Quotes from DJ Premier

Black men, we're known for getting into some drama with other black men, specifically black-on-black crime. We're used to the confrontational attitude.

God knows I'm a good guy, I'm known in the industry as a good guy. I'm not known to be a foul, evil dude that you've got to watch out for and my name is not muddy in the industry.

Anyone from our era knows that Guru was in every club and every bar and every spot. He could go all night, all day. And he would never be tired!

Guru's family gave me a piece of his ashes. I saw the gold box of ashes that his father had when we had the memorial service. He had a nice giant gold box that had his name on it. It was really nice. I know all the family members had ashes that they all spread and took on their own. So I said lemme ask is it cool if I have some.

I can't make the new generation like me, because they didn't grow up on me. So I stick to what I know.

A lot of Friday nights, Guru and I would go kick it with Biggie, since he was just three blocks down from us.

I love heavy metal, Metallica. I'm into Jefferson Starship and acid rock.

I remember going backstage on a random night and Kanye goes, 'Ayo Premier, I'm about to drop an album called 'College Dropout' and I'm rapping on the whole thing. And as I soon it drop it's gonna go double platinum.' I looked at him like, 'That's a bold statement to make if you never rapped before.'

All of our other albums were consecutive year after year: 'No More Mr. Nice Guy,' 'Step in the Arena,' 'Daily Operation,' 'Hard to Earn.' After 'Hard to Earn,' a four-year gap is a lot of not having Gang Starr music, as far as an album is concerned.

When I hold a gun, I know how to be sensible about it. I'm not holding it to wild out or just to shoot somebody because I'm mad at him. There's responsibility in buying that gun, and part of it is dealing with it like a man, and not dealing with it like an idiot, and getting behind iron bars for unnecessary reasons.

Every now and then there might be a beat someone turned down that I have as an unused beat. But everything that predominantly matches the artist in my 30 years of doing this, it was me walking in and sitting there with no drums, no samples, no nothing, and making a beat on the spot.

If I feel like something needs to be updated, I'll break my neck to outdo the original.

I came out with sounds that didn't sound like the usual hip-hop beat. I took that chance because no one would identify with me if I sound like somebody who's already out.

Jazz came from the streets, hip-hop came from the streets. It's just a different language. It's all borne out of hard times, struggle, and the fight to have equality and things be better.

The great thing was that both K-Ci and JoJo told me to not make an R&B track that was reminiscent of radio hit records. 'Make a Gang Starr track and we'll write our lyrics to that,' they told me. They couldn't stress it enough.

I like showing versatility.

I remember Bumpy Knuckles came in wearing all mink everything and said, 'Yo, when I spit my verse, I gotta pull my guns out and aim them.' He was serious! I told him that I was going to duck in the event that those guns accidentally went off. He pulled out the twin glocks, spit his verse in one take and said, 'I've got a meeting to go to' and left!

I've always cared about how certain songs fade into other ones and which songs should follow others. I studied that as a consumer and fan before I even got into music.

The radio stations strayed away from the raw hip-hop that they were playing in the early 1990s. We were like, 'All this watered down stuff is dominating the airwaves. We should make a record to make fun of that' and Guru's like, 'Let's call it 'Mass Appeal.''

Actually, for 'Family & Loyalty' I wanted Drake on the track but he was about to go on tour for his Scorpion album, so timewise it wasn't going to work.