Just Listen to This! - Gang Starr: Step in the Arena

Just Listen to This! - Gang Starr: Step in the Arena

As I began high school I was coming down off my first Hip Hop high that I experienced with Run DMC and the Beastie Boys. It continued with the likes of KRS-One, LL Cool J, Big Daddy Kane, Eric B and Rakim and others. Like anyone else back in those days, you were armed with a Walkman and a handful of tapes. The one question I would often hear from my fellow peers was, “What are you listening too?”. After answering I’d ask them the same question and soon enough we would be comparing what tapes we had on us at that given moment and then trading one or two cassettes between each other to borrow for the week.

I told you before in my last ‘Just Listen to This!’ post that it was usually my friends who kept me up on what was happening in the world of Hip Hop and told me what I needed to listen to. They would be up on the latest release, be it a single or a full LP, either bought from the record store, recorded off the radio or dub from another friend. Then one day my best friend came up to me with a purpose. He didn’t ask me any questions about who I was listening to. He just walked right up to me and shoved a cassette tape right in front of my face and said, “You need to check this out! This is some straight up B-Boy shit!” And there it was, Gang Starr’s Step in the Arena.

Step in the Arena (Image Source)

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Gang Starr: Emcee Guru (Rest in Peace) and DJ Premier
Step in the Arena, Released January 15, 1991
Listen to the Album here

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Gang Starr consists of two members. Guru, aka Keith Edward Elam and Dj Premier, aka Christopher Edward Martin. Guru passed away died April 19, 2010. They worked together from 1989 to 2003 before breaking up and put on Gang Starr six albums. They lived in Brooklyn, New York for their time together as Gang Starr. Guru is originally from Roxbury, Massachusetts U.S. and Premier is from Houston, Texas, U.S.

So let me begin by saying that when I began to listen to ‘Step in the Arena’ I wouldn’t say that I was blown away. Not at first. Instead I was mesmerized. I was completely caught off guard by what I was listening to. Hip Hop didn’t sound like this. It wasn’t hardcore or wierd. It was just incredibly different. What happened was I had been taken away on a musical journey, hypnotized at take off and then left refreshing sober at the end of that trip. Compared to other classic Hip Hop album with eardrum breaking bass and drums, loud vocals assaults, explicit language and controversial subject matter, Step in the Arena is the thinking man’s solace. Guru and Premier take their music seriously and without their egos getting in the way. The music here prove that the duo is confident enough in the skills they bring that they don’t have to try so hard to impress. With what seems like a mature approach to making Hip Hop music their musical efforts put Step in the Arena ahead of its time.

The reason why Step in the Arena sounds different from other Hip Hop records of its time is properly due to its heavy use of jazz samples. Step in the Arena may have not been the first Hip Hop act to sample jazz but they may have been the best to do it and the most notable in their field. That’s the one thing that is always brought up when talking about Gang Starr. Guru and Premier have always been associated with jazz/rap when their career began to take off. Not a bad thing necessarily but as they have stated they are a Hip Hop group first. They used jazz because they love the music and how it sounds. And due to the fact that they wanted to be original instead of sampling James Brown like everyone else. Besides there was nothing left to be sampled from James Brown that hadn’t been used before. Before Step in the Arena, Gang Starr released a single off their first album ‘No More Mister Nice Guy’ called ‘Words I Manifest’ in 1988. The track used a sample from a 1952 jazz song called ‘Night in Tunisia’ performed by jazz musician Dizzy Gillespie. Then in 1990 Gang Starr made the song ‘Jazz Thing’ for the soundtrack of Spike Lee’s movie ‘Mo Better Blues’. So when Step in the Arena was released, it seems that the group unintentionally cemented themselves in the classification of an jazz/rap group of an ‘alternative rap group’ rather than a hardcore hip hop act.

So in my opinion Step in the Arena is a jazz/rap album but not just because of what they sampled. The album doesn’t come off as an attempt to make incredibly jazzy hip hop or as a piece of work praising jazz’s legacy. It doesn’t have as many horns as a Pete Rock produced project and it doesn’t feature any jazz musicians like A Tribe Called Quest’s ‘Low End Theory’ (Jazz bassist Ron Carter played bass on Tribe’s song Verses from the Abstract). Yes, Premier used jazz samples to build his tracks but in my opinion his beats sound like he was influenced by the mood and the atmosphere of the jazz records he was exploring. Premier’s beats come off as a well put together composition with nothing clashing into each other hard enough to break up the musical union. All of the sampled music sound natural together. While some beats are calm and mellow, others are more energetic with faster, harder drums and soaring highs. No matter what, Premier has everything under control.

There are some moment where Step in the Arena has some intense moments in its music. In his early days Premier could bring the house down as his beats do today. One such example, and one of my favourite Gang Starr songs is ‘Who’s Gonna Take the Weight’. Premier, who relied on a lot of looping to make his beats before he mastered the chop, looped up a funky bassline for this track. Then he sampled and played a piercing horn throughout most of the song, which Premier states in an interview, was influenced by Public Enemy’s work. Premier takes it a step further with the horn sample and created a scratch route that he displays in the middle and the end of the song. In doing so Premier demonstrates that a little improvisation, like that of a jazz musician’s skill, he can tame any sound and makes it sound funky.

Premier doesn’t stop showcasing his dominance over hard hitting beats. The song ‘Take a Rest’, starts up with an energy building intro using horns and a drum loop that leads to a track worthy enough for any battle emcee to rage across lyrically. What happens next is that the music starts to change up. Were introduced to a deep bassline, a sample that could pass as an electric piano keys and Premier scratching on the hook and by the end of the track Premier loops up some horns to take us out on a high note. The next example of Premier’s grip on slamming tracks is ‘Check the Technique’. Premier doesn’t use as many samples as he did on ‘Take a Rest’, instead were treated to the delightful highs of violins and the moving rhythms of a break-beat. Premier drops the violins on the chorus and at different spots throughout the track, leaving the listener suspended in anticipation, wondering just what is going to happen next.

Premier provided Step in the Arena with a lot of laid back tracks that show off early signs of his mastery when it comes to producing beats. If you listen to the albums more relaxed songs, you hear that Premier knows how to pick samples. It must be the Dj in him that gives him the ability to find the right groove to sample and turn into a beat. This is what I meant earlier about how the jazz albums that Premier was listening may have influenced him to produce what he made. Most of the tracks on Step in the Arena feel like a orchestrated jazz session that was recorded and crafted in the studio, with every sound organized and in its proper place.

Gang Starr (Image Source)

With tracks like ‘Form of Intellect’, ‘Execution of a Chump (No More Mr. Nice Guy Pt.2)’ and ‘Beyond Comprehension’, Premier constructs each with its own detailed soundscape and mixes all the activity together seamlessly. Meaning the samples used to produce these tracks sound like they all came off either the same song or the same album that Premier was using. Everything works without sounding forced. In today’s world of Hip Hop, and even years before Gang Starr was in the scene, the drums in Hip Hop were loud and hard. On Step in the Arena, there are examples where the drums ‘play nice’ with all the samples their paired with and aren’t trying to beat you down. However for the sake of the boom bap some tracks have an 808 kick here or there on the song while the snare sounds as if it’s left alone without any help to make it stand out. I believe Premier realized there was no need to overemphasize their presence on the track as everything sounded perfect. Over all, it seems that Premier just let the music he sampled do its thing for the most part and took control when he needed to.

After this analysis I’m left thinking if whether or not this was Premier’s best work. I’m not sure if it’s fair for me to say it is but I feel it’s up there among his best efforts. It certainly proves that he has an ear for music and picking the right samples to use for his production. One thing that separates Step in the Arena from Premier’s later work is that he later learned to chop up his samples as opposed to using just loops to make beats. As well Premier’s drum techniques changed along the way to programed kicks and snares and less breakbeats. As for Step in the Arena being Premier’s best work, I don’t think I can say in all fairness that it is due to the fact that his methods and technique in beat production have changed since then. But I believe it maybe his best in terms of musical accomplishments on an entire Gang Starr album. After all the album helped to bridge the gap between jazz and hip hop and help usher in a new genre of music. And I think that’s impressive for a hip hop producer in complish early in his career when his talents for sample manipulation haven’t been realized yet.

Guru of Gang Starr (Image Source)

Now that I’ve written about the backbone of Step in the Arena, allow me to talk about the voice of that classic album. And what a voice it was. There’s nobody in Hip Hop that sounds like Guru, not even close. His dead serious delivery, distinctively monotone voice, his blunt and straight to the point lyricism, Guru was set to show the world why he was someone you had to listen to and respect. And he did it by showing the audience respect and most of all intelligence.

When Step in the Arena was released, Hip Hop had its share of conscious rap groups. Two of the biggest at that time, Public Enemy and KRS-One, had influenced others to do the same and that was to make music with a message. They properly influenced other artists to put at least one positive song of their albums, I can think of a few from the likes of Big Daddy Kane, Rakim and EPMD who had some good examples. In Guru’s case, most of the lyrics he penned for Step in the Arena dealt with social issues and street stories to intelligent commentary about the world around us and how to deal with it.

Take Guru’s voice, how he held himself in the public eye and the nature of his lyrics and you have yourself a street savvy, man of the people, emcee who’s very aware of all that’s around him. At the time he was a young man with the elder’s wisdom and an old soul. He didn’t have to yell at you to make you listen, his voice persuaded you to lend a ear. His rhymes made you take whatever what he spoke about seriously and not to forget the lessons he was offering. He was never preachy, instead he shared his opinions, thoughts and experiences to guide you through your troubles. Guru exudes class with each syllable, even when he sharing personal drama on ‘Execution of a Chump (No More Mr. Nice Guy Pt.2)’, battling wack emcees on ‘Take a Rest’ or expressing his frustration with obsessive girls on ‘What You Want This Time’ and even when he’s rhyming about heartache on the melancholy ‘Love Sick’. Guru’s rhyme style did change down the road but the approach on Step in the Arena matches perfectly with Premier’s production style.

Gang Starr (Image Source)

What I think reeled me and others in to Guru was actually his energy. What I mentioned before in regards to what made up Guru as a lyricist and an emcee might not excite the average rap fan at first. Not if your looking for the average battle rap/gangster/drug dealer rap group. Guru carried himself as a mature and laid back individual. But when you listen to Guru on Step in the Arena and think about it, he’s actually going for broke and rapping his ass off. He’s no Big Pun or Kool G Rap when it comes to rapid fire rhymes or a quick thinking off the dome freestyler like Black Though or Supernatural. He’s more of a strategist who’s explaining that he’s going to take you down and how he’s going to pull it off. Here are a few of Guru’s rhymes from the title track of Step in the Arena,

“Once you step in the arena, cheater; you're gonna be a-
mazed when you gaze at the armor on this leader
Fully clad and glad to find a cause, I won't pause
Fear is a joke, slowpoke, I'm like claws
that'll rip 'cause your gift, is merely flesh
Superficial and I wish you, would give it a rest
But if you don't, I'll unsheath my Excalibur
Like a noble knight, so meet ya challenger
A true hero, while you're a through zero
Getting beat to a pulp so that you can't run for help….”

“But now I must bow to the crowd as I stand proud
Victorious, glorious, understand now
cause battles and wars and much fights I have been through
One MC got beheaded, and you can too
Forget it, cause you'd rather be just a spectator
An onlooker, afraid you may get slayed or
struck by a blow, from a mic gladiator….”

Guru delivers lyrics in the tone of a mob boss who has already decided your fate. I believe Guru knew that if was to try rhyming any other way, it wouldn’t work with his voice. His delivery makes sure you hear every word he says and you can’t help but listen. It’s this approach that brings a strong sense of confidence and maturity to Step in the Arena. Guru knows he has an unique voice and how to use it. He doesn’t have to try too hard to get his point across. It’s like he’s having an intelligent conversation with the listener and he’s aware that the best way to get their attention is to speak quietly and give them something worthwhile to listen to.

Gang Starr's 'Just to Get a Rep' single (Image Source)

I’ve described Step in the Arena as if every single song is flawless and as good as the last joint. But it’s their lead single that caught everyone off guard and turned their heads. Their lead single ‘Just to Get a Rep’ is a tale about the trills and consequences of the crime life in the inner city. It’s a quick and tragic example of a life cut short due to the envy felt for another person material wealth. It starts off with a young man, referred to as a stickup kid, who is armed and sees someone wearing an expensive rolex watch and a gold chain that he wants for himself. The stickup kid gets his crew to help him rob the items so he can take them for himself. In the aftermath of the robbery the stickup kid then shoots the victim, leaving him for dead and his reputation increases in a positive way for him. Now the video version of this song is different as it has a third verse not on the album. This time the ending is different and the victim doesn’t perish. Instead hecomes back for his stolen items and to exact revenge and takes down the stickup kid once and for all.

Guru crafts the narrative with simple yet precise lyrics, delivered in an relaxed flow. First setting the scene and then recounting the entire story from beginning to end with the seriousness of a street veteran who seen the same scenario one to many times. Guru’s voice lacks the emotion that one might feel if caught up in the situation described in Just to Get a Rep. Instead he almost sounds indifferent, as though numb to the violence that lurks in his community. The effectiveness of this approach drives the point home that brothers where willing to die in the streets for quick cash and to earn a reputation of one that shouldn’t be trifled with.

The beat for Just to Get a Rep is an erie track that carries the promise of malice intentions. It's haunting instrumentations are carried over a funky bassline and a simple beat. In straightforward fashion, Premier scratches in a Greg Nice sample “Stick up kids is out to tax” that informs the listener immediately of the danger around the corner. In my opinion it’s one of Premier’s best beats and perhaps the best one on Step in the Arena. I don’t think Guru would of been able to rhyme about anything else on that beat except for the depressing story of young black men murdering each other for material items.

Just to Get a Rap was a hit and is a classic. It’s a gangsta rap song without the explicit language, without the rapper on a murder spree, there isn’t even a hint of glorification coming from the emcee involved and the song ends on a depressing note. Guru doesn’t need to include a moral of the story at the end of the song. It’s all clear in the final conclusion that living this way will only lead to a fatal ending. It’s is a straight up story about the reality of living in the streets and what motivates others to do what they feel they must do. On an album packed full of well constructed songs, Just to Get a Rep in Step in the Arena’s magnum opus and the song that would inspire their later work for the rest of their career as Gang Starr.

Gang Starr's Logo (Image Source)

Step in the Arena is a world of sounds all on its own and there really isn’t anything else like it. Like I said before Step in the Arena helped start and push the jazz/rap era to this day. It inspired music makers, spawned many imitators and most importantly proved how well jazz and hip hop can together work in unison. Whether it was jazz musicians working directly hip hop producers (Like Guru did for his Jazzmatazz series) or hip hop artists seeking out old records in the jazz section for unused samples to make their tracks as dope as could be. Today it is common place to hear the fusion of the two musical genres. So if you decide to take a step into the world of Gang Starr, Step in the Arena is the best place to start and well worth the listen. Besides being an incredible album of the last century and a piece of musical and hip hop history, it’s just good music and its rep has held up over the years.

Peace!

Image Source
Listen to Step in the Arena here