at a glance...

Hometown: Los Angeles, CA
Formed: 1993

Members:
Chali 2na -vocals
Marc 7 -vocals
Akil -vocals
Zaakir (Soup) -vocals
Cut Chemist -DJ, turntabling
Nu-Mark -DJ, turntabling

Related Artists :
Ozomatli, Cut Chemist, Rebels of Rhythm, Unity Committee, Quannum MCs

Notes:
It was a lucky day for everyone when Rebels of Rhythm and Unity Committee, two of LA's youngest and hungriest hip-hop acts, met up with each other at a little club called The Good Life. The two crews, operating in the same bugged-out zone as The Pharcyde and Freestyle Fellowship, decided to combine their efforts into one great rap frankenstein's monster called Jurassic 5. Many cheered when their debut, 1997's ep EP, hit the shelves and airwaves; at last, a rap group that didn't sniff at old-school line-sharing! And three years of relentless touring, both in this formation and side projects (Cut and Chali became part of Ozomatli for a while) have honed their lyrical skills and turntable heroics until they can fairly be described as low-key and deadly. Their full-length manifesto, Quality Control, was unleashed on an unready public in 2000.

I like this record very much, because I am intelligent and have good taste. If you don't like it, you have no intelligence and horrible taste. It could be a little better, but it's really very good. You should buy it and support the band. Okay, bye.

Huh? You guys want me to write more about it? Very well, if I must. But it's kind of tough to analyze albums like this one, that try SO HARD to be likable. One almost feels bad to fault J5 at all, since they are obviously cool and their approach is so honorable. I mean, who would think of doing what amounts to a tribute to early hip-hop, now, in what is acknowledged as very dark days indeed for a genre drowning in fake-ass clichés and ugly sterile beats? Just these dudes, and they do it well. There are echoes of every good movement in rap history on Quality Control, from old-school to Def Jam to Native Tongues all the way to Wu-Tang (early edition), and nary a reference to DMX or No Limit to be found. My kind of record, know what I'm sayin'?

Add to this the skills and dexterity of the four MCs and the two DJs. Nu-Mark and Cut Chemist are a great team, and seem mostly ego-less in their splitting of the beat structure of the album - indeed, one of the highlights is the closing track, a turntable workout called "Swing Set" that plays kind of like a fly version of "Swing on 45." Who thought old Bing Crosby records could get so funky? And the lyrical legerdemain displayed by all the rappers is impressive. The one who comes off best is Chali 2NA, who has the album's best line: "You baby MCs drink Pedialite/While underground doesn't love you but the media might," but it's not really about any of the solo lines. In fact, it's almost hard to remember any particular individual lines, because there are so many group passages when all four are flowing simultaneously. On the title track alone, there are 19 uninterrupted measures of four-man flow. No one has ever done this in the history of hip-hop.

So what's the problem, Cibula? Well, a couple of things. The songs largely follow the same approach, so the album gets a little samey sometimes; this is not helped by the weird sequencing. Why is the all-turntable "Swing Set" the last track? Next time, guys, tell Interscope to go screw themselves when they try to mess with your track order. And while Chali's big deep voice is distinctive, the others share the same sort of tenor timbre, so it's hard work figuring out who's saying what. There are no real home runs here, something that will hopefully be corrected on the second album when the crew take a few more chances.

But this is all chump change bullshit. Overall, this album is a work of great dope-osity and cleverness, and I play it a lot. And how can you not love an album that features shout-outs from both Sean Lennon and Sherman Helmsley? I mean, come on, that's the shit for real.