The six men that make up the visionary hip-hop collective Jurassic 5 (a member joined the group after the name had already been established) are both skilled time travelers and professors of the present. Injecting the wisdom of hip-hop’s original torchbearers with a taste for pushing the sonic envelope, J5 is a soul-infused group of urban Magellans. On its new record, Power In Numbers, it spends much of its time exploring the murky waters of its craft, connecting Marvin Gaye with the Native Tongues and DJ Shadow, proving that “Planet Rock” is indeed round. Any true fan of hip-hop’s earlier permutations shouldn’t miss Jurassic 5’s upcoming show at Fredonia State University. It will be a celebration of rap’s magical tendency to free your mind, with your ass following closely behind.
But don’t expect an entirely “old skool” kind of party. When MC Chali 2na (one of four rappers in the group) verbalizes the J5’s desire to “take rap back to its primitive state” on Power In Numbers, he’s not talking about doing Sugar Hill Gang covers. “I’m talking about ethics,” said 2na in a recent telephone interview. “Not necessarily the simple rhymes. I’m talking about a time when cats didn’t have videos, when cats didn’t have million dollar record contracts, or at least a conglomerate behind them that had a million dollars—when all they had was their skills, their performance and the love they put into their craft.”
Chali and the rest of the group (MCs Marc 7even, Zaakir and Akil, and DJs Cut Chemist and Nu-Mark) strive to bring back a time when talent was a more precious commodity than fashion, when the untainted poetry of hip-hop spread via word of mouth without the help of a cushy logo and corporate sponsor.
“When people witnessed what was happening, they’d tell their friends, and the next time that particular artist would perform, that person saw ‘em, and their friends came. And the process continued,” 2na says. “It’s the old-school ethics of hip-hop, and that’s basically what we are as Jurassic 5. It ain’t necessarily just the ‘Yes, y’all-ing’ and the harmonizing. That’s another thing about [Power In Numbers]; people’ll be like ‘Wow, they didn’t do as much harmonizing.’ We did it in a different type of way; we were more soulful about it, as opposed to doing the average old-school harmony. We’re trying to show you different and deeper aspects of us.”
Much more assured than Jurassic 5’s uneven 2000 debut Quality Control, Power In Numbers is a bubbling cauldron of hip-hop roots and electronic music—this stew tastes somewhat familiar, yet it’s largely unlike anything your palette has experienced in a long while. Since forming in 1993, the group has gelled into a singular musical, spiritual and theoretical entity. The eccentric, dusty sampling of Cut Chemist sits side-by-side with the straight-ahead power of Nu-Mark’s beats, and the quartet of MCs injects its syllables with effortless grace and determination. It’s a synthesis of sound that contains some highly varied ingredients.
“We all like different shit,” 2na remarked. “But we all like the same shit too. That’s what’s pretty dope about it. I’m an avid dancehall fan, so I might bring that vibe to the crew. In the end, we’re just trying to regurgitate all of the music we grew up with, trying to get back to our influences.”
This common goal gives invaluable replenishment to a genre whose biggest stars are materialistic, empty-headed cartoon characters who wear diamond-encrusted messages of misogyny around their necks — Nelly and Ludacris are a few of the biggest-selling voices in hip-hop today, and it’s pretty obvious that they’re not thinking too much about connecting to the past or pushing the art form forward. Power In Numbers establishes Jurassic 5 as true rap veterans; even though this is only the band’s second full-length album, it began its journey nine years ago, and the members have certainly crossed over into adulthood, regardless of the back catalog.
The best example of the mature poetic wisdom of Jurassic 5 is “Thin Line,” one of several standout tracks on Numbers. Reminiscent of “You Got Me,” The Roots’ 1999 tale of a stormy relationship, “Thin Line” discusses the complicated barrier between friendship and romantic love, delivered over Cut Chemist’s string-laden funk groove. Oddly, Nelly Furtado’s guest vocal is a great fit for the track; her female perspective rounds out a concept that would otherwise have been too one-sided.
“[Working with Furtado] was a little weird; it was kind of natural, actually,” 2na said. “We were looking for a beat that could house a nice song about a relationship. We didn’t want to do it in a regular way, like the shit that you hear on the radio every day — we wanted to hit home with it, without it being really superficial, something that’s deeper than the surface of the skin. We’d been talking about a situation when you have a relationship with a girl, and y’all are really, really good friends, but at that same time, you could cross those lines if you’d just let your guard down. But you respect the relationship so much, that you don’t.
While we were writing the song, one of the guys from our label was at a grocery store in West Hollywood, and ran into [Furtado]. He walked up to her, and he asked her ‘Do you know Jurassic 5?’ And she was like ‘Hell, yeah!’ It turns out that she has an extensive knowledge of hip-hop; she’s really dope.”
Furtado’s appearance on Numbers is a sign of the J5’s growing popularity and expanding audience. The tendrils of this music reach much farther than the hip-hop crowd; the Fredonia appearance will be as an opening act for jazz-fusion groovemeisters Medeski Martin and Wood, and the group has toured in the past with the Warped Tour, and as Fiona Apple’s opening act.
Jurassic 5 is hip-hop in its untainted state: a band of poets spouting rhythmic messages rife with meaty metaphors, music fused with strains of jazz, soul, funk, calypso and whatever happens to be in the DJ’s record crate that evening.
Earlier this year, I had the displeasure of witnessing the Anger Management Tour, a rap show set in HSBC Arena, the unfriendly place where sound goes to die. When I could understand what was being said during Ludacris’ set, it was usually something along the lines of “Make some noise if you’re a ho,” followed immediately by the screams of the row of 16-year-old girls sitting behind us.
With moments like this burned into my mind, the importance of artists like Jurassic 5, Blackalicious, The Roots and Aesop Rock is even more tangible – they’re what hip-hop is, was and ever will be. Pumping reality into culturally and emotionally starved suburbs across the country, it’s one of the few resources left that actually tells us what the hell is really going on. Chali 2na and the rest of Jurassic 5 wear rap music on their sleeves, and the result is inspired, down-to-earth, and fantastically funky.
“Hip-hop is life; it’s the post-beat of the people; it’s the ghetto newscast; it’s the things that are not said on TV; it’s the between the lines; it’s audio painting; it’s all the things that can steal a man’s heart,” says Chali 2na.
They’re not Ruff Ryders; they’re not St. Lunatics; they’re not members of P. Diddy’s family. They’re Jurassic 5, so on September 29, be sure to prime both your frontal lobe and your bottom end for one hell of a workout.
Appeared in the September 26, 2002, issue of Artvoice.