Gimel Androus Keaton, better known by his stage name Young Guru, is an American audio engineer, record producer, disc jockey, and record executive from Wilmington, Delaware. In 2019, Young Guru won a Grammy Award for Best Urban Contemporary Album for mixing the albumEverything Is Love by The Carters. He has worked with many leading recording artists, most notably Jay-Z, and an April 2015 Wall Street Journal profile called him "the most famous and successful engineer in the history of hip-hop".
Career
Young Guru acquired his moniker as a teen when he taught African history classes at a community center. He also used his name when he began working as a DJ while still a teenager. In the early 1990s Young Guru bought his own amplifiers, lights and microphones which sparked his interest in music technology. While a student at Howard University, he saw the early development of Bad Boy Records and landed some of his early engineering jobs. He began DJing in Washington DC in 1996, where he met singer/rapper Nonchalant, who had a top 20 single at the time, and became her tour DJ. Young Guru, who had taken piano lessons as a child, used the money he received from the tour to fund a six-month music recording course at Omega Recording Studios in Rockville, Maryland, which had a great impact on him. After Omega, Young Guru engineered Nonchalant's second album, which was never released, but the producer, Chucky Thompson recognized the young engineer's potential and invited him to come and work with him in Washington DC. In 1999, Young Guru went independent and moved to New York, where he worked with Deric "D-Dot" Angelettie on his Madd Rapper project and with Memphis Bleek. The latter was signed to Roc-A-Fella Records, which led to Young Guru meeting Jay-Z. Over the years Young Guru has been a major part of several artists' careers in addition to Jay-Z, including Beyoncé, Rihanna, Ludacris, Ghostface Killah, Freeway, Cam'ron, Redman & Method Man, Mariah Carey, Pete Rock, Fabolous, Talib Kweli, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony and T.I. He was the tour DJ for the 'Watch The Throne' world tour featuring Jay-Z and Kanye West, and also for JAY-Z's '4:44' Tour In August 2013, Young Guru taught an audio mixing class via Skillshare. The video lessons, filmed at SAE Institute New York, were titled "Sound Check: The Essentials of DIY Audio Mixing." In April 2015, Young Guru was named the Director Of Operations at 9th Wonder's record label It's a Wonderful World Music Group. Young Guru has also lent instruments to the youth-oriented digital audio workstation, EarSketch. In November 2018, Young Guru was credited with mixing the latest Meek Mill album Championships.
