and tradition. For the first 18 months of their friendship, Coleman didn't even know Douthit made music.



"When I first met 9th, I didn't even know he made beats. We listened to a lot of the same music. We were reading The Source together. It was, 'That's my man. P is a funny nigga,'" remembers Coleman. "The whole 9th Wonder thing? No, me and Patrick was cool. The whole Little Brother shit came later."



In hip-hop, a producer most often makes beats and submits them to artists or managers who listen and pick what they like. The beat maker and the musician negotiate a price, and the producer moves on. The band hires someone to record their raps and someone else to mix the parts—the vocals and the instrumental—together. It's a casual, case-by-case relationship.



Little Brother was one of the rare groups that claimed an in-house producer. 9th Wonder would craft the beats, and Phonte and Pooh would sort through them, picking the music that meshed with their ideas. Late at night, they'd all meet in Comanche's Raleigh studio or in a downtown Durham business office they called The Chopp Shop, making records until the wee hours of the morning. Ask anybody involved, and those sessions were the most fun they've ever had making music.



"The way Tay and Pooh used to write, they used to go in the car and listen to the beat. They'd come upstairs when they were finished and record," says Chaundon, smiling at the memory as he sits alone on a large couch in his Morrisville townhome. "We were college kids, so we're all sitting on the couch. The microphone is on the wall, and they're like, 'Shhh, be quiet, be quiet.' We're listening to the punch lines, trying to hold in the laughter. At the end of the day, we were just kids trying to make dope music."



Trouble is, a lot of people agreed they'd done exactly that. Their talents were suddenly in high demand. Little Brother needed to tour in support of The Listening and to expand its reputation. 9th Wonder joined them for a time, deejaying behind the emcees every night. In 2003, though, Jay-Z's representatives came calling for a 9th Wonder beat. He'd have to skip the next tour. Everyone in the Justus League says they agreed it was an incredible opportunity for the team. Dho would deejay. 9th Wonder would stay home.



But they never returned to the original formula, even when it was time to begin making their second album—their debut for Atlantic Records, their first shot at legitimate fame. 9th Wonder engineered a handful of the tracks and told the group he was done with their trademark late-night sessions. Christopher "Khrysis" Tyson, who'd risen through the Justus League ranks to become their second in-house producer and engineer, would record the rest of the album. 9th Wonder needed to be at home with his family.



Phonte, who wasn't married then but lived with his girlfriend and child, understood. Growing up requires adjustments, he says, and that was a grown-man decision he could accept. But 9th's signature sound started showing up on dozens of records each year. Phonte and Pooh figured that, by skipping Little Brother's sessions and tours, he had plenty of time for collaborations.



"For me, it was, 'Why do we have to keep asking a group member for their participation in a group project?' This is a severe problem," says Pooh. "When you're in a group, everybody has to be willing to sacrifice the same things. When you're not willing to sacrifice the things the other two are sacrificing, the other two are going to look at you funny."



For a time, Little Brother became a quartet of trios, something Pooh calls a charade: On tour, it was Pooh, Phonte and DJ Flash, a Raleigh friend Dho pulled away from a day job and a family. In business meetings, it was Pooh, Phonte and Dho. In the studio, it was Phonte, Pooh and Khrysis. But in the press and in each album's liner notes, it remained Pooh, Phonte and 9th Wonder. That was the version of Little Brother Atlantic Records wanted to sell, and that became the central conflict—work given versus recognition received.



For instance, the music video for "Lovin' It," the lead single from The Minstrel Show, opens with 9th Wonder and DJ Flash shaking hands and cracking the lid on an old-fashioned turntable. Though the video is ultimately just a glorified take on a live show, Flash—who scratched records for Little Brother nightly—disappears after five seconds. 9th Wonder backs the group by himself.



And months before The Minstrel Show was released, Atlantic Records flew 9th Wonder to London for one day to do press behind the record and, ostensibly, to perform with Little Brother for a night. Pooh and Phonte wouldn't have it. The second he climbed onstage they knew audiences from Omaha to Belfast would start demanding the original trio. They banned him from the show.



"That's just kind of a recurring thing that we had with him—'Dude, you're either in this shit all the way, or it's nothing,'" says Phonte. "If you're going to tour, you got to tour. I don't have that luxury. Pooh don't have that luxury. It was nothing that was meant to hurt his feelings. It was just a business decision."



The remnants of Little Brother and artists who still work with 9th Wonder, like Kaze and Khrysis, agree that this was the crux of the problem: 9th Wonder was never again in all the way. He would stop in only for The Minstrel Show sessions that included famous guests. He couldn't be at his own group's late-night sessions, but when hip-hop's biggest names came calling, he would meet them on their own terms. And when it came time to work on the band's third LP, 2007's Getback, Pooh and Phonte began to expect that he was sending them his dump-bin beats—stuff that he'd had sitting around for years, picked over by everyone else. Pooh insists he'd heard all the material before.



So Little Brother put one 9th Wonder beat on Getback. The three college friends parted ways via conference call during January of 2007. Aside from a run-in at an airport and a few short conversations through online instant messages, they haven't spoken since.



Last summer, Big Dho sent all three an e-mail, demanding friendship.



"I said, 'Fuck a 9th Wonder. Fuck a Rapper Big Pooh. Fuck a Dho. Fuck a Tay or a Tigallo. I'm talking to Patrick. I'm talking to Thomas. I'm talking to Phonte. This is Mischa talking to you. I want to get back to that. Fuck music,'" says Dho. "9th just responded to me and said that it was over—the friendship, everything. That shit hurt."



If you can call it that, the album-release party at Dolce Tuesday night is finally winding down. Rapper Big Pooh and Phonte have said hello and now goodbye to most everyone in attendance. Phonte spots Pooh in the thin crowd and tells him he's ready to head to the car. Beneath a light drizzle, a group of fans loading into a Ford Explorer asks for autographs and for a few words on a video camera. Pooh and Phonte oblige and lean in close to one another.



"Them two is legends right there," says one zealot, still waiting outside the car. He points to Phonte and Pooh, their backs turned. "Legends."



They walk the block, cutting jokes about an upcoming show in California and a video they've just released for Leftback's first single, "Curtain Call." Phonte unlocks his car and they climb in.



Back in 2005, on The Minstrel Show's soulful "Slow It Down," Phonte rapped, "I'll scoop you up in my Porsche—sike/ You know I got a Nissan/ That I'm still paying for, still got a lease on." That rhyme was for his big-money major-label debut, the record people thought might make Little Brother rich. Nearly five years later, he's still got a Nissan, now with a baby seat and an array of food crumbs sprinkled across the back seat. He mutes NPR, plugs his iPod into an adapter and pushes play on "This Could Be the Night," a new track he's making with Detroit-based producer Zo!



It's a fun number about drinking and dancing, and Phonte and Pooh nod along hard to the beat. Phonte quietly sings a bit of Darien Brockington's verse, and Pooh smiles slightly when it's time for his guest spot. His recent material has been edgy, tough-guy stuff, but here he plays the part of master entertainer: "Let your hair down/ Let's go!"



While they were still finishing Leftback, Pooh stopped by Phonte's home studio in Raleigh to record this verse. It seems carefree, focused entirely on celebration. For the past several years, that's what Little Brother lacked. On Getback, those once joyful late-night sessions began to turn into suicide missions, pushing past dawn. As Khrysis puts it, Little Brother had to prove they could succeed without 9th Wonder and without a major label. It became work.



"The night we finished the album The Listening, I drove back to Durham, and I sat in my car listening to it until the sun came up. I knew that my life was about to change," says Phonte, sitting in the Nissan alone now, his smile fading. "Once you start seeing some success, it does change you. It's just like any other kind of business: The more you learn about the industry, it can really take your love for it away and beat your spirit out."



That's the silver lining of this Little Brother breakup, of Pooh and Phonte no longer calling themselves by that name. After a decade of making raps, they decided they wanted to depart as friends rather than to force their mounting creative and commercial differences into a compromise—and end up hating each other for it.



Phonte had figured out how to make a comfortable life for himself and his family with his own Grammy-nominated, cyber-soul project, The Foreign Exchange, and by working with artists on his new label, +FE Music. He's mostly singing now, while Pooh's rap has only grown more menacing. Pooh's still hoping that his verses can translate to some larger success.



"We're still friends. You just saw us kicking it, but from that perspective, I knew that if we kept trying to make it work as a business, we were going to ruin our friendship," says Phonte. "I'd already been through that with 9th, and it wasn't worth me losing another friend."



Meanwhile, 9th Wonder has moved from being a mere producer to, these days, being something of an enterprise. He leads the True School Corporation, a multimedia company devoted to celebrating and preserving hip-hop's cultural legacy, and he now teaches at Duke University after an extended stay at the helm of N.C. Central's Hip-Hop Initiative. Red Bull is one of his corporate sponsors, and in just the past two years he's supplied beats to Ludacris, Erykah Badu, Nas & Damian Marley, Wale, David Banner and Sadat X. Two weeks ago, he released his fourth full-length collaboration with California underground favorite Murs.



He owns two record labels, too, Jamla and The Academy. They're stocked largely with young, local talent. Each month, the labels throw a showcase at a local club. 9th Wonder spins records, and each act—whether the firebrand female emcee Rapsody, the Justus League veteran Edgar Allen Floe or the preppy outfit Actual Proof—gets three songs.



Last month at The Brewery in Raleigh, the showcase had the feeling of an organization looking for energy but not quite finding it. The rappers constantly pleaded with the crowd of about 60 to get its hands up, to chant the hooks or to dance. 9th Wonder remains hopeful.



"I understand the division that was created. It was like, first the Fat Boys break up, and now this? Now what?" 9th Wonder said last year, admitting that he felt a certain responsibility to build a new hip-hop scene in the Triangle, to restore the same energy that served as Little Brother's all-important cradle. "It kind of died when we went our separate ways, but it can come back. As long as we stay here and keep representing this area and this state, it can happen."



But sitting in his house set back in a North Raleigh subdivision on a Sunday afternoon, DJ Flash argues it could have already happened—and that it probably won't now. Flash is a plainspoken Midwesterner. He confesses to a short temper, but he's mostly hilarious, with a disarming V-shaped gap between his front teeth. A father of two, he compares this situation to a bunch of bickering children who can't see past their priorities to be collaborators, let alone pals. Their division, he thinks, prevents a lot of talented people from working with a whole lot of other talented people.



He remains friends with all of them, at least. Pooh and Phonte were at his house for a barbecue last week, and 9th Wonder will be here in a few hours. He's often considered inviting them over the same week.



"All of them are like my brothers. I'm cool with everybody," he says. "But what if we were all together? That's what really burns me up. What if both camps were together? We would have a little empire right now. But, man, everybody just really fucked it all up."

INTERVIEW----9TH WONDER

CHECK THIS DOPE INTERVIEW WITH 9TH WONDER BY JP WILLIAMS.  9TH SHARES SOME INSIGHT INTO THE NEXT PHASE OF HIS CAREER POST-LITTLE BROTHER.

ENJOY!!!

http://www.blickees.com/content.php?175-Sitting-Down-with-Producer-9th-Wonder

Written by:  JP Williams



It seems like just yesterday Patrick "9th Wonder" Douthit was an "aspiring" producer, sitting in my room making bangers with records I thought were utter trash. It never crossed my mind that years later, the guy sitting in my room chopping Curtis Mayfield would later work with heavyweights that we idolized like Jay-Z, Beyonce, Ericka Badu, De La Soul, and Mary J. Blige. While that list continues to grow, I caught up with the Wonderbread man to see what's poppin'.




First some history is needed. I met 9th Wonder in 1996 when we were both students at North Carolina State University. We didn't really hang until 98'-99', when both of us were getting started with production, along with fellow Justus League producer Son of Yorel. (I went by "Eccentric" and was one of the 4 original producers of the Justus League) We pushed each other to new heights, routinely sharing beat tapes, production ideas, and equipment/software. It was evident even then that 9th possessed a unique combination of talent and determination that pushed him well into the stratosphere.



Routinely I keep in contact with 9th to check out new unreleased material, but primarily just to dig into the endless onslaught of instrumentals. It's difficult to sit down in the studio with this guy for an hour listening to what seems to be an endless stream of dopeness while witnessing his passion for his work and not come away completely amazed. I've done it so many times, so I know what Jay-Z, Destiny's Child, and the many others 9th has worked with felt after a listening session. Your neck is literally sore and you wonder how he gets it done. It's been an experience watching him grow over the past 10 years.



Recently, we got up in Raleigh, NC for a listening session. Within minutes of settling down, the Away Team (Khrysis and Sean Boog) show up, two guys I haven't seen in ages.



Khrysis apparently is on a Steve Arrington/Slave kick, which leads to us doing some Steve Arrington research. Comedy ensued as we discovered his 2009 solo album, "Pure Thang." (Maybe it's just me, but old guys talking about pure "thangs" just wreaks of inappropriate behavior with minors). After chillin' with the old Justus League fam, I sat down with 9th and played catchup:



Let me start by saying I've heard the Murs record and the chemistry you two guys have is astonishing. This was the first album recording on the west coast. How would you say that affected the sound of the album?



9th: Just the overall feel of the record. The whole vibe of L.A. changed the sound of the record. I let the vibe I got from my West Coast family dictate the sound of it. I made "Live from Roscoe's" in the studio with Kurupt, so the whole studio vibe really helped. Plus E. Jones adding those bells and whistles on the record took it to the NEXT level.



What projects are coming down the pipe?



9th: Lots of things. David Banner and 9th Wonder "Death of a Popster," Buckshot and 9th Wonder "The Solution," and me and Murs will do it again...running two labels also. Alot of things.



I know you've been trying to catch up with Nas for a while, even making the infamous "Come on Nas" youtube video. Any updates on that or other projects with any well known artists on the horizon?



9th: Jay-Z asked me for some joints when I saw him in Greensboro. I played joints for Nas in ATL. I've been spending LOTS of time trying to make my artists well known though.



You were the first major artist to popularize the use of Fruityloops and other computer software for sample-based production. What equipment are you using nowadays? Still on that Fruity?



9th: FL-Studio and MPC 2500



As we both know, you have a ton of beats in the vault that you want people to use, but for some reason they never see the light of day. I know personally I can think of hundreds of bangers I've heard that have never been used. How much say do you have in what beats artists pick?



9th: Man its funny ... "Slow Down" by David Banner is a 6 year old beat. You NEVER know, I've got tons of beats that never see the light of day.



Alot of people are souring on the current state of hip-hop, what are you listening to nowadays and what artists would you like to work with?



9th: Raekwon, Jay Elec[tronica], Blu, T.I. (big fan of his), Laws, Skewby from Memphis, Cyhi Da Prince, my artists, everything pre-97, lol.



You, like myself, are one of the most die hard Duke Blue Devil fans around. I see you on Facebook religiously fighting with Carolina die hards. What are your thoughts on the rivalry and Duke's surprise championship run this year?



9th: I love it. I love shuttin' Carolina fans up. I wonder what they are gonna say if we repeat ... man facebook might BLOW up. lol. Seriously, its a great rivalry, the best in sports.



What's up with your class at Duke. Does it differ from the class you taught at Central?



9th: More in-depth, not because of the students, but because of the type of class. We get more into the social-political aspects of music, as opposed to at NCCU it was just plain history.



I'm sure alot of your students want to have a career in music, what advice do you offer them?



9th: Get your degree...lol...this game is NO joke. I just tell them the truth, I don't believe in letting people learn the hard way.



Do you keep in contact with any Justus League members?



9th: Yessir, Justus League is STILL what u need!



I know both you and Phonte very well and recent events have made things even more difficult for the two of you. Do you guys talk at all?



9th: No sir. We are both bull-headed, man, and stuck in our ways...two capricorns. Sometimes you gotta let go and let God homey. He will handle everything when you come to wit's end.



Both of you have seen alot of success since the breakup, what will it take for the two of you to put things behind you? Are you open to that?



9th: Us. The media, everybody is taking their part in standing around us saying "fight, fight, fight." People love that man. Once everything and everybody goes away and finds something else to do, we will.



Did you get a chance to read the interviews on okayplayer.com with Pete Rock, ?uestlove and other regarding LB's history and their last album? Any thoughts you'd like to share with regards to that?



9th: Nah, that's their thoughts. I got the music and memories bro, we did our thang.



Tell me about Jamla and the roster of artists you have on the label.



9th: We got Big Remo, Actual Proof, Rapsody, Thee Tom Hardy, Tyler Woods, Skyzoo, TP, Heather Victoria, and GQ. (alot right?) It's gonna be fun man, I get to let them know all of the mistakes I made, so they can be better off.



What is your ultimate goal with the label?



9th: Just to stay in our lane man, everybody equates TV and Radio as success. What about being financially comfortable, traveling the world, and meeting your heroes? That's success to me.



So if an aspiring artist was interested in signing with Jamla, what type of artists are you looking for and how would they go about getting in contact with you?



9th: Contact Maya Jackson, VP of Basketball Operations, Team IWW/Jamla/Academy at mayajackson@gmail.com. We are also looking for interns. There is no pay involved, but the experience will help you understand the game. You can also contact Maya for that as well.

HIP HOP EMBEDDED-----A POEM

Feel pain in heart burdened with excess stress


No relief in sight unless you look to the future

Don't live in the past because it will entrap you

In a prison that can be escaped once mind is refocused

Reloaded ammunition into life gun and shoot for the stars

Spit bars of hope instead of spend time and money in bars

Barred from that existence is what the outcome should be

Let income accumulate to build the American Dream

And stop having nightmares filled with fright and terror

Welcome To The Terrordome blaring from speakers made for deaf ears

Maybe one day listening instead of babbling may end the battling

But ears are filled with wax made of parrafin

Paraphasing paragraphs prepared for perpetual motion

Mountains out of molehills made mental notes of commotion

Not sure why these words appear on these pages

Maybe it's a way to deal with anger and rage

Slave to master 'bout to make escape into dark

Might hurt heart but life needs resuscitating

Hip hop not dead, I am hip hop

I am soul, I am rock and roll

I am neo-soul, like Neo in The Matrix trilogy

Looking for The One except eyes have seen too many

Empty feeling with two so now is the time to go underground

With railroad, with hip hop, with pipelines

Not sniffing white lines or telling white lies

Truth in coded language only a select few will understand

Who won't undermine or underappreciate

Or make mistakes the basis of existence

Facing resistance, flee into the woods

Following streams of consciousness to new land, new time, new person...

INSTALLMENTS OF SAMPLE SUNDAYS

I HAVE A SERIES OF INSTALLMENTS ENTITLED "SAMPLE SUNDAYS".  THE PREMISE IS PRETTY STRAIGHTFORWARD AND TO THE POINT;  I WILL FIND NOT SO RECOGNIZABLE SAMPLES, BE IT SOUL, JAZZ, ROCK, EVEN COUNTRY MUSIC, AND MATCH IT WITH THE HIP HOP OR NEO-SOUL SONG THAT INCORPORATES OR INTERPOLATES THE SONG.  THIS IS BASICALLY MY BLOG VERSION OF "DIGGIN' IN DA CRATES".  THIS IS GOING TO BE A GOOD SERIES TO NOT ONLY ENLIGHTEN MY READERS AND LISTENERS, BUT IT WILL GIVE ME THE OPPORTUNITY TO DIVE BACK INTO THE ART OF CRATE-DIGGING.  

FOR THOSE THAT DON'T KNOW, LOOKING FOR OBSCURE, HIDDEN GEMS WITHIN DUSTY VINYL IS AN ART UNTO ITSELF.  I CAN REMEMBER THOSE DAYS (AND LONG NIGHTS) IN THE BASEMENT OF MY MUSICAL PARTNER IN RHYME ED.  WE WOULD COMB THROUGH RECORD AFTER RECORD, SEARCHING FOR THAT "PERFECT BEAT" THAT WOULD SERVE AS THE BACKDROP FOR OUR EMCEE  SPEECH TO SPIT THAT "ILLOGICAL FLOW".  THOSE WERE DEFINITELY WONDERFUL AND DEFINING TIMES IN OUR HIP HOP EXISTENCE, BECAUSE EACH OF US (WISDOM, SPEECH, AND AWETHENTIC) DEVELOPED AN EAR FOR MINUTE AUDIBLE DETAILS.  ANYTHING FROM AN OL' JAMES BROWN/FUNKY DRUMMER CONCOCTION TO A LOOPED TAKE SIX VOCAL SAMPLE WAS FAIR GAME.  WE PURPOSELY WENT IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION OF WHAT MOST WERE DOING IN THE LATE 80'S/EARLY 90'S (I'M DATING MYSELF PEOPLE).  WE DEVELOPED AND CULTIVATED OUR OWN LYRICAL AND AURAL STYLE DURING THIS "GOLDEN ERA" OF HIP HOP.  SO THIS SERIES IS GOING TO BE SPECIAL AND DEAR TO MY HEART.

IF THERE ARE ANY SUGGESTIONS OR TOPICS TO COVER WITHIN THIS SAMPLE SERIES, PLEASE HIT ME UP EITHER ON THE BLOG, OR AT MY E-MAIL ADDRESS:  WISDOM_HIPHOP@YAHOO.COM

ONE LOVE BLOGSPOT FAM!!!!

INTERVIEW WITH GRAND 7 EMPLOYEE TASHA DENHAM

THIS IS SUCH A THOUGHT-PROVOKING AND GREAT READ FROM TASHA DENHAM.  YOU MAY NOT KNOW THE NAME, BUT YOU WILL WANT TO KNOW THE STORY.  SHE IS A FORMER EMPLOYEE FOR 7 GRAND RECORDS, THE LABEL SHARED BY LATE GREAT EMCEE GURU AND THE "QUESTIONABLE" SOLAR.  THIS INTERVIEW/ARTICLE FROM HIPHOPDX SHOULD SHED A LITTLE MORE LIGHT ON THE SOMETIMES VOLATILE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN GURU AND SOLAR.  OF COURSE THESE ALLEGATIONS ARE HAVE NOT BEEN PROVEN, BUT YOU AS THE READER BE THE JUDGE.  I AM GOING TO RESERVE MY OPINION(S) FOR NOW, EVEN THOUGH YOU SHOULD KNOW WHAT I THINK ON THIS CRAZY, SOAP OPERA-INSPIRED DRAMA.

http://www.hiphopdx.com/index/interviews/id.1535/title.tasha-denham-just-to-get-a-rep

Story by:  JAKE PAINE
April 27, 2010 12:00:00 AM CDT

 

The last week has stung the eyes and hearts of Hip Hop fans. Since the late 1980s, Keith "Guru" Elam gave us street scripture in poetical parables, weathered wisdom and a signature voice of reason. As if the announcement of Guru's death to cancer has not hurt enough, controversies have swept the media trying to understand Guru's last days, his bizarre relationship with musical partner John "Solar" Mosher and a suspicious and damaging last letter.




As the truths come to the light, one courageous woman has come forward. Tasha Denham considers herself a friend to Guru. On two different occasions, they temporarily lived under the same roof between 2006 and 2008. She was also an employee of Guru and Solar's 7 Grand Records, having served a tenure as Executive Assistant within the four-person operation. Lastly, Denham has a young daughter, that she says was fathered by Solar. Having witnessed those two-plus years on a personal, private and professional level, Tasha Denham's accounts come from one of the few people who was privy to the tight circle Solar and Guru kept.



This jaw-dropping and quite-lengthy interview was conducted just minutes after midnight this morning (April 27). As the contents below suggest, it is one first-hand account on the last chapter in the life of one of the most respected emcees in Hip Hop. Merely one person's testimony, but suspicions of foul-play are confirmed in vivid detail, and some background information is provided at a time when all of us who knew Guru, loved him, or lived by his verses are looking for answers.



HipHopDX: Thank you for speaking to us. To start, could you describe your relationship and the context of your relationship to the man the Hip Hop community knows as Solar, as well as Guru?

Tasha Denham: I met Guru and Solar in 2006. I actually met them out in Denver, [Colorado]. I was moving back to New York. I started a personal relationship with Solar and subsequently became pregnant by him, and had a child by him.



In the middle of 2006, a situation happened on tour. They needed some help with some business things - they were in Europe, and needed some things done in the States, and I happened to be able to help them out at that time.



By the end of 2006, I decided that I was going to leave and come back to Denver, due to issues that I was having with Solar in our personal relationship. At that time, because we weren't going to have a personal relationship, I wasn't able to help [7 Grand Records] anymore. After our daughter was born, I started talking to them again, and had just a personal relationship at that time with both Solar and Guru. I considered Guru a close friend of mine. Solar is obviously the father of my child.



In 2007, once again, they were over in Europe, and had some complications on tour. Their tour manager had to quit in the middle of the tour. So they had me do some stuff for them. It ended up working out well, and at that point in time, they decided to bring me on as an assistant for [7 Grand Records] and I was both of their personal-slash executive assistants, at the same time, it was a small record label, so I did whatever needed to be done to try and make the record label run smoothly. So I worked on a day-to-day basis with both Guru and Solar till about July, 2008.



DX: In regards to 7 Grand, I know you probably wore many hats in the day-to-day, but what was your specific title?

Tasha Denham: My specific title was executive assistant. That was the general title I was given.



DX: The Hip Hop perspective is, somewhere in 2004, Guru and Solar began working together musically. Do you know the context in how they came to know each other?

Tasha Denham: Everything I've been told, I've been told by them. I was not around at the time that they met. But my understanding is that in 2003 I believe, they became friends. They would hang out and party together. Guru, at the time, was still with [DJ] Premier [in Gang Starr]. They had the album, The Ownerz at that time. They were just friends. Solar ended up going on one of the Gang Starr tours with Guru in 2003, I believe. They were talking one night, and Solar [was listening] to Guru. [Guru] was expressing his displeasure with [Virgin/EMI Records] at that time. Solar said, "Well, if you're so unhappy with your label, why don't you start your own?" Guru thought about it a little, I guess, thought about it overnight, and then came back to Solar the next day and said, "I want to do this, man. Let's start the label." Solar was like, "I didn't mean us, I meant for you to start it." [Guru reportedly responded], "No. No, man. I want to do it together." At that point in time, Solar told him that if [Guru] wanted to do this, then he had to stop drinking. From that point on, that's when they decided to build 7 Grand Records.



DX: It's a weird question to ask, but I know that what you're telling me a lot on pre-2006 is based entirely on what you've heard, but it's an important question to the Hip Hop community, in the wake of last Tuesday's letter - do you know the context from that Ownerz Tour of the relationship that Solar and DJ Premier may have had with each other? A lot of people believe that Premo has been [attacked by these words Solar may have written in the letter]. A lot of people are curious to know if Solar would have any motive.

Tasha Denham: Um...I do know that there were at least some tensions. I wasn't there, obviously, so I can't say to what extent. But I do know that there was some tensions. I can't say that anything Solar had against Premier had to be one specific incident. Just watching, over the time that I spent with them, Solar had such a twisted sense of how important [his own role] was to the music game. I think there was an extensive amount of jealousy towards what Premier had already created in the music industry. I can't speak that there was one specific incident that created that animosity between them.



DX: As a member of the press, often times, prior to an interview, Premier's name and Gang Starr were often not allowed to be mentioned at all. Did you know anything, as far as behind-closed-doors for the motives in that?

Tasha Denham: I definitely know that press was told, numerous times, not to speak on Gang Starr, not to ask questions on Gang Starr or Premier. And [press was told], that if they were to speak on it, the interview would pretty much be over. I know this because I was the one who told the press this a lot of times. I was required to prep people ahead of time, basically, on what questions were going to be acceptable, and that they wanted to focus on 7 Grand at the time, and whatever album at the time was coming out, and not on the past - it didn't matter. Again, I believe it all stemmed from...I think when Solar got into [the music industry], I feel that he thought it was just gonna take off like that. They were gonna have instant love around the world, instant fame, instant fortune from this label. I don't think he got the realities of quite how hard it was gonna be to overcome the legacy that [Gang Starr] had together. I think that his jealousy of both Premier and Guru's fame around the world - yeah, there's a lot of people who don't know who they are, but anybody who really knows Hip Hop, and especially in Europe and such, it's insane amounts of love and fame out there. Solar would go places and people would want Premier, they wouldn't want Solar. Not because they hated Solar, but because they didn't know Solar. They wanted the legendary Gang Starr, with its producer.



You know, I understand Guru wanting to move on and create things on his own. He did, with Jazzmatazz, way before Solar even came around. But before, I think he didn't understand that maybe it could be both. I think what's distanced Solar so much from so many of the Gang Starr fans is he always acted like he was in competition with Premier instead of taking the natural route that he was Guru's partner now, after Premier. [Instead, Solar] came across with so much anger about it. He truly believes that Premier was financing a campaign agaist him on the Internet - a hate campaign.



DX: Wow. Like a website or just through message board and comment section posts?

Tasha Denham: Message boards as a whole. Whether it be your MySpace or through an article on HipHopDX or another one of the Hip Hop sites. Anything that was put on there that was negative, Solar felt like Premier was fueling that - not that there was fans out there that didn't appreciate Solar's music, that didn't appreciate what Solar called his "genius," that they didn't appreciate the fact that Solar was saying, "I remixed all of Gang Starr's tracks and they sound so much better now." One thing after another.



I have had a lot of people reach out to me since Guru's passing - and before, when he was in the hospital that knew I worked for them and knew I was close, at one point in time, to them. [They said], "I always thought it was strange, 'cause I'd come up to them at a concert and I'd want to take a picture with just Guru. But if I wanted a picture, I had to take one with both Guru and Solar." If he was gonna do an interview, it had to be both Guru and Solar. Guru was not allowed to do interviews by himself.



DX: I interviewed Premier in December 2005 in New York shortly after the break-up was implied. Premier expressed that the group was simply on glorified hiatus. I interviewed Guru and Solar in spring of 2006, and Guru was very resistant to even my question to whether Big Shug's "Counterpunch," which featured Guru, would be the last time fans would hear his voice on a DJ Premier beat. In interviews to come, for various outlets, Guru said some harsh things. You're one of the few people he seemed to speak a lot to in recent years. In your private conversations with Guru, was that [sentiment] really there?

Tasha Denham: There was definitely some distaste. I don't want to go as far as "bitterness." I think of it had been put into his head. I don't know if he truly felt some of the things he said in his heart. He was convinced, by Solar, that back in maybe 2003, 2004, Guru was held up and mugged in Queens, [New York]. Solar convinced Guru, at that point in time, that Premier had put the hit out on him, and Premier wanted him dead.



DX: Wow.

Tasha Denham: He got that into Guru's head, and he got that drilled into Guru's head that that's what happened. I have to believe that that's where some of his distaste came from. He did say things that he was unhappy with, from his past. A lot of it had to do with contractual things. There were situations that he got into contractually that he felt like he had kind of gotten the short-end of the stick, if you want. Not from Premier, but [from Virgin Records and management]. Any of his anger that he had or any of his ill words that he had, I think a lot of them were not really heartfelt. I may be wrong, but I can only take my own judgement. I think that a lot of it was that Solar had him so convinced that all these people were against him: [Gang Starr/Empire manager] Phat Gary, Premier, all the people from the Gang Starr Foundation - Big Shug. I actually just spoke to Lil Dap from Group Home. I've never spoken to him before. I didn't know him, but I knew of him, of course. I knew of him through Guru. He called to express his condolences [and say] "We're all in this together. We all want to see Guru's legacy move on in the best way possible." I think that's what Guru missed out on so much [in] his last few years, because I think he was so distanced from these people because of Solar that he started to forget how much people really did care about him. They didn't just care about him as an artist. I think if Guru never did another Gang Starr record, I truly believe that all of them would've still cared about Guru. For me, anybody's really been touched by Guru and been around Guru knows Guru as a man, they know what a kind person he is. Anybody who's really met him and knows him as a person, they loved him no matter what. I don't think it was always about the music. Lil Dap expressed that to me, that Guru was like a brother to him. They started out at the same time. Guru had to be one of the kindest people I knew. He would give you even when he did not have.



It hurts me to read this [last] letter. If he did write this letter - which I truly have my doubts on, I can't say that some of it was not things that they had spoken on before, and stuff that Solar put it into words himself. I'm not gonna say that, I wasn't there. Do I believe Guru wrote the letter word-for-word or even sentence-by-sentence? I don't believe that. I really hope that Guru didn't spend his last moments of consciousness with hate like that. I didn't know Guru to be like that. I didn't know Guru to be a hateful person. There were other people in Guru's life that Solar had spoken ill of to Guru and had convinced Guru [were] against him. In speaking to Guru in private, Guru himself wasn't always convinced of that. Guru didn't always believe, but at the same time, he didn't always want to speak that back to Solar because it would've not been a good situation either.



DX: New York is a big place, but it's a small place, especially in the Hip Hop industry. A few artists worked with Guru and Solar on early 7 Grand releases - Talib Kweli, Jean Grae, Damian Marley...

Tasha Denham: Common.



DX: Right. These guys weren't just studio rats, so to speak. How close did it get, not in terms of it being a feud or anything, but you think there would have been contact with people that could get Guru's mind right, old peers...

Tasha Denham: Honestly, pretty much, they kept themselves secluded from the Hip Hop world. They did not go out in New York City very often at all. It was a very rare occurrence, after Guru stopped drinking, that they would go out in New York. It wasn't because of Guru's drinking that they stopped going either.



When Guru stopped drinking, when he decided to stop drinking, he stopped drinking. Solar drinks Corona [beers] every single day. Solar would send Guru to the store to buy his Coronas for him. When Guru stopped drinking, he stopped drinking. Guru could have a bottle in his house, he wasn't gonna drink it. He made that decision. When they toured, he was in nightclubs every night. He stopped drinking.



I truly believe that...Solar made it that "there's so much hate out there for us. Being New York, Premier and them are out there, blah, blah, blah." So they didn't go. They didn't even take shows in New York most of the time. There was always an excuse. Shows in Boston, there was always an excuse as to why they weren't gonna do that show. All the tracks that had [featuring artists], they were all sent [to Guru and Solar]. They didn't do those in the studio, personally, with any of those artists. I cannot speak of one single artist that was actually in the studio with them. Most of the time, it was all through management, so on and so forth. So there weren't any opportunities for other artists to help bridge that gap because first of all, if Guru ever had the opportunity, Solar was standing right there.



Guru was never around anyone in the industry without Solar standing right next to him. He never did an interview unless Solar was right there. If somebody was to say, "Yo Guru, when's there gonna be another Gang Starr album?" Guru would just knock it down right away, because if that got brought up and that became an issue, it would be become a [problematic issue] between him and Solar.



Guru and I spoke privately about who was that one person who could help give us that one hit for 7 Grand. He and Fat Joe were always really close, back in the day, and that was one of the people I know he thought about reaching out to. I can't say that he ever did, out of fear that Solar wouldn't agree with it, and Solar would find a reason not to, and it would become a problem again.



DX: For the record, you and I spoke privately before this interview. There's a reason why it's not the first question, and that largely comes from respect for Guru and his legacy and distaste for some of the unfounded rumors running right now. However, I have to ask, as MTV's Sway Calloway so effectively worded last week to Solar, from your respective, were Guru and Solar engaged in a relationship of "a romantic nature?"

Tasha Denham: I spent extreme amounts of time with both Guru and Solar, both individually and altogether. I traveled with them. At one point in time, I stayed in Guru's house for several weeks. I, myself, never saw any indication of it being a romantic or sexual relationship. I do have a child with [Solar]. I know that there's many men out there that are homosexuals that have children, so that does not say that he's not. I, however, do not believe he is. I never saw any indication of that. I never saw any type of affection in that way, if you want. I saw Guru interested in women. Obviously when I was around, Solar was with me at that point in time, but at the same time, I have my feelings that there were probably other women as well. I never got the feeling that it was homosexual. It angers me, the rumors that I hear out there - not from people like Sway. The way he asked, it was absolutely appropriate. He asked as a journalist. But I have read things, on the Internet of course, that have really disgusted me, because they're being spoken by people that don't have facts. They're just giving an opinion that they're stating as a fact, and I think they're forgetting that both of these men have children. Both of these men have families. Both of these men, especially Guru, has a legacy to be upheld. To sit and put something as trivial as that into the mix [with such little care], is foul. I don't think it's appropriate. If somebody has something that's concrete, then by all means. But if you're only speculating, and because they had a very close relationship, and bizarre relationship to most, that you can't believe that they could have the kind of relationship without it being sexual, I disagree.



I think the way Solar is, he needed it to be that way, because that's the way of control. You get somebody, and you distance them from everyone else. They see you on a daily basis. You're their man day in and day out, the first person you talk to in the morning, the last person you talk to before you go to bed, that's gonna be the person you're gonna turn to for everything. That's the way to best control someone. I don't ever believe it was sexual.



DX: As the details play out, a few people have commented that this is reminiscent of Selena Gomez' story. Did you sense a kind of [platonic] worship, on Guru, from Solar?

Tasha Denham: Absolutely not. It was actually the opposite. It was almost like because he had that legacy and all those years in music, it was like he had a distaste for [Guru] because of that.



DX: As a close associate, an employee, all these things. When was the first time you started to notice that things were not normal or healthy?

Tasha Denham: [Pauses] I think it came pretty early on, really. One of the defining moments to me when I knew something was...it was the way Solar spoke to Guru. It was always down to him. He really belittled him, and would do it in front of other people. This wasn't something he just did in private. He is a member of The [Five Percent] Nation of Gods and Earths, as is Guru. He would use that against him, to bring him down. It was important to both of them, very important. I believe Guru's a pleaser; he liked to make people happy. [Solar] would tell him that the Nation of Gods and Earths are ashamed of him, they're disappointed in him. That he doesn't live up to their teachings. I can't think of the word that they used. There was a lot of times they'd get into arguments over it. He'd sit, and Guru would try to defend himself, and Solar would just get more and more irate over it.



There was one night we were at Guru's house. I was about three months pregnant at the time. Guru kept defending himself. Guru actually stood up and kind of got in Solar's face about it. Next thing I know, Solar punched him in the face. From that point in time, he just started kicking him and hitting him. Guru was fighting back, he wasn't just sitting there being a punk, but at the same time, Guru had severe asthma. He didn't have his inhaler. He started really hyper-ventalating and really having a hard time, and Solar kept beating him. It wasn't a fight anymore, it was beating him. I felt that it was so bad that I got in between the two of them and broke it up, because I knew he wouldn't hit me of course. At that point in time, I was pregnant with his child.



Instead of stopping and making sure his partner, friend, "brother" - as he calls him was okay, Guru was sitting there saying, "I'm having an asthma attack. I need to go to the hospital. I think I'm gonna have a heart attack." He's bleeding, really shaking. Instead of stopping and calming himself down, [Solar] told me, "We're leaving," and goes and gets in the car and drives me back to the city. [He] didn't call and check on Guru, didn't make sure he was alright. That's probably one of the first times I was like, "Wow, this relationship is really unhealthy. It's a really sick relationship." After that, if I didn't physically see it myself...I saw [Guru] punched in the face numerous times with no provocation. It [would just be] that he'd get upset with something Guru would say and punch him in the face. I know he knocked a tooth out of Guru's. I know he gave him a black eye [so Guru would] have to wear glasses for photo-shoots and concerts. To listen to [Solar] talk to [Guru], you'd think he was talking to a child sometimes. Guru would tell me how bad that hurt him. He'd say, "Back when we were just friends, he never would have spoken to me this way. He always treated me with respect. Now that we're doing this record label, he has no respect. He treats me this way." There was a fear in him. Solar had distanced him from everything in his life: his family, his ex-partner, the whole Gang Starr Foundation and the music industry, really, as a whole. Guru spent a lot of time alone. A lot of time, if he wasn't with Solar, he was by himself. It was his son or Solar.



He would tell me that since the label wasn't as successful as they originally thought, he just wanted to go away. He just wanted to disappear. He wanted to go to Europe, or go to L.A. and do voice-over work and quit the whole music industry as a whole. He wanted to go back to being a regular guy, like a mailman. It got worse and worse.



Unfortunately, in about July of 2008 is when I was banished from the circle because I wouldn't follow orders that were given to me. At that time, Guru was instructed that he was to have no more contact with me. Without Solar's knowledge, we stayed in contact throughout 2008, till the end of 2008. I had a lot of business information that they didn't have access to, and Guru would need it for different things. He couldn't ask Solar to ask me, 'cause we didn't speak. He couldn't ask Solar [for permission] to speak to me, 'cause Solar would be angry that Guru didn't have [the information]. So he'd contact me. I knew that things weren't getting any better. He'd tell me that Solar was checking his emails. I was also informed that, the longer and longer it went, that Solar even took Guru's phone away for days at a time. Guru wasn't allowed to have a personal life at all. Even when they were on tour, he took Guru's inhaler from him and told him that he wasn't allowed to use it, because it was a crutch, and that he didn't really need it...It just breaks my heart that [Guru] was suffering that way.



DX: Premier said it prior to last week on his radio show, Guru was a tough dude. I knew that about him when I first crossed paths with him when Gang Starr was still in tact. You're guessing like I could guess, but what do you think it was that prevented him from really fighting back and/or walking away?

Tasha Denham: His own fear. His insecurities. His twisted sense of loyalty to Solar. He credited Solar with helping him stop drinking. Guru's town-home, several years ago, burned down. At that point in time, Solar let him come live at his house with his family. So Guru looked at things like that. Guru never took credit himself for quitting drinking. When he decided to stop smoking weed, he just did it. He did it. But yet, when he was still smoking weed, Solar controlled that. Solar kept the weed and would only give Guru what he wanted him to smoke.



[Guru] was dedicated to changing and making his life better. He was a vegetarian, he was working out daily. He was dedicated to his son, and he loved that kid like no other. He wanted to make sure he was healthy, to be around for his son.



I think that he was so scared that if he broke away from Solar that he just didn't know what was next. He didn't always have the support around him on a daily basis. He knew there were people out there that would help him. But when you're not hearing it daily, and you're not around people daily that are telling you these things, it's hard to prevent to break away from the person who is there on a daily basis. They're bringing out your insecurities. Instead of talking about your positives, they're bringing out your faults. He was just scared. I told him before I left, "Guru, you've got to get away. If you don't get away, he's gonna kill you." He was being so abusive to him, physically. Guru was not a punk. Guru would not have taken that from anyone else. No one else. No one. I can't even imagine.



Solar's a bully. He's all talk. He preys on people [that] he can bully. If you won't go along with Solar and you won't let him control you, he will have nothing to do with you. He couldn't control me, and that's why he got rid of me. As soon as [DJ] Doo Wop quit working for them, Guru wasn't allowed to speak to Doo Wop anymore. A man that had been in his life, on a daily basis for almost five years, and he'd known for almost 15, he wasn't allowed to speak to him anymore. Guru was so sick [from the cancer] by that point in time too.



DX: In the later years of their life, what would Guru and Solar do with their free time, especially since they were removed from the Hip Hop industry?

Tasha Denham: Guru's day-to-day basis was basically business all day and studio in night. He had to fit in time to see his son. There were times when he'd want to go to Boston to see his family - his mother was ailing as well, as his father's getting up there in age, and Solar would tell him he couldn't go because he needed to be in the studio. Yet, Solar, during the day, I'd talk to him on the phone, and he'd be laying out in the sun, tanning. Or he'd be working out in the gym. He'd work out like two hours a day. Or he'd be out to dinner with his family. He'd call and give us orders on what to do, work-wise, but who really ran 7 Grand Records? Guru put his heart and soul in that.



DX: Did the label have other employees, besides the three of you and the band?

Tasha Denham: Guru did a lot of the stuff. I filled in whatever role. There was times where Guru would refer to me as their "head of video promotions" or this or that, because there wasn't people there to take those roles on. I helped them with tour booking, routing tours, whatever needed to be done. Guru taught me so much, because I'd never done this. I kind of fell into this. I happened to have a knack for it, as far as their label was concerned. Guru was learning himself too. Because any other tour he'd ever done had always been through a major record label. He'd always had the support of a major. They also had Solar's now-come-to-find-out-wife [Denise Sandoval], who knows about me obviously, working as, I'm gonna say, their accountant. She'd fill in different places as well. Solar has an older daughter that would help out with some Internet stuff. A lot of the other stuff, we'd outsource. We worked with [4Sight Media] for a while, and [Public Wizard]. So there were people involved, but none more than the four of us - Solar, myself, Denise and Guru were.



DX: I find this all to be pretty interesting. Not for nothing, one of my interviews with Guru and Solar, whether it was 2006 for AllHipHop, 2007 for Skope magazine or one of them in 2008 for DX, Solar told me that he had an extensive record collection of his own. Obviously, I know that the Hip Hop community was hard on him initially, being that he did not have production credits prior to Guru and called himself "Super Producer Solar." However, to be fair, did you find him to be a very musical person in your time together?

Tasha Denham: By the time that I came into it, he was already working extensively and exclusively with Guru. Everything that I've been told was told to me from Solar or from Guru, from before [2006]. So I've come to find a lot of the things that Solar told me over the years were absolutely false. How much of what he told me, I'm not sure how much to believe. He did tell me he had a studio before he ever met Guru. He told me that he used to do beats just on his spare time, and this is something he used to just do for fun; he never thought of it as a career. He used to tell me he wishes he just kept it as fun and not as fame. I almost say that with a laugh, 'cause it was all about fame for him. I believe, in hindsight - and everything is hindsight, because obviously, when I met him, I didn't see these things, I believe that he saw a meal-ticket in Guru. Instant fame, instant fortune.



DX: Not to interrupt you. But you spoke about their context of meeting each other. Both were always elusive about that, though they had once told me in an interview about Solar helping Guru stop drinking. We aren't here to throw anybody under the bus, but for the interest of facts, do you know what it was that Solar did for a living? Did that ever come up? He had told press that he worked with at-risk youth, as did Guru.

Tasha Denham: I've been told numerous things, again. Everything I've been told, [I have] not seen first-hand. I've been told at one point in time, [Solar] worked for the MTA [New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority]. I had been told that he was in the military. I have been told in one point in time that he worked on Wall Street. I had been told at one point in time that he dealt drugs. We're talking numerous things across the board.



I've been told that he and - who I'm now finding out is his legal wife, which I was not aware was his legal wife -- Denise Sandoval. I know her another by another name ("Asia"). Just like Solar doesn't go by John, she doesn't go by Denise Sandoval. I was not aware until Birthplace magazine came out with it, that she was his legal wife. Guru was never aware that she was his legal wife. Guru told me things that he wasn't always supposed to tell me. If he had honestly known, I truly believe he would've told me the truth on that one. I don't think he ever knew. That's supposed to be his best friend. Solar didn't even want to admit the truth about that in his life.



I do believe that he probably did work for MTA. That's one of the ones I believe, I think. Everything else, I'm really not sure myself. If anybody can shed light on that, it'd be interesting to me as well. [Laughs] I do know that they had foster kids, supposedly at one time. Because he has used that against me at times, and told me that he's much more capable of raising children than I'd ever be 'cause he has had foster kids. I never saw that though, so I can't say that he ever did have foster kids, or if he was registered to have foster kids.



Guru had numerous jobs. He was a regular guy. He was a teacher at one point in time. He [attended] the Fashion Institute [of Technology] at one point in time. He did numerous regular jobs, I can't even think of them off the top of my head.



DX: In "The P.L.A.N.E.T." he rapped about working in a mail-room when he first arrived to New York.

Tasha Denham: Yep! [Laughs] He did so many regular jobs. Guru, as everybody knows, came from a prestigious family. He had every thing offered to him growing up. His brothers and his sisters, they're writers and they're lawyers, and they're successful professors, so on and so forth. For Guru to go off and do this was breaking the mold; his dad was a judge in Boston. It's what [Guru] really believed in. It's part of him. It wasn't just music to him, it was a part of who he was. It was something he felt like he had to do.



DX: You mentioned Europe. I reviewed and listened to a lot of Guru's later solo work and his albums with Solar. Although they never captured the sonic success of his Gang Starr or first two volumes of Jazzmatazz, they were solid albums that a lot of fans and press domestically ignored. With so much touring, from your 7 Grand experience, can you tell us about their reception abroad?

Tasha Denham: Overseas, I think is much more open and flexible with things than Americans are. From everything to what their tours paid overseas to the turn-outs, they'd do concerts in [unique] places like South Africa and they did one in Spain, with tens of thousands of people there. A lot of them were festivals, yes, but Guru would be one of the headliners. They definitely received more love overseas, more money overseas. These people, they were fans. At the same time, a lot of them were Gang Starr fans. There was still controversy overseas, just like in the U.S., about the Gang Starr situation versus 7 Grand Records. They were bringing in what I would say is triple [the amount of money] overseas for shows to what they were getting here, at least.



They were floating. The label definitely wasn't as successful as anybody would have liked it to have been, but in one respect, it was a new label, an independent label. It was not a major label. They were in a really tough economic time, and a tough time for the music industry. With everything now going digital, it's hard for labels now to make the same kind of money they used to be able to make. Guru was funding a lot of it himself, and there was the money coming in, but a lot of it was being funded from stuff Guru had [additionally]. They were floating. It wasn't successful in the way that they had hoped, but they stayed around. They were still booking shows up until January when Guru was so sick that he shouldn't have even be doing shows, they were still booking them.



DX: So, based on your experience. What happens to Solar now?

Tasha Denham: I'm not sure what his motivation is. Everything he puts out there, he [uses to discredit other people]. [His] going to speak to Sway on MTV, I don't understand the motivation. He's just giving himself more rope to hang himself. He's just looking more and more guilty in everything he speaks, because he's so blatantly...it's so blatantly not true, the things he's saying. He embellishes things so much. But I truly believe he believe the things he says.



DX: -- Not to interrupt you. But it's worth noting, there is a "#FuckSolar" campaign on Twitter and in message boards. Several extremely respected rappers and actors have joined in on that. Is Solar the type of guy that is watching all of these comments and tweets? You say this somebody who really wants fame...

Tasha Denham: He reads everything he can find on the Internet. He'll see this article tomorrow as soon as its posted. Between [HipHopDX], AllHipHop.com, he's obviously on his Twitter, I think it's probably just gnawing at the very core of his being. Peoples' perception is so important to him, even if it's a false perception. When I was [at 7 Grand], he'd be the one to tell me not to tell him if I saw negative things written about them. Yet he'd seek them out. He went looking for them. He would read so much and tell me not to tell Guru if I saw it. You know, the funny thing is, Guru could handle it. He'd been doing it for so long, he knew everything wasn't gonna be positive. I know [Solar] is looking at all these things, all these other artists that are just disgusted by his behaviors, and disgusted with the way this has all come out, and made subliminal comments on Twitter as to situation, and it's gotta be killing him. These are respected artists in the music industry. He has to know, now, with the feelings that people have towards him in the music industry, there is no music career left for him. Who's gonna work with him?



DX: It's a gritty conversation we've just had. Not for nothing, you lost a dear friend. Let's end on a positive note. What's your favorite memory with Guru?

Tasha Denham: I have so many things, so many memories of us, as friends. Just the regular, everyday kind of memories are the things that stick out to me the most. Of course he was an artist. But I look at Guru as my friend. He was there for my daughter's first birthday. I got kicked out of my apartment in New York because Solar had a problem with my landlord and Guru's the one who drove to New York City [from 45 miles away] and helped me carry all my stuff down three flights of stairs, load it in his truck and bring it to his house, and let me stay at his house for several weeks. He was the person, that if I needed someone to talk to, I could pick up the phone and call. Those are the things. He was just a regular guy, but he was such a kind person. We all went to the zoo one day, with the kids. Guru's son was there. He was just a dad that day. He wasn't Guru. Even after 21 years of living with fame, and yet we'd go to a place and hear, "Yo, that's Guru," and it almost always seemed to kind of take him by surprise, 20 years later.



This legacy deserves to be cherished. His son deserves to grow up loving and respecting his father for the person and artist that he was, instead of rumors and speculation.



DX: Lastly, and one question a colleague expressed his curiousity with. You mentioned earlier that Guru comes from a prestigious family. Do you think action will be taken?

Tasha Denham: No. I really hope so. I've spoken to a member of his family before his passing. I got the opportunity to speak ti him before his passing, and after his passing, we've exchanged words. I right now they're dealing with the loss so much. They're dealing with legal issues right now. As everybody's aware, [the Elam Family] was able to retrieve the body. Not having contact with him for so many years, there's a lot of things left up in the air that they're still trying to deal with, as well as the emotions. I think that his family absolutely has his son's best interest in heart. I think that his family has the knowledge, the power and the support behind him [including mine]. His son deserves to know his father, and his son deserves to be the one that benefits from his father's success over the years, not someone else.



It's funny, because I was looking through emails the other day. Just random emails from back when I was working for them, and still in contact from that. I found one from a point in time when Solar and I were no longer speaking anymore, yet he wrote me an...email. His last words in that email were to me, "Fortunes are made, not extorted." I wish at this point in time, Solar could look back at that and take his own advice.
The last week has stung the eyes and hearts of Hip Hop fans. Since the late 1980s, Keith "Guru" Elam gave us street scripture in poetical parables, weathered wisdom and a signature voice of reason. As if the announcement of Guru's death to cancer has not hurt enough, controversies have swept the media trying to understand Guru's last days, his bizarre relationship with musical partner John "Solar" Mosher and a suspicious and damaging last letter.




As the truths come to the light, one courageous woman has come forward. Tasha Denham considers herself a friend to Guru. On two different occasions, they temporarily lived under the same roof between 2006 and 2008. She was also an employee of Guru and Solar's 7 Grand Records, having served a tenure as Executive Assistant within the four-person operation. Lastly, Denham has a young daughter, that she says was fathered by Solar. Having witnessed those two-plus years on a personal, private and professional level, Tasha Denham's accounts come from one of the few people who was privy to the tight circle Solar and Guru kept.



This jaw-dropping and quite-lengthy interview was conducted just minutes after midnight this morning (April 27). As the contents below suggest, it is one first-hand account on the last chapter in the life of one of the most respected emcees in Hip Hop. Merely one person's testimony, but suspicions of foul-play are confirmed in vivid detail, and some background information is provided at a time when all of us who knew Guru, loved him, or lived by his verses are looking for answers.



HipHopDX: Thank you for speaking to us. To start, could you describe your relationship and the context of your relationship to the man the Hip Hop community knows as Solar, as well as Guru?

Tasha Denham: I met Guru and Solar in 2006. I actually met them out in Denver, [Colorado]. I was moving back to New York. I started a personal relationship with Solar and subsequently became pregnant by him, and had a child by him.



In the middle of 2006, a situation happened on tour. They needed some help with some business things - they were in Europe, and needed some things done in the States, and I happened to be able to help them out at that time.



By the end of 2006, I decided that I was going to leave and come back to Denver, due to issues that I was having with Solar in our personal relationship. At that time, because we weren't going to have a personal relationship, I wasn't able to help [7 Grand Records] anymore. After our daughter was born, I started talking to them again, and had just a personal relationship at that time with both Solar and Guru. I considered Guru a close friend of mine. Solar is obviously the father of my child.



In 2007, once again, they were over in Europe, and had some complications on tour. Their tour manager had to quit in the middle of the tour. So they had me do some stuff for them. It ended up working out well, and at that point in time, they decided to bring me on as an assistant for [7 Grand Records] and I was both of their personal-slash executive assistants, at the same time, it was a small record label, so I did whatever needed to be done to try and make the record label run smoothly. So I worked on a day-to-day basis with both Guru and Solar till about July, 2008.



DX: In regards to 7 Grand, I know you probably wore many hats in the day-to-day, but what was your specific title?

Tasha Denham: My specific title was executive assistant. That was the general title I was given.



DX: The Hip Hop perspective is, somewhere in 2004, Guru and Solar began working together musically. Do you know the context in how they came to know each other?

Tasha Denham: Everything I've been told, I've been told by them. I was not around at the time that they met. But my understanding is that in 2003 I believe, they became friends. They would hang out and party together. Guru, at the time, was still with [DJ] Premier [in Gang Starr]. They had the album, The Ownerz at that time. They were just friends. Solar ended up going on one of the Gang Starr tours with Guru in 2003, I believe. They were talking one night, and Solar [was listening] to Guru. [Guru] was expressing his displeasure with [Virgin/EMI Records] at that time. Solar said, "Well, if you're so unhappy with your label, why don't you start your own?" Guru thought about it a little, I guess, thought about it overnight, and then came back to Solar the next day and said, "I want to do this, man. Let's start the label." Solar was like, "I didn't mean us, I meant for you to start it." [Guru reportedly responded], "No. No, man. I want to do it together." At that point in time, Solar told him that if [Guru] wanted to do this, then he had to stop drinking. From that point on, that's when they decided to build 7 Grand Records.



DX: It's a weird question to ask, but I know that what you're telling me a lot on pre-2006 is based entirely on what you've heard, but it's an important question to the Hip Hop community, in the wake of last Tuesday's letter - do you know the context from that Ownerz Tour of the relationship that Solar and DJ Premier may have had with each other? A lot of people believe that Premo has been [attacked by these words Solar may have written in the letter]. A lot of people are curious to know if Solar would have any motive.

Tasha Denham: Um...I do know that there were at least some tensions. I wasn't there, obviously, so I can't say to what extent. But I do know that there was some tensions. I can't say that anything Solar had against Premier had to be one specific incident. Just watching, over the time that I spent with them, Solar had such a twisted sense of how important [his own role] was to the music game. I think there was an extensive amount of jealousy towards what Premier had already created in the music industry. I can't speak that there was one specific incident that created that animosity between them.



DX: As a member of the press, often times, prior to an interview, Premier's name and Gang Starr were often not allowed to be mentioned at all. Did you know anything, as far as behind-closed-doors for the motives in that?

Tasha Denham: I definitely know that press was told, numerous times, not to speak on Gang Starr, not to ask questions on Gang Starr or Premier. And [press was told], that if they were to speak on it, the interview would pretty much be over. I know this because I was the one who told the press this a lot of times. I was required to prep people ahead of time, basically, on what questions were going to be acceptable, and that they wanted to focus on 7 Grand at the time, and whatever album at the time was coming out, and not on the past - it didn't matter. Again, I believe it all stemmed from...I think when Solar got into [the music industry], I feel that he thought it was just gonna take off like that. They were gonna have instant love around the world, instant fame, instant fortune from this label. I don't think he got the realities of quite how hard it was gonna be to overcome the legacy that [Gang Starr] had together. I think that his jealousy of both Premier and Guru's fame around the world - yeah, there's a lot of people who don't know who they are, but anybody who really knows Hip Hop, and especially in Europe and such, it's insane amounts of love and fame out there. Solar would go places and people would want Premier, they wouldn't want Solar. Not because they hated Solar, but because they didn't know Solar. They wanted the legendary Gang Starr, with its producer.



You know, I understand Guru wanting to move on and create things on his own. He did, with Jazzmatazz, way before Solar even came around. But before, I think he didn't understand that maybe it could be both. I think what's distanced Solar so much from so many of the Gang Starr fans is he always acted like he was in competition with Premier instead of taking the natural route that he was Guru's partner now, after Premier. [Instead, Solar] came across with so much anger about it. He truly believes that Premier was financing a campaign agaist him on the Internet - a hate campaign.



DX: Wow. Like a website or just through message board and comment section posts?

Tasha Denham: Message boards as a whole. Whether it be your MySpace or through an article on HipHopDX or another one of the Hip Hop sites. Anything that was put on there that was negative, Solar felt like Premier was fueling that - not that there was fans out there that didn't appreciate Solar's music, that didn't appreciate what Solar called his "genius," that they didn't appreciate the fact that Solar was saying, "I remixed all of Gang Starr's tracks and they sound so much better now." One thing after another.



I have had a lot of people reach out to me since Guru's passing - and before, when he was in the hospital that knew I worked for them and knew I was close, at one point in time, to them. [They said], "I always thought it was strange, 'cause I'd come up to them at a concert and I'd want to take a picture with just Guru. But if I wanted a picture, I had to take one with both Guru and Solar." If he was gonna do an interview, it had to be both Guru and Solar. Guru was not allowed to do interviews by himself.



DX: I interviewed Premier in December 2005 in New York shortly after the break-up was implied. Premier expressed that the group was simply on glorified hiatus. I interviewed Guru and Solar in spring of 2006, and Guru was very resistant to even my question to whether Big Shug's "Counterpunch," which featured Guru, would be the last time fans would hear his voice on a DJ Premier beat. In interviews to come, for various outlets, Guru said some harsh things. You're one of the few people he seemed to speak a lot to in recent years. In your private conversations with Guru, was that [sentiment] really there?

Tasha Denham: There was definitely some distaste. I don't want to go as far as "bitterness." I think of it had been put into his head. I don't know if he truly felt some of the things he said in his heart. He was convinced, by Solar, that back in maybe 2003, 2004, Guru was held up and mugged in Queens, [New York]. Solar convinced Guru, at that point in time, that Premier had put the hit out on him, and Premier wanted him dead.



DX: Wow.

Tasha Denham: He got that into Guru's head, and he got that drilled into Guru's head that that's what happened. I have to believe that that's where some of his distaste came from. He did say things that he was unhappy with, from his past. A lot of it had to do with contractual things. There were situations that he got into contractually that he felt like he had kind of gotten the short-end of the stick, if you want. Not from Premier, but [from Virgin Records and management]. Any of his anger that he had or any of his ill words that he had, I think a lot of them were not really heartfelt. I may be wrong, but I can only take my own judgement. I think that a lot of it was that Solar had him so convinced that all these people were against him: [Gang Starr/Empire manager] Phat Gary, Premier, all the people from the Gang Starr Foundation - Big Shug. I actually just spoke to Lil Dap from Group Home. I've never spoken to him before. I didn't know him, but I knew of him, of course. I knew of him through Guru. He called to express his condolences [and say] "We're all in this together. We all want to see Guru's legacy move on in the best way possible." I think that's what Guru missed out on so much [in] his last few years, because I think he was so distanced from these people because of Solar that he started to forget how much people really did care about him. They didn't just care about him as an artist. I think if Guru never did another Gang Starr record, I truly believe that all of them would've still cared about Guru. For me, anybody's really been touched by Guru and been around Guru knows Guru as a man, they know what a kind person he is. Anybody who's really met him and knows him as a person, they loved him no matter what. I don't think it was always about the music. Lil Dap expressed that to me, that Guru was like a brother to him. They started out at the same time. Guru had to be one of the kindest people I knew. He would give you even when he did not have.



It hurts me to read this [last] letter. If he did write this letter - which I truly have my doubts on, I can't say that some of it was not things that they had spoken on before, and stuff that Solar put it into words himself. I'm not gonna say that, I wasn't there. Do I believe Guru wrote the letter word-for-word or even sentence-by-sentence? I don't believe that. I really hope that Guru didn't spend his last moments of consciousness with hate like that. I didn't know Guru to be like that. I didn't know Guru to be a hateful person. There were other people in Guru's life that Solar had spoken ill of to Guru and had convinced Guru [were] against him. In speaking to Guru in private, Guru himself wasn't always convinced of that. Guru didn't always believe, but at the same time, he didn't always want to speak that back to Solar because it would've not been a good situation either.



DX: New York is a big place, but it's a small place, especially in the Hip Hop industry. A few artists worked with Guru and Solar on early 7 Grand releases - Talib Kweli, Jean Grae, Damian Marley...

Tasha Denham: Common.



DX: Right. These guys weren't just studio rats, so to speak. How close did it get, not in terms of it being a feud or anything, but you think there would have been contact with people that could get Guru's mind right, old peers...

Tasha Denham: Honestly, pretty much, they kept themselves secluded from the Hip Hop world. They did not go out in New York City very often at all. It was a very rare occurrence, after Guru stopped drinking, that they would go out in New York. It wasn't because of Guru's drinking that they stopped going either.



When Guru stopped drinking, when he decided to stop drinking, he stopped drinking. Solar drinks Corona [beers] every single day. Solar would send Guru to the store to buy his Coronas for him. When Guru stopped drinking, he stopped drinking. Guru could have a bottle in his house, he wasn't gonna drink it. He made that decision. When they toured, he was in nightclubs every night. He stopped drinking.



I truly believe that...Solar made it that "there's so much hate out there for us. Being New York, Premier and them are out there, blah, blah, blah." So they didn't go. They didn't even take shows in New York most of the time. There was always an excuse. Shows in Boston, there was always an excuse as to why they weren't gonna do that show. All the tracks that had [featuring artists], they were all sent [to Guru and Solar]. They didn't do those in the studio, personally, with any of those artists. I cannot speak of one single artist that was actually in the studio with them. Most of the time, it was all through management, so on and so forth. So there weren't any opportunities for other artists to help bridge that gap because first of all, if Guru ever had the opportunity, Solar was standing right there.



Guru was never around anyone in the industry without Solar standing right next to him. He never did an interview unless Solar was right there. If somebody was to say, "Yo Guru, when's there gonna be another Gang Starr album?" Guru would just knock it down right away, because if that got brought up and that became an issue, it would be become a [problematic issue] between him and Solar.



Guru and I spoke privately about who was that one person who could help give us that one hit for 7 Grand. He and Fat Joe were always really close, back in the day, and that was one of the people I know he thought about reaching out to. I can't say that he ever did, out of fear that Solar wouldn't agree with it, and Solar would find a reason not to, and it would become a problem again.



DX: For the record, you and I spoke privately before this interview. There's a reason why it's not the first question, and that largely comes from respect for Guru and his legacy and distaste for some of the unfounded rumors running right now. However, I have to ask, as MTV's Sway Calloway so effectively worded last week to Solar, from your respective, were Guru and Solar engaged in a relationship of "a romantic nature?"

Tasha Denham: I spent extreme amounts of time with both Guru and Solar, both individually and altogether. I traveled with them. At one point in time, I stayed in Guru's house for several weeks. I, myself, never saw any indication of it being a romantic or sexual relationship. I do have a child with [Solar]. I know that there's many men out there that are homosexuals that have children, so that does not say that he's not. I, however, do not believe he is. I never saw any indication of that. I never saw any type of affection in that way, if you want. I saw Guru interested in women. Obviously when I was around, Solar was with me at that point in time, but at the same time, I have my feelings that there were probably other women as well. I never got the feeling that it was homosexual. It angers me, the rumors that I hear out there - not from people like Sway. The way he asked, it was absolutely appropriate. He asked as a journalist. But I have read things, on the Internet of course, that have really disgusted me, because they're being spoken by people that don't have facts. They're just giving an opinion that they're stating as a fact, and I think they're forgetting that both of these men have children. Both of these men have families. Both of these men, especially Guru, has a legacy to be upheld. To sit and put something as trivial as that into the mix [with such little care], is foul. I don't think it's appropriate. If somebody has something that's concrete, then by all means. But if you're only speculating, and because they had a very close relationship, and bizarre relationship to most, that you can't believe that they could have the kind of relationship without it being sexual, I disagree.



I think the way Solar is, he needed it to be that way, because that's the way of control. You get somebody, and you distance them from everyone else. They see you on a daily basis. You're their man day in and day out, the first person you talk to in the morning, the last person you talk to before you go to bed, that's gonna be the person you're gonna turn to for everything. That's the way to best control someone. I don't ever believe it was sexual.



DX: As the details play out, a few people have commented that this is reminiscent of Selena Gomez' story. Did you sense a kind of [platonic] worship, on Guru, from Solar?

Tasha Denham: Absolutely not. It was actually the opposite. It was almost like because he had that legacy and all those years in music, it was like he had a distaste for [Guru] because of that.



DX: As a close associate, an employee, all these things. When was the first time you started to notice that things were not normal or healthy?

Tasha Denham: [Pauses] I think it came pretty early on, really. One of the defining moments to me when I knew something was...it was the way Solar spoke to Guru. It was always down to him. He really belittled him, and would do it in front of other people. This wasn't something he just did in private. He is a member of The [Five Percent] Nation of Gods and Earths, as is Guru. He would use that against him, to bring him down. It was important to both of them, very important. I believe Guru's a pleaser; he liked to make people happy. [Solar] would tell him that the Nation of Gods and Earths are ashamed of him, they're disappointed in him. That he doesn't live up to their teachings. I can't think of the word that they used. There was a lot of times they'd get into arguments over it. He'd sit, and Guru would try to defend himself, and Solar would just get more and more irate over it.



There was one night we were at Guru's house. I was about three months pregnant at the time. Guru kept defending himself. Guru actually stood up and kind of got in Solar's face about it. Next thing I know, Solar punched him in the face. From that point in time, he just started kicking him and hitting him. Guru was fighting back, he wasn't just sitting there being a punk, but at the same time, Guru had severe asthma. He didn't have his inhaler. He started really hyper-ventalating and really having a hard time, and Solar kept beating him. It wasn't a fight anymore, it was beating him. I felt that it was so bad that I got in between the two of them and broke it up, because I knew he wouldn't hit me of course. At that point in time, I was pregnant with his child.



Instead of stopping and making sure his partner, friend, "brother" - as he calls him was okay, Guru was sitting there saying, "I'm having an asthma attack. I need to go to the hospital. I think I'm gonna have a heart attack." He's bleeding, really shaking. Instead of stopping and calming himself down, [Solar] told me, "We're leaving," and goes and gets in the car and drives me back to the city. [He] didn't call and check on Guru, didn't make sure he was alright. That's probably one of the first times I was like, "Wow, this relationship is really unhealthy. It's a really sick relationship." After that, if I didn't physically see it myself...I saw [Guru] punched in the face numerous times with no provocation. It [would just be] that he'd get upset with something Guru would say and punch him in the face. I know he knocked a tooth out of Guru's. I know he gave him a black eye [so Guru would] have to wear glasses for photo-shoots and concerts. To listen to [Solar] talk to [Guru], you'd think he was talking to a child sometimes. Guru would tell me how bad that hurt him. He'd say, "Back when we were just friends, he never would have spoken to me this way. He always treated me with respect. Now that we're doing this record label, he has no respect. He treats me this way." There was a fear in him. Solar had distanced him from everything in his life: his family, his ex-partner, the whole Gang Starr Foundation and the music industry, really, as a whole. Guru spent a lot of time alone. A lot of time, if he wasn't with Solar, he was by himself. It was his son or Solar.



He would tell me that since the label wasn't as successful as they originally thought, he just wanted to go away. He just wanted to disappear. He wanted to go to Europe, or go to L.A. and do voice-over work and quit the whole music industry as a whole. He wanted to go back to being a regular guy, like a mailman. It got worse and worse.



Unfortunately, in about July of 2008 is when I was banished from the circle because I wouldn't follow orders that were given to me. At that time, Guru was instructed that he was to have no more contact with me. Without Solar's knowledge, we stayed in contact throughout 2008, till the end of 2008. I had a lot of business information that they didn't have access to, and Guru would need it for different things. He couldn't ask Solar to ask me, 'cause we didn't speak. He couldn't ask Solar [for permission] to speak to me, 'cause Solar would be angry that Guru didn't have [the information]. So he'd contact me. I knew that things weren't getting any better. He'd tell me that Solar was checking his emails. I was also informed that, the longer and longer it went, that Solar even took Guru's phone away for days at a time. Guru wasn't allowed to have a personal life at all. Even when they were on tour, he took Guru's inhaler from him and told him that he wasn't allowed to use it, because it was a crutch, and that he didn't really need it...It just breaks my heart that [Guru] was suffering that way.



DX: Premier said it prior to last week on his radio show, Guru was a tough dude. I knew that about him when I first crossed paths with him when Gang Starr was still in tact. You're guessing like I could guess, but what do you think it was that prevented him from really fighting back and/or walking away?

Tasha Denham: His own fear. His insecurities. His twisted sense of loyalty to Solar. He credited Solar with helping him stop drinking. Guru's town-home, several years ago, burned down. At that point in time, Solar let him come live at his house with his family. So Guru looked at things like that. Guru never took credit himself for quitting drinking. When he decided to stop smoking weed, he just did it. He did it. But yet, when he was still smoking weed, Solar controlled that. Solar kept the weed and would only give Guru what he wanted him to smoke.



[Guru] was dedicated to changing and making his life better. He was a vegetarian, he was working out daily. He was dedicated to his son, and he loved that kid like no other. He wanted to make sure he was healthy, to be around for his son.



I think that he was so scared that if he broke away from Solar that he just didn't know what was next. He didn't always have the support around him on a daily basis. He knew there were people out there that would help him. But when you're not hearing it daily, and you're not around people daily that are telling you these things, it's hard to prevent to break away from the person who is there on a daily basis. They're bringing out your insecurities. Instead of talking about your positives, they're bringing out your faults. He was just scared. I told him before I left, "Guru, you've got to get away. If you don't get away, he's gonna kill you." He was being so abusive to him, physically. Guru was not a punk. Guru would not have taken that from anyone else. No one else. No one. I can't even imagine.



Solar's a bully. He's all talk. He preys on people [that] he can bully. If you won't go along with Solar and you won't let him control you, he will have nothing to do with you. He couldn't control me, and that's why he got rid of me. As soon as [DJ] Doo Wop quit working for them, Guru wasn't allowed to speak to Doo Wop anymore. A man that had been in his life, on a daily basis for almost five years, and he'd known for almost 15, he wasn't allowed to speak to him anymore. Guru was so sick [from the cancer] by that point in time too.



DX: In the later years of their life, what would Guru and Solar do with their free time, especially since they were removed from the Hip Hop industry?

Tasha Denham: Guru's day-to-day basis was basically business all day and studio in night. He had to fit in time to see his son. There were times when he'd want to go to Boston to see his family - his mother was ailing as well, as his father's getting up there in age, and Solar would tell him he couldn't go because he needed to be in the studio. Yet, Solar, during the day, I'd talk to him on the phone, and he'd be laying out in the sun, tanning. Or he'd be working out in the gym. He'd work out like two hours a day. Or he'd be out to dinner with his family. He'd call and give us orders on what to do, work-wise, but who really ran 7 Grand Records? Guru put his heart and soul in that.



DX: Did the label have other employees, besides the three of you and the band?

Tasha Denham: Guru did a lot of the stuff. I filled in whatever role. There was times where Guru would refer to me as their "head of video promotions" or this or that, because there wasn't people there to take those roles on. I helped them with tour booking, routing tours, whatever needed to be done. Guru taught me so much, because I'd never done this. I kind of fell into this. I happened to have a knack for it, as far as their label was concerned. Guru was learning himself too. Because any other tour he'd ever done had always been through a major record label. He'd always had the support of a major. They also had Solar's now-come-to-find-out-wife [Denise Sandoval], who knows about me obviously, working as, I'm gonna say, their accountant. She'd fill in different places as well. Solar has an older daughter that would help out with some Internet stuff. A lot of the other stuff, we'd outsource. We worked with [4Sight Media] for a while, and [Public Wizard]. So there were people involved, but none more than the four of us - Solar, myself, Denise and Guru were.



DX: I find this all to be pretty interesting. Not for nothing, one of my interviews with Guru and Solar, whether it was 2006 for AllHipHop, 2007 for Skope magazine or one of them in 2008 for DX, Solar told me that he had an extensive record collection of his own. Obviously, I know that the Hip Hop community was hard on him initially, being that he did not have production credits prior to Guru and called himself "Super Producer Solar." However, to be fair, did you find him to be a very musical person in your time together?

Tasha Denham: By the time that I came into it, he was already working extensively and exclusively with Guru. Everything that I've been told was told to me from Solar or from Guru, from before [2006]. So I've come to find a lot of the things that Solar told me over the years were absolutely false. How much of what he told me, I'm not sure how much to believe. He did tell me he had a studio before he ever met Guru. He told me that he used to do beats just on his spare time, and this is something he used to just do for fun; he never thought of it as a career. He used to tell me he wishes he just kept it as fun and not as fame. I almost say that with a laugh, 'cause it was all about fame for him. I believe, in hindsight - and everything is hindsight, because obviously, when I met him, I didn't see these things, I believe that he saw a meal-ticket in Guru. Instant fame, instant fortune.



DX: Not to interrupt you. But you spoke about their context of meeting each other. Both were always elusive about that, though they had once told me in an interview about Solar helping Guru stop drinking. We aren't here to throw anybody under the bus, but for the interest of facts, do you know what it was that Solar did for a living? Did that ever come up? He had told press that he worked with at-risk youth, as did Guru.

Tasha Denham: I've been told numerous things, again. Everything I've been told, [I have] not seen first-hand. I've been told at one point in time, [Solar] worked for the MTA [New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority]. I had been told that he was in the military. I have been told in one point in time that he worked on Wall Street. I had been told at one point in time that he dealt drugs. We're talking numerous things across the board.



I've been told that he and - who I'm now finding out is his legal wife, which I was not aware was his legal wife -- Denise Sandoval. I know her another by another name ("Asia"). Just like Solar doesn't go by John, she doesn't go by Denise Sandoval. I was not aware until Birthplace magazine came out with it, that she was his legal wife. Guru was never aware that she was his legal wife. Guru told me things that he wasn't always supposed to tell me. If he had honestly known, I truly believe he would've told me the truth on that one. I don't think he ever knew. That's supposed to be his best friend. Solar didn't even want to admit the truth about that in his life.



I do believe that he probably did work for MTA. That's one of the ones I believe, I think. Everything else, I'm really not sure myself. If anybody can shed light on that, it'd be interesting to me as well. [Laughs] I do know that they had foster kids, supposedly at one time. Because he has used that against me at times, and told me that he's much more capable of raising children than I'd ever be 'cause he has had foster kids. I never saw that though, so I can't say that he ever did have foster kids, or if he was registered to have foster kids.



Guru had numerous jobs. He was a regular guy. He was a teacher at one point in time. He [attended] the Fashion Institute [of Technology] at one point in time. He did numerous regular jobs, I can't even think of them off the top of my head.



DX: In "The P.L.A.N.E.T." he rapped about working in a mail-room when he first arrived to New York.

Tasha Denham: Yep! [Laughs] He did so many regular jobs. Guru, as everybody knows, came from a prestigious family. He had every thing offered to him growing up. His brothers and his sisters, they're writers and they're lawyers, and they're successful professors, so on and so forth. For Guru to go off and do this was breaking the mold; his dad was a judge in Boston. It's what [Guru] really believed in. It's part of him. It wasn't just music to him, it was a part of who he was. It was something he felt like he had to do.



DX: You mentioned Europe. I reviewed and listened to a lot of Guru's later solo work and his albums with Solar. Although they never captured the sonic success of his Gang Starr or first two volumes of Jazzmatazz, they were solid albums that a lot of fans and press domestically ignored. With so much touring, from your 7 Grand experience, can you tell us about their reception abroad?

Tasha Denham: Overseas, I think is much more open and flexible with things than Americans are. From everything to what their tours paid overseas to the turn-outs, they'd do concerts in [unique] places like South Africa and they did one in Spain, with tens of thousands of people there. A lot of them were festivals, yes, but Guru would be one of the headliners. They definitely received more love overseas, more money overseas. These people, they were fans. At the same time, a lot of them were Gang Starr fans. There was still controversy overseas, just like in the U.S., about the Gang Starr situation versus 7 Grand Records. They were bringing in what I would say is triple [the amount of money] overseas for shows to what they were getting here, at least.



They were floating. The label definitely wasn't as successful as anybody would have liked it to have been, but in one respect, it was a new label, an independent label. It was not a major label. They were in a really tough economic time, and a tough time for the music industry. With everything now going digital, it's hard for labels now to make the same kind of money they used to be able to make. Guru was funding a lot of it himself, and there was the money coming in, but a lot of it was being funded from stuff Guru had [additionally]. They were floating. It wasn't successful in the way that they had hoped, but they stayed around. They were still booking shows up until January when Guru was so sick that he shouldn't have even be doing shows, they were still booking them.



DX: So, based on your experience. What happens to Solar now?

Tasha Denham: I'm not sure what his motivation is. Everything he puts out there, he [uses to discredit other people]. [His] going to speak to Sway on MTV, I don't understand the motivation. He's just giving himself more rope to hang himself. He's just looking more and more guilty in everything he speaks, because he's so blatantly...it's so blatantly not true, the things he's saying. He embellishes things so much. But I truly believe he believe the things he says.



DX: -- Not to interrupt you. But it's worth noting, there is a "#FuckSolar" campaign on Twitter and in message boards. Several extremely respected rappers and actors have joined in on that. Is Solar the type of guy that is watching all of these comments and tweets? You say this somebody who really wants fame...

Tasha Denham: He reads everything he can find on the Internet. He'll see this article tomorrow as soon as its posted. Between [HipHopDX], AllHipHop.com, he's obviously on his Twitter, I think it's probably just gnawing at the very core of his being. Peoples' perception is so important to him, even if it's a false perception. When I was [at 7 Grand], he'd be the one to tell me not to tell him if I saw negative things written about them. Yet he'd seek them out. He went looking for them. He would read so much and tell me not to tell Guru if I saw it. You know, the funny thing is, Guru could handle it. He'd been doing it for so long, he knew everything wasn't gonna be positive. I know [Solar] is looking at all these things, all these other artists that are just disgusted by his behaviors, and disgusted with the way this has all come out, and made subliminal comments on Twitter as to situation, and it's gotta be killing him. These are respected artists in the music industry. He has to know, now, with the feelings that people have towards him in the music industry, there is no music career left for him. Who's gonna work with him?



DX: It's a gritty conversation we've just had. Not for nothing, you lost a dear friend. Let's end on a positive note. What's your favorite memory with Guru?

Tasha Denham: I have so many things, so many memories of us, as friends. Just the regular, everyday kind of memories are the things that stick out to me the most. Of course he was an artist. But I look at Guru as my friend. He was there for my daughter's first birthday. I got kicked out of my apartment in New York because Solar had a problem with my landlord and Guru's the one who drove to New York City [from 45 miles away] and helped me carry all my stuff down three flights of stairs, load it in his truck and bring it to his house, and let me stay at his house for several weeks. He was the person, that if I needed someone to talk to, I could pick up the phone and call. Those are the things. He was just a regular guy, but he was such a kind person. We all went to the zoo one day, with the kids. Guru's son was there. He was just a dad that day. He wasn't Guru. Even after 21 years of living with fame, and yet we'd go to a place and hear, "Yo, that's Guru," and it almost always seemed to kind of take him by surprise, 20 years later.



This legacy deserves to be cherished. His son deserves to grow up loving and respecting his father for the person and artist that he was, instead of rumors and speculation.



DX: Lastly, and one question a colleague expressed his curiousity with. You mentioned earlier that Guru comes from a prestigious family. Do you think action will be taken?

Tasha Denham: No. I really hope so. I've spoken to a member of his family before his passing. I got the opportunity to speak ti him before his passing, and after his passing, we've exchanged words. I right now they're dealing with the loss so much. They're dealing with legal issues right now. As everybody's aware, [the Elam Family] was able to retrieve the body. Not having contact with him for so many years, there's a lot of things left up in the air that they're still trying to deal with, as well as the emotions. I think that his family absolutely has his son's best interest in heart. I think that his family has the knowledge, the power and the support behind him [including mine]. His son deserves to know his father, and his son deserves to be the one that benefits from his father's success over the years, not someone else.



It's funny, because I was looking through emails the other day. Just random emails from back when I was working for them, and still in contact from that. I found one from a point in time when Solar and I were no longer speaking anymore, yet he wrote me an...email. His last words in that email were to me, "Fortunes are made, not extorted." I wish at this point in time, Solar could look back at that and take his own advice.