DJ Premier

My mom's an art teacher, so I always had music in the house. She always had records, and I was mesmerized by the mechanics of how a turntable works.

I grew up in a town called Prairie View. It's like 45 minutes outside of Houston.

I was a heavy kid, even though I was into sports and very active.

Yeah, Travis Scott's dad taught me how to ride minibikes and how to repair the engines. His name's Jack Webster. Jack had a drum set and his brother had a bass. So I used to play with them, and that's what started me wanting to get into music and take it serious. And this is before rap.

My musical knowledge goes beyond hip-hop.

My crew used to listen to 'Taking It to the Top' by Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince.

When I miss Guru, I bump one of our records. Then I shed a tear and get back to work.

Jay Z and Biggie and Nas always listened to my direction. They listened and they applied it and I also listened to their opinions and that's why the records came out so good.

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.'

When I was 19 I had a record deal.

When I got my knee replacement and I opened my eyes straight outta surgery, the first person standing there was Guru's son.

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.

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.''

I'm all about competition; still am to this day. That's how you should be, but not with any malice. From Mike Will Made It to Boi-1da to Mike Zombie, I'm out to get 'em all and it's that friendly competition that keeps us all on our toes.

I'm a country boy.

I listen to my early Gang Starr interviews, I'm like, damn I was really trying to sound like a New Yorker then.

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.

Jazzmatazz' was Guru's thing, but Gang Starr was his baby. I don't care what anybody says. That dude loved Gang Starr.

I'm passionate about music in general, not just hip-hop. But when it comes to hip-hop, I don't wanna see it die culturally.

Guru had such a different voice from most people. Plus he had a Boston accent! So, I always made sure the beats were tailored to him.