DJ Premier has recruited the late Guru’s son Keith Casim and internet personality Spice Adams for the new Gang Starr video “Bad Name.” Shot on location in Chicago, the visual begins with Casim sitting in a barber’s chair, chopping off his signature dreads.
From there, Preemo passes the torch to Casim to spit his father’s lyrics throughout the video.
“I initially wanted ‘Bad Name’ to be the first single that officially brought Gang Starr back,” Premier said in a press release. “Since the inception of video music channels, I have always paid very close attention to the direction and production elements. I love coming up with concepts, and I already had a vision for ‘Bad Name.’
“I wanted a fun video with Spice Adams and for Guru’s son to play his father in the video — and then never do that again. We ended up going with ‘Family and Loyalty’ with J. Cole as the first single and it worked out perfectly, as Keith was able to get more comfortable being in front of the camera and used to the process.”
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“Bad Name” comes from Gang Starr’s historic album One Of The Best Yet, a 16-track trip down memory lane.
In a recent interview with HipHopDX, Premier opened up about making the album and revealed he’d felt Guru’s presence in the studio “every day.”
“I did a ritual where I burned sage because that’s known to ward off evil energy,” Premier explained. “Then, I would bless his ashes with the sage and bless his picture. If you saw the picture in The New York Times article that’s in that frame, that’s the picture that sits on top of our control board. I would let the smoke billow all throughout the picture and just kind of fog up the whole glass frame.
“I’d take his ashes and rub it against the picture and I would always say, “Get everybody evil away from us. Get everybody evil away from us. Get Solar away from us” and not even to keep bringing him up because I don’t really want to speak of him like that, but that was one of the things I prayed for because the energy has always been bad. Bad energy.”
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Check out the “Bad Name” video up top.
