When you goin’ down 37th Street with no lights in Hell’s Kitchen area, it was grimy. So there was heroin addicts everywhere just floating around, needles, crack vials, and no lights. I remember Heavy D, rest in peace great brother-Heavy D was like, ‘Yo, can we not work here when we ?’ ‘Cause it was a heroin block. There were a lot of rappers that were scared to enter- known rappers that were scared to come there. The building was sold, causing the studio to close in early 2015, when Preemo moved operations to Queens. crew and Tony Touch were also fixtures there. Founded by Douglas Grama and David Lotwin, DJ Premier would eventually purchase and renamed it HeadQCourterz, after Gang Starr’s fallen affiliate. One of them would always be in there it was just a circular thing with us being in the same spot all of the time…Funkmaster Flex would come in at like two in the morning and start sessions.” In the late 1990s, JAY-Z was still booking time at the weed-scented studio, with Philly blunts in its spindle vending machine. “Da Beatminerz were always there with Black Moon, Smif-n-Wessun, and Heltah Skeltah. Even outside of Gang Starr’s recording cycles, it was commonplace to find Premier or Guru creating, relaxing, or napping on the dark green leather couch in the cramped lab. By the recording of Moment Of Truth, Gang Starr had been entrenched in the Midtown Manhattan fourth floor B Room for five years. We had the pool table we used to shoot dice all the time, for thousands of dollars,” Premier recalls. The two men maintained their individual personal lives while using D&D as a gathering place. “That was not difficult,” says DJ Premier of no longer sharing an address. Nice Guy and 1994’s Hard To Earn, the pair shared a residence.

Moment Of Truth is the first Gang Starr album released at a point where Guru and DJ Premier did not live together. They had certain formulas, but they had been very clearly updated. The samples used for beats and the lyrical themes had evolved greatly from Gang Starr’s early work. That’s always been our formula.” Preemo also says that the (then) two volumes of Jazzmatazz allowed the group to step beyond its “Jazz Rap” label. We got back together to do Moment Of Truth. I started doing more production, did Jazzmatazz. “Every year we dropped an album, then we took a four-year-break no album. The Set-Up To Moment Of Truth & “Updating The Formulas”: Twenty years later, with a portrait of Guru over his shoulder on the boards, DJ Premier opens up about what was going on behind the scenes and shares several things that even diehard fans may never have otherwise known. They delivered a beloved, unifying, and honest body of work that rallied the supporters. In the end Gang Starr achieved a gold-standard without compromising its underground royalty. As with any season of change, there were hurdles, hardships, and profound loss of loved ones.

Moreover, two pillars of Hip-Hop opened up their cypher to outsiders and expanded their fiercely loyal family. At a time when Guru was facing serious time, the judicial artwork was no accident.

Guru and Preemo’s bond was challenged (though few knew it at the time), but it refused to break.

As its title suggests, it was a crucial time for Gang Starr, both internally and within the ever-changing Hip-Hop climate. There, the co-creator of Moment Of Truth shared some new information about a game-changing LP. The night before the album’s 20th anniversary, Ambrosia For Heads joined Preemo in his Queens, New York HeadQCourterz Studio. Gang Starr’s fifth album helped change things. You’d think we were platinum artists that sold millions, but we weren’t even on that radar,” admits DJ Premier 20 years after release. Guru and DJ Premier had taken four years since giving the masses their seminal album, Hard To Earn, and Hip-Hop was at a pivotal place in history. On March 30, 1998, Gang Starr stepped forth with Moment Of Truth.

Gang starr moment of truth