Piénsalo dos veces

Donald Byrd

The death of legendary hard bop trumpeter and composer Donald Byrd last Monday has got me revisiting some of my favorite Byrd tunes, which either have been sampled by hip-hop artists or were collabos with the late Guru as part of the rapper's Jazzmatazz series. Heads like myself are more familiar with Byrd's jazz-funk/Mizell Brothers/Blackbyrds period than his hard bop period because the former was what beatmakers often loved to shape their tunes from. According to the liner notes of Blue Note's '90s Blue Break Beats series (a bunch of compilations that are a great introduction to the sounds of Byrd and other jazz legends), "The Byrd man is the most sampled of all Blue Note artists."

Producer J-Swift memorably sampled Byrd's 1967 track "Beale Street" in the Pharcyde's "Oh Shit," which kicks off one of my all-time favorite hip-hop albums from start to finish, Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde, an enjoyable (and self-deprecating, which was rare in hip-hop back then) masterwork that celebrated the 20th anniversary of its release late last year. But the Byrd track I'm fondest of is the gorgeous tune "Think Twice."

Guru (1961-2010)

"Lemonade was a popular drink and it still is/I get more props and stunts than Bruce Willis."
--Guru, "Dwyck"

The Gang Starr MC with the love-it-or-hate-it monotone delivery and a preference for "an alternative to James Brown samples" has died way too young from cancer. Guru's star-studded Jazzmatazz albums were among my favorite CDs during my university years--I remember trying to finish writing a term paper or two to the sounds of Volume II: The New Reality. Jazzmatazz introduced my ears to cats like Donald Byrd and Roy Ayers, who performed alongside the Brooklyn rapper, an admirer of their jazz albums since his childhood in Boston.

Together with DJ Premier, Guru (birth name: Keith Elam) recorded such hip-hop classics as "Manifest," "Just to Get a Rep," "Take It Personal," "Mass Appeal" and my favorite Gang Starr track, "Dwyck," an endlessly quotable collabo with Nice & Smooth ("I left my Philly at home/Do you have another?/I wanna get blunted, my brother").

Gang Starr's sole original contribution to movie soundtracks was the Mo' Better Blues end title theme "Jazz Thing."