RIP Guru

So barely have I finished posting a link to Guru's latest mixtape (well, less than 48 hours anyway...) when my newsfeed on Facebook starts to fill up with shouts out to the dearly departed.

I had vaguely heard that he was unwell but hadn't really followed up on it - to be absolutely honest I've always been a much bigger fan of DJ Premier than of his former lead MC - but this certainly represents sad news and the passing of a significant talent with enormous influence in the rap game.

As ever with the death of public figures, there's so much out there in the way of obituaries that it seems pointless for me to recap the facts here. I will note though that I was amused to find the first news result for his death on Google came from the Daily Mail. It's sad to read there how badly he'd fallen out with Premier... again, I don't follow rap gossip as a matter of course so that was news to me.

UPDATE:

There's some understandable disagreement from Premier's camp as to the authenticity of the letter that allegedly expressed the negative sentiments from Guru. The blame is being placed on Guru's DJ, Solar.

More on that (albeit without I think any explicit names named), plus some of the very best of Guru's back catalogue chopped up by Premier himself, on the DJ Premier Blog radio show here - I strongly urge you to check it out. Thanks to Kid Kanevil for the link.