Legendary Rapper Guru of Gang Star in Coma from Sudden Heart Attack

It’s hard to take in the news about Guru (Keith Elam) suffering from a heart attack and slipping into a coma while still in his 40s and not have in the backdrop all these other people both public and private who have dropped dead to sudden heart attacks, having seizures, strokes etc at a young age... Before I get to all that, lemme let folks know what's been passed along from Guru’s former partner DJ Premier…

He noted that yesterday Guru suffered a heart attack and later slipped into a coma and is scheduled to have surgery today. Craig G noted that Guru also had a stroke. In anycase none of this is good... We wish Guru the best of luck in pulling through. We are keeping him in our prayers. But like I said it's hard to simply isolate Guru’s health condition.

This year I lost two radio colleagues both in their early 50s to sudden heart attacks. Both Andrea Lewis and Gina Hotto were pillars in the activist community here in the Bay Area as well as radio hosts at KPFA.  We lost another comrade Javad Jahi, who did lots of work around the SF8 case, who passed after getting the H1N1 flu which compounded the walking pneumonia he had. Their deaths came within a couple of months of each others and left us shocked. It also made many of us take long hard looks at our lifestyles and lessen the stresses we constantly endure as people seeking social change in our communities. 

This weekend we learned that actor Gary Coleman who is also in his 40s.. suffered a seizure.. Details are still sketchy. But it's indicative of what is happening to way too many people. In the past two years two friends suffered minor strokes, and another friend completely shut down and was hospitalized over stress... These were folks who had just hit their 40s. My point here is that even though folks aren’t eating meat and not obese, which I believe was the case with Guru, doesn’t mean they are free of these types of health challenges...I have a friend who ran into Guru just two weeks ago and he was commenting on how he was feeling great and was in great health. I guess we can’t take any of this for granted...

Many of the folks I know don’t have health insurance and so they never get a check up and usually wind up going to the hospital when things are dire if they even do that... And even if they do have health insurance, many of those policies don’t cover things like stress due to financial upheavals... or stress from being pushed to the limit at your job... or even just having tremendous insecurities about keeping their jobs... All this adds up...

Not sure what else one can say except that we all had best start looking at health as a right and not a privilege... Let's pray for Guru and let's pray for ourselves so that we can stay healthy...

Here’s an interview I did with Guru a couple of years ago:

http://www.swift.fm/mrdaveyd/song/25904/  pt1

http://www.swift.fm/mrdaveyd/song/25905/  pt2

http://www.swift.fm/mrdaveyd/song/25906/ pt3