Dig Of The Day: Gang Starr – Jazz Thing (1990)

Back with some more realness. We have a really dope track by the legendary Gang Starr that was featured on the soundtrack to Spike Lee’s film Mo’ Better Blues.

DJ Premier:

Jazz Thing is what really got me my deal because Spike Lee saw our Words I Manifest video. He said he saw the Malcolm X resemblances, and he was making Mo’ Better Blues at the time. He bought our album, No More Mr. Nice Guy and he heard the song Jazz Music on that. He was doing Mo’ Better Blues about jazz, so he was like, ‘Yo, I like the record that ya’ll did, but ya’ll didn’t do an in-depth version of it. Why don’t you do a re-make and update it?

I got this guy who wrote this poem that has everything in there. His name is Lolis Eric Elie. The poem didn’t rhyme, so Guru just looked at that and took certain lines in that poem and added his little parts, and made it into a verse. And that was our thing, which caught the attention of Chrysalis Records. When they signed us, they thought we were going to do records like Jazz Thing all the time. When we were just doing that for Mo’ Better Blues.