When an artist or high profile person passes on, a fan’s way of mourning is more of an acknowledgment of what they’ve done than who they are as a person because there wasn’t a personal relationship.

Sometimes that bond made through music is more personal than a relationship with someone you knew. My life story is no more tragic than the next person from my area. A youth filled with parents divorce, city life, running the street, moving constantly, lost some friends to the pen and the other side. Music was truly my “safe place”. Mom and dad arguing was drowned out by EPMD and Gangstarr. That’s it. I could plug to a lie director test on that.

Gangstarr was and is everything to me. Guru’s voice was the reasoning of a person that was college educated, street smart and had knowledge of self— all that came through the music. It was what I gravitated to during a period where things weren’t great.

Hearing Guru passed away and the circumstances behind it truly made me sad.

He will live on in his music and through the legacy he left behind with his art.

Maybe my brother Franco will bump into him up there—

Rest in paradise.

Keith Elam (July 17, 1961 – April 19, 2010)