Keith Edward Elam, who performed as Guru, was born July 17, 1961, in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston, the son of a Boston Municipal Court judge and a Boston Public Schools library co-director. He graduated in business administration from Morehouse College in Atlanta and formed Gang Starr with DJ Premier in 1985, one of hip-hop's most respected and influential duos. Guru is a backronym for Gifted Unlimited Rhymes Universal.

While Gang Starr built its reputation on Premier's boom-bap production, Guru pursued an entirely separate project on the side: Jazzmatazz, a series combining live jazz performance with hip-hop production, the first of its kind. Jazzmatazz, Volume 1 (1993) brought in Donald Byrd and Roy Ayers as guest performers, both jazz-funk pioneers already profiled on this project; their own careers are covered in full in Donald Byrd's JazzProfiles.com profile and Roy Ayers's. Jazzmatazz, Volume 2: The New Reality followed with Ramsey Lewis and Branford Marsalis as guests.

Gang Starr continued releasing and touring through the early 2000s before tensions between Guru and DJ Premier led the group to part ways after 2003's The Ownerz. Guru kept the Jazzmatazz series going, releasing a fourth volume in June 2007. He went into cardiac arrest on February 28, 2010, fell into a coma following surgery, and died April 19, 2010, at age 48, from cancer.

Guru's Jazzmatazz series treated jazz not as a sample source but as a genuine live collaborator, pairing real jazz-funk pioneers with hip-hop production years before "jazz-rap" became a recognized subgenre, a direct and literal crossover between the two traditions this project traces.