'One Of The Best Yet' - Gang Starr - Album Review

Music has a martyr complex. Releasing bodies of work from artists posthumously that reconceptualise the creative’s identity is a tale as old as time. The use of an iconic voice can represent a time and a place, but in post-mortem sampling it is often to evoke something new. If you asked hip-hop fans who they considered to be the most famous rapper of all time, a lot would probably put forward the late greats Tupac and Biggie. These answers are no doubt partly due to their great music, but also a result of how the embodiment of these two artists were framed after their deaths. In the case of Tupac, records sales went from 5.9 million at the time of his death to over 36.5 million in the US. Both have a vast number of posthumous releases with artists they never met in real life. Facebook and Instagram accounts flourish for the pair who would have struggled to wrap their heads around the idea of social media. As a result, they are used to project ideologies and art they have never signed off on, transcending both time and place in the process.

Personally, I often feel frustrated by musicians who have their work released without their consent. As much as I would love to hear, for example, Mac Miller’s reported Circles to follow up Swimming, I concede that if he wanted us to hear it, he would have released it himself. As Alan Clayson puts it, “before they had a chance to dry their tears, music industry moguls would be obliged to meet the demand kindled by tragedy and rush release the product while the corpse was still warm”. Thus, when the resurrection of Gang Starr was announced I was not totally enthused. Their 1998 release Moment of Truth is one of my favourite all time hip-hop albums and, not only did I not want the legacy to be ruined, I did not want Gang Starr to become something it never was. My worry was that the music itself would not be the product, but instead identifying messages in the music that was not the original focus.

Within seconds of the album starting, it is clear it was designed as a nostalgia trip for old fans of Gang Starr and not so much a newer audience. Even the title, One Of The Best Yet, is a throwback to a line from Moment of Truth’s opener ‘You Know My Steez’ that was later scratched into their classic single ‘Full Clip’. The introduction to the album sets the tone, as a live call and response interpolating lyrics from their track ‘DYWCK’ is played over a host of ever-changing classic Gang Starr beats. Unexpectedly hearing the instrumental to ‘Full Clip’ immediately put a grin on my face. Whilst I was barely able to walk and talk when this song was released, I have replayed it countless times and consider it to have one of the greatest hip-hop beats of all time.

The first new Gang Starr track ‘Lights Out’ is the pair in its prime. Menacing piano chords, slapping drums and sampled orchestras, with an M.O.P. feature to seal the deal, all reminded me why so many hip-hop heads loved the Guru-Premier partnership. In this regard, One Of The Best Yet does a lot of things right to please fans of boom-bap and 90s rap. Scratched hooks on intros, outros and hooks across the album are a great touch, whilst many of the features are nostalgic throwbacks to how East Coast rap once was. Tracks such as ‘Bad Name’ include hauntingly prophetic statements from Guru like ‘You used to support your fam off of this/Now you can't even buy SPAM off of this’ that shed light on streaming-era royalty payments, whilst old audio of comedian Sinbad casts doubt on the longevity of hip-hop. Guru is also gripping story-teller and the Q-Tip-featured ‘Hit Man’ brilliantly reels in the listener, painting a great picture from the perspective of a paid killer.

There are, however, quite a few shortcomings on this album. In the case of a resurrection album, there is not a lot of point putting work on there that is not up to scratch. It is not like either members of Gang Starr need this album to further their careers, so in theory it should only be some of their best work with no room for filler. Yet this album seems to use a lot of rejected work that was probably not deemed good enough in the first place. For example, Guru’s flows can often be lazy or drawn out and, whilst there are some fantastic instrumentals, the beats stretching from ‘Business Or Art’ to ‘Take Flight’ are not some of Premo’s best. It begs the question as to why some of these Guru verses or DJ Premier beats were not released while they were active; if they weren’t it is probably because the pair didn’t deem them to be good enough, as the Gang Starr franchise ended long before Guru’s death.

One of the things that I find most frustrating about the album is the J. Cole feature on ‘Family and Loyalty’. As the lead single on One Of The Best Yet, its purpose was to show how timeless the pair’s music is and that modern rappers are still influenced by the work of Gang Starr. Although it is not a bad song and J. Cole does a decent job on his feature, he is the wrong fit for what this song represents. Cole does have a history of boom-bap but it is not something I would instantly associate him with and he often tries to adapt to flows and rhymes that don’t bring out the best in him on this track. It is telling that DJ Premier recently revealed he wanted Kendrick to fill this feature slot but couldn’t get him and instead had to settle for Cole. Personally, I would have vouched for someone such as Joey Bada$$, a modern rapper that made his career from East Coast beats similar to Gang Starr’s that would have bridged the gap between the old and the new.

The best way I can summarise this album is to relate it to the recent releases Toy Story 4 and El Camino, the new Breaking Bad follow up feature. Both followed the conclusions of two of the greatest franchises of all time that had some of the most satisfying conclusions imaginable. Fans of both Toy Story and Breaking Bad collectively crossed their fingers when these sequels were announced, praying they weren’t going to go down the Star Wars route and tarnish their respective legacies. They came out and, in my opinion, were big successes. Granted, they did not reach the emotional peaks of their predecessors, but they were highly enjoyable films made for the older fans in the same way as One Of The Best Yet. The reason for their success, without dropping Toy Story and Breaking Bad spoilers in a Gang Starr album review, was because they did not treat these films as a sequel but more as an epilogue. Did Bonnie love the toys in the same way Andy did? Where did Jesse end up driving to? Fans did not need to know what happened next, but were not against finding out.

In regard to Gang Starr, the question they ask is whether hip-hop’s legacy, as well as their own, stood the test of time. The problem is that we lived through it and already know the answer. We know that hip-hop grew to become the most popular genre in the world and we know that Grammy-winning hip-hop albums still take massive influence from the history of black music. But unlike Toy Story 4 and El Camino, there was no character development or new information that made us view Gang Starr’s earlier work differently. While the aforementioned films complete their final chapters, One Of The Best Yet simply tugs on the heartstrings of Gang Starr’s fans to remind them how good things used to be like a reminiscent Manchester United fan or a MAGA hat. In this sense, the album could never have truly won me over. By sticking to their guns One Of The Best Yet comes across as breathing artificial life into a finished product, whilst changing their sound too drastically would have stained their legacy. I am happy that the original fans got one last hoorah with the group, but as a late-comer with hindsight I didn’t find it had the necessity to be worth it.

6.5/10