The following is a Designated Cheerleader piece by @sipologyblog for the Best Album of 1991 tournament. I hope you enjoy it, and I hope you follow the link to vote in the tournament. Thanks!

In Hip Hop, conversations about greatest MC of all time are always contentious, but when it comes to Hip Hop producers, there seems to be more agreement. The same names always come up. Some are household names, some aren’t, but one is always at the top or very close to it: DJ Premier (Christopher Martin), one half of Gang Starr. Part of what makes DJ Premier great is how every track he produces is crafted to fit the MC’s voice. His work with Nas, Biggie, and Rakim are legendary, but the man whose voice he knew best of all was the other half of Gang Starr, Guru. Guru (Keith Elam) is probably not on many people’s top ten lists of MCs, but he stands out in his era (one in which there was a lot of competition!) for his unique low monotone voice and extensive vocabulary. Together, they made Gang Starr once of the most important and beloved underground Hip Hop groups of all time.

Step in the Arena is their second album. The first, No More Mr. Nice Guy, was a strong debut with a standout single “Manifest” and a DJ track that might be the best one ever made: “DJ Premier in Deep Concentration”. As strong as that album was, Step in the Arena is the one that really made Gang Starr’s rep, as it were.

The hallmarks of Premier’s style are in full bloom right away. Jazz and soul samples are so seamlessly blended that it can be hard to imagine they began life in different songs. The hooks are almost always heavily scratched vocal samples from other Hip Hop records, ranging from the famous to the obscure. How could one man’s brain hold so much music? It’s beyond comprehension.

One of the great things about Gang Starr albums is that they are truly albums. They’re perfectly sequenced with no filler or throwaways, not even the crew songs of later albums. That can make it hard to pick out highlights, but I’ll do my best.

The opening track “Name Tag” transports the listener into the sonic world of the record, like the overture of an opera. After a series of increasing strong tracks, #5 “Who’s Gonna Take the Weight?” explodes out of the gate with “I was raised like a Muslim/prayin’ to the east…”. The song acts as a sort of manifesto for Guru at this early stage in his career, although he would have to clarify that opening line on the next record.

“Check the Technique” is the next up tempo banger, full of bravado and an enormous boom bap beat topped with a tense, furious string sample. “Take a Rest” is similar in spirit, but constructed out of entirely different elements. Premier pushes Guru’s typically laidback delivery with a quick, noisy, Bomb Squad-esque beat with very good results.

The climax of the album is the song that was Gang Starr’s breakthrough hit, “Just to Get a Rep”, which would go on to be their signature. Unusually for Preemo, the beat is constructed almost entirely out of one song, a slightly sped up segment of electronic music pioneer Jean-Jacques Perrey’s song E.V.A. Guru is in storyteller mode, telling a tale of street tragedy and the futility of embracing violence for the sake of street cred and material gains.

 While Guru and Premier didn’t fit the stereotype of the dashiki-clad Afrocentric Hip Hop artists of the time, they were pro-Black to the core and throughout their career they managed to successfully balance street style with positivity. They’re considered one of the greatest New York groups of the 90s, despite the fact that neither Guru nor Premier were actually from New York. Both arrived in New York in the late 80s seeking a career in Hip Hop, Guru from Boston and Primo from Houston. They would go on to produce four more studio albums together (3/4 of which are undisputed classics) in addition to numerous side projects, including Guru’s Jazamatazz and The Gang Starr Foundation, a loose crew of MCs, including Jeru the Damaja, Bumpy Knuckles aka Freddie Foxxx, Krumb Snatcha, and others. Gang Starr split up for good in 2006, and Guru died of cancer in 2010. DJ Premier continues to produce and perform around the world. In 2019 Premier released a posthumous Gang Starr album entitled One of the Best Yet.

So why should you vote for Step in the Arena? You should vote for it because Gang Starr was unique and great, and for all of transformational contributions Guru and Premier made to New York underground Hip Hop during their run, and to honor Guru’s legacy. Most of all, you should vote for it because it’s a great album. It’s a showcase for Preemo’s production prowess and Guru is always a pleasure to listen to. In his words, “we don’t make wack tracks.” Thank you for reading!

-- @sipologyblog