DX: Right. These guys weren't just studio rats, so to speak. How close did it get, not in terms of it being a feud or anything, but you think there would have been contact with people that could get Guru's mind right, old peers...
Tasha Denham: Honestly, pretty much, they kept themselves secluded from the Hip Hop world. They did not go out in New York City very often at all. It was a very rare occurrence, after Guru stopped drinking, that they would go out in New York. It wasn't because of Guru's drinking that they stopped going either.
When Guru stopped drinking, when he decided to stop drinking, he stopped drinking. Solar drinks Corona [beers] every single day. Solar would send Guru to the store to buy his Coronas for him. When Guru stopped drinking, he stopped drinking. Guru could have a bottle in his house, he wasn't gonna drink it. He made that decision. When they toured, he was in nightclubs every night. He stopped drinking.
I truly believe that...Solar made it that "there's so much hate out there for us. Being New York, Premier and them are out there, blah, blah, blah." So they didn't go. They didn't even take shows in New York most of the time. There was always an excuse. Shows in Boston, there was always an excuse as to why they weren't gonna do that show. All the tracks that had [featuring artists], they were all sent [to Guru and Solar]. They didn't do those in the studio, personally, with any of those artists. I cannot speak of one single artist that was actually in the studio with them. Most of the time, it was all through management, so on and so forth. So there weren't any opportunities for other artists to help bridge that gap because first of all, if Guru ever had the opportunity, Solar was standing right there.
Guru was never around anyone in the industry without Solar standing right next to him. He never did an interview unless Solar was right there. If somebody was to say, "Yo Guru, when's there gonna be another Gang Starr album?" Guru would just knock it down right away, because if that got brought up and that became an issue, it would be become a [problematic issue] between him and Solar.
Guru and I spoke privately about who was that one person who could help give us that one hit for 7 Grand. He and Fat Joe were always really close, back in the day, and that was one of the people I know he thought about reaching out to. I can't say that he ever did, out of fear that Solar wouldn't agree with it, and Solar would find a reason not to, and it would become a problem again.
DX: For the record, you and I spoke privately before this interview. There's a reason why it's not the first question, and that largely comes from respect for Guru and his legacy and distaste for some of the unfounded rumors running right now. However, I have to ask, as MTV's Sway Calloway so effectively worded last week to Solar, from your perspective, were Guru and Solar engaged in a relationship of "a romantic nature?"
Tasha Denham: I spent extreme amounts of time with both Guru and Solar, both individually and altogether. I traveled with them. At one point in time, I stayed in Guru's house for several weeks. I, myself, never saw any indication of it being a romantic or sexual relationship. I do have a child with [Solar]. I know that there's many men out there that are homosexuals that have children, so that does not say that he's not. I, however, do not believe he is. I never saw any indication of that. I never saw any type of affection in that way, if you want. I saw Guru interested in women. Obviously when I was around, Solar was with me at that point in time, but at the same time, I have my feelings that there were probably other women as well. I never got the feeling that it was homosexual. It angers me, the rumors that I hear out there - not from people like Sway. The way he asked, it was absolutely appropriate. He asked as a journalist. But I have read things, on the Internet of course, that have really disgusted me, because they're being spoken by people that don't have facts. They're just giving an opinion that they're stating as a fact, and I think they're forgetting that both of these men have children. Both of these men have families. Both of these men, especially Guru, has a legacy to be upheld. To sit and put something as trivial as that into the mix [with such little care], is foul. I don't think it's appropriate. If somebody has something that's concrete, then by all means. But if you're only speculating, and because they had a very close relationship, and bizarre relationship to most, that you can't believe that they could have the kind of relationship without it being sexual, I disagree.
I think the way Solar is, he needed it to be that way, because that's the way of control. You get somebody, and you distance them from everyone else. They see you on a daily basis. You're their man day in and day out, the first person you talk to in the morning, the last person you talk to before you go to bed, that's gonna be the person you're gonna turn to for everything. That's the way to best control someone. I don't ever believe it was sexual.
DX: As the details play out, a few people have commented that this is reminiscent of Selena Quintanilla's story. Did you sense a kind of [platonic] worship, on Guru, from Solar?
Tasha Denham: Absolutely not. It was actually the opposite. It was almost like because he had that legacy and all those years in music, it was like he had a distaste for [Guru] because of that.
DX: As a close associate, an employee, all these things. When was the first time you started to notice that things were not normal or healthy?
Tasha Denham: [Pauses] I think it came pretty early on, really. One of the defining moments to me when I knew something was...it was the way Solar spoke to Guru. It was always down to him. He really belittled him, and would do it in front of other people. This wasn't something he just did in private. He is a member of The [Five Percent] Nation of Gods and Earths, as is Guru. He would use that against him, to bring him down. It was important to both of them, very important. I believe Guru's a pleaser; he liked to make people happy. [Solar] would tell him that the Nation of Gods and Earths are ashamed of him, they're disappointed in him. That he doesn't live up to their teachings. I can't think of the word that they used. There was a lot of times they'd get into arguments over it. He'd sit, and Guru would try to defend himself, and Solar would just get more and more irate over it.
There was one night we were at Guru's house. I was about three months pregnant at the time. Guru kept defending himself. Guru actually stood up and kind of got in Solar's face about it. Next thing I know, Solar punched him in the face. From that point in time, he just started kicking him and hitting him. Guru was fighting back, he wasn't just sitting there being a punk, but at the same time, Guru had severe asthma. He didn't have his inhaler. He started really hyper-ventalating and really having a hard time, and Solar kept beating him. It wasn't a fight anymore, it was beating him. I felt that it was so bad that I got in between the two of them and broke it up, because I knew he wouldn't hit me of course. At that point in time, I was pregnant with his child.
Instead of stopping and making sure his partner, friend, "brother" - as he calls him was okay, Guru was sitting there saying, "I'm having an asthma attack. I need to go to the hospital. I think I'm gonna have a heart attack." He's bleeding, really shaking. Instead of stopping and calming himself down, [Solar] told me, "We're leaving," and goes and gets in the car and drives me back to the city. [He] didn't call and check on Guru, didn't make sure he was alright. That's probably one of the first times I was like, "Wow, this relationship is really unhealthy. It's a really sick relationship." After that, if I didn't physically see it myself...I saw [Guru] punched in the face numerous times with no provocation. It [would just be] that he'd get upset with something Guru would say and punch him in the face. I know he knocked a tooth out of Guru's. I know he gave him a black eye [so Guru would] have to wear glasses for photo-shoots and concerts. To listen to [Solar] talk to [Guru], you'd think he was talking to a child sometimes. Guru would tell me how bad that hurt him. He'd say, "Back when we were just friends, he never would have spoken to me this way. He always treated me with respect. Now that we're doing this record label, he has no respect. He treats me this way." There was a fear in him. Solar had distanced him from everything in his life: his family, his ex-partner, the whole Gang Starr Foundation and the music industry, really, as a whole. Guru spent a lot of time alone. A lot of time, if he wasn't with Solar, he was by himself. It was his son or Solar.
He would tell me that since the label wasn't as successful as they originally thought, he just wanted to go away. He just wanted to disappear. He wanted to go to Europe, or go to L.A. and do voice-over work and quit the whole music industry as a whole. He wanted to go back to being a regular guy, like a mailman. It got worse and worse.
Unfortunately, in about July of 2008 is when I was banished from the circle because I wouldn't follow orders that were given to me. At that time, Guru was instructed that he was to have no more contact with me. Without Solar's knowledge, we stayed in contact throughout 2008, till the end of 2008. I had a lot of business information that they didn't have access to, and Guru would need it for different things. He couldn't ask Solar to ask me, 'cause we didn't speak. He couldn't ask Solar [for permission] to speak to me, 'cause Solar would be angry that Guru didn't have [the information]. So he'd contact me. I knew that things weren't getting any better. He'd tell me that Solar was checking his emails. I was also informed that, the longer and longer it went, that Solar even took Guru's phone away for days at a time. Guru wasn't allowed to have a personal life at all. Even when they were on tour, he took Guru's inhaler from him and told him that he wasn't allowed to use it, because it was a crutch, and that he didn't really need it...It just breaks my heart that [Guru] was suffering that way.
DX: Premier said it prior to last week on his radio show, Guru was a tough dude. I knew that about him when I first crossed paths with him when Gang Starr was still in tact. You're guessing like I could guess, but what do you think it was that prevented him from really fighting back and/or walking away?
Tasha Denham: His own fear. His insecurities. His twisted sense of loyalty to Solar. He credited Solar with helping him stop drinking. Guru's town-home, several years ago, burned down. At that point in time, Solar let him come live at his house with his family. So Guru looked at things like that. Guru never took credit himself for quitting drinking. When he decided to stop smoking weed, he just did it. He did it. But yet, when he was still smoking weed, Solar controlled that. Solar kept the weed and would only give Guru what he wanted him to smoke.
[Guru] was dedicated to changing and making his life better. He was a vegetarian, he was working out daily. He was dedicated to his son, and he loved that kid like no other. He wanted to make sure he was healthy, to be around for his son.
I think that he was so scared that if he broke away from Solar that he just didn't know what was next. He didn't always have the support around him on a daily basis. He knew there were people out there that would help him. But when you're not hearing it daily, and you're not around people daily that are telling you these things, it's hard to prevent to break away from the person who is there on a daily basis. They're bringing out your insecurities. Instead of talking about your positives, they're bringing out your faults. He was just scared. I told him before I left, "Guru, you've got to get away. If you don't get away, he's gonna kill you." He was being so abusive to him, physically. Guru was not a punk. Guru would not have taken that from anyone else. No one else. No one. I can't even imagine.
Solar's a bully. He's all talk. He preys on people [that] he can bully. If you won't go along with Solar and you won't let him control you, he will have nothing to do with you. He couldn't control me, and that's why he got rid of me. As soon as [DJ] Doo Wop quit working for them, Guru wasn't allowed to speak to Doo Wop anymore. A man that had been in his life, on a daily basis for almost five years, and he'd known for almost 15, he wasn't allowed to speak to him anymore. Guru was so sick [from the cancer] by that point in time too.
DX: In the later years of their life, what would Guru and Solar do with their free time, especially since they were removed from the Hip Hop industry?
Tasha Denham: Guru's day-to-day basis was basically business all day and studio in night. He had to fit in time to see his son. There were times when he'd want to go to Boston to see his family - his mother was ailing as well, as his father's getting up there in age, and Solar would tell him he couldn't go because he needed to be in the studio. Yet, Solar, during the day, I'd talk to him on the phone, and he'd be laying out in the sun, tanning. Or he'd be working out in the gym. He'd work out like two hours a day. Or he'd be out to dinner with his family. He'd call and give us orders on what to do, work-wise, but who really ran 7 Grand Records? Guru put his heart and soul in that.
DX: Did the label have other employees, besides the three of you and the band?
Tasha Denham: Guru did a lot of the stuff. I filled in whatever role. There was times where Guru would refer to me as their "head of video promotions" or this or that, because there wasn't people there to take those roles on. I helped them with tour booking, routing tours, whatever needed to be done. Guru taught me so much, because I'd never done this. I kind of fell into this. I happened to have a knack for it, as far as their label was concerned. Guru was learning himself too. Because any other tour he'd ever done had always been through a major record label. He'd always had the support of a major. They also had Solar's now-come-to-find-out-wife [Denise Sandoval], who knows about me obviously, working as, I'm gonna say, their accountant. She'd fill in different places as well. Solar has an older daughter that would help out with some Internet stuff. A lot of the other stuff, we'd outsource. We worked with [4Sight Media] for a while, and [Public Wizard]. So there were people involved, but none more than the four of us - Solar, myself, Denise and Guru were.
