Posted on 10/26/2009
In the movie High Fidelity, Jack Black’s spastic record store clerk raises the philosophical question of whether it’s best for a formerly great artist to flame out, or simply fade away. On Guru 8.0: Lost & Found, the former Gang Starr front man, and Jazzmatazz architect presents the possibility of achieving both simultaneously. If Lost & Found is the latest chapter in the former king of monotone’s slow descent into mediocrity that began on the final Gang Starr album, it also marks a sharp acceleration towards a terminal explosion.

The project starts off solidly enough, with Guru dropping his trademark plainspoken chin checks over an ominous mid-tempo track from his producer de jour, Solar, on the title track. But things quickly deteriorate as Solar begins to steer the sonics into more experimental, electronic territory, and Guru starts to sound increasingly lost, and eventually indifferent. “No Gimmick,” plays like just that, with Guru sleep walking through an insipid hook, over pseudo Asian instrumentation and knock-off Neptunes drum programing. Even more disconcerting is the sound of Guru’s gravelly rumble distorted by auto-tune on the synth happy, “It’s a Shock.” And when Guru struggles to keep up with the pulsating techno beat of “Divine Rule,” you cannot help put envision a distraught DJ Premier banging his forehead repeatedly on his SP 1200s.

Even Lost & Found’s highlights, like the boom-bap driven, “Best Of My Years,” simply serve to make long time listeners nostalgic for the days when a hungry Guru would rhyme with a youthful vengeance over the very best beats of that milieu. So perhaps, at the end of the day, every slow fade, if allowed to continue long enough, begets an eventual flame out. Or maybe it doesn’t matter, as at the end of the day, it all leads to the same place, and we all know what that is... Yes, the time may have come for Guru to holler at VH1 about a reality show.

-Jeff Harvey