Mr. Lif and Stu Bangas have formed a new group: Vangarde.
“It definitely emanated from my reverence for Gang Starr, the void in my life from Guru leaving us and just missing that,” Lif told hhdx. “This is not to disrespect any other producer and MC combination because I can honestly say I’m not the most privy to what everyone else is doing right now, but I just wanted to, in my own way, be some sort of iteration of that and pay homage through just trying to make classic records.”
“For a couple of years, I’ve been thinking like, ‘OK, it needs to be someone who’s just consistently dope, someone who’s really prolific,’” he continued. “As an MC, I’ve been linked up with producers every now and then that just they don’t produce that much. They’ll throw you a beat here, throw you a beat there, but you might wait a whole year before you have even an EPs worth of material.
When I started building with Stu, it was like, wait a minute, everything that he’s sending me is barbaric. He’s sending me stuff like every day. We kept building and I think I might have even put pen to paper on a couple more songs. The whole time I was analyzing and it was in the midst of making this EP that we made together that I was like, ‘Yeah, we’re Vangarde.’ That’s respect to Stu’s skills and work ethic.”
Now, with a self-titled EP due sometime this year, Lif and Stu have shared two songs: “Basquiat” and “The New Normal.” Both available below.
