Jurassic 5 – Jurassic 5 – TVT/Interscope Records – Released 1st December 1998
This post celebrates the 25th anniversary of the eponymous debut album from Jurassic 5.
Also known as J5, the group consists of the inimitable Chali 2na, alongside Marc7, Akil and Zaakir, plus DJs Nu-Mark and Cut Chemist.
Now sentences like that tend to slip past me since I’m far from mathematically inclined. Whereas those of a more readily employable nature will have noticed the disparity between group name and group members.
It is what it is.
Technically it was a quintet briefly when Cut Chemist left the group for a while, but thankfully he returned.
Also – and I’ve discussed this with eminent palaeontologists to be sure – just like most of the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, Cut Chemist’s actually from the Cretaceous period.)
It’s a solid old skool name though, wouldn’t you agree? Reminiscent of the days of big sneakers, breakdancing, scratching, Sugarhill Records, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five…
A simpler time.
And when that first Jurassic 5 album dropped way back in 1998, it did kinda feel like millions of years had passed since we’d heard anything that was so true to the original spirit of hiphop culture.
Taking It Back To The Concrete Streets
Recently I’ve been going flat out to cover all the hiphop anniversaries this year, including essential albums from Cypress Hill, KRS-1, the Wu Tang Clan, Snoop Dog and Ice Cube. And honestly, I feel like I’ve only just scratched the surface.
The period from 1988 to 1998 saw hiphop transition from a predominantly east coast movement, which enjoyed limited mainstream success, to becoming the dominant musical force across North America, via the g funk era and the subsequent age of east/west coast beefs.
All the while new scenes continued to develop across the continent from Miami to Toronto, Atlanta to Philadelphia, bringing new sounds, new styles and new stars. The decade closed out with the most unlikely of all rap stars, an angry white guy from Detroit.
Jurassic 5 were technically west coast but were definitely not west coast in their approach to hiphop. The group may have been born in LA, but not all the members were. The group was also multiracial, which was noteworthy at the time.
Another striking anomaly was the inclusion of two DJs; Nu-Mark a trained drummer who gave up the sticks in favour of machines soon as he heard that first 808 kick boom, and Cut Chemist, turntablist and consummate crate digger, adding yet another layer of old skool artistry to the mix.
Six guys who should really be five, four MCs and two DJs instead of the usual one, all from various backgrounds, on paper it sounds like a mess.
And yet, you’ll be hard pressed to find a debut album where all the elements mesh together so perfectly. That’s because these guys spent quite a lot of time working together, doing shows and paying their dues well before the album dropped.
So when the time came to record the tracks which would comprise their debut, the result was polished gold.
Infectious beats seasoned with high-speed verbal gymnastics, seamless, dream-team timing and effortless flow.
I first heard J5 in the summer of 1998 and they just seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. Suddenly I was hearing them everywhere, often in the most unlikely of places.
It’s worth noting the diversity of people who love this album, they come from all walks of life.
I’ve worked with guys in factories, I’ve been to afters with posh students, I’ve drank with die-hard heavy metal heads while listening to this album. I’ve travelled the world and met all sorts of people and the appeal of this album, even to those who ordinarily don’t claim to normally enjoy hiphop, is truly universal.
It’s the album we didn’t know we wanted but turns out we badly needed.
Straight from the streets, an album that swaggered but was completely lacking in bravado.
Coming shortly after both Tupac and Biggie were shot, it helped remind us of hiphop’s true origin as party music.
J5 was positive, but there was no message. No complex stories about street life, no real narrative whatsoever, no politics, no preaching, no posturing, no bragging, just rapping.
So much of hiphop consists of guys loudly insisting they’re the man before listing off all the reasons why.
But Jurassic 5’s all about show don’t tell.
Five seconds of Chali 2na rapping is all takes to know he’s the man.
And hearing all the members together locked in perfect synchronicity as they vibe on the chorus that first time, it’s transcendent.
This is an album for hiphop connoisseurs, while at the same being an album you can play to cynical non-believers to help them understand why rap music is an artform.
You can play it at a messy after party full of wreckheads to keep things bumpin, or early in the morning with your kids on the drive to school – it’s good clean family fun.
Because Jurassic 5 are to hiphop what the Harlem Globetrotters are to basketball. Except instead of flipping basketballs, they flip rhymes.
The sheer skills and showmanship on display, the effortless flair, the DJing, the mic tricks (no rabbit-in-a-hat tricks), the four-main tag-team flow – all the right elements combined together is what makes this album so special.
A true celebration of hiphop culture.
And it goes a little something like this
In The Flesh kicks things off with jazz guitar licks and reassuring old skool flava, introducing us to the crew and readying us for the experience – light and breezy but deeply compelling.
Track two, Jayou, drops some funky flute loops via Pleasure Web while the crew “conjugate verbs and constipate nerds”, invoke Bob Marley and generally vibe off one another to induce sheer delight.
Lesson 6 – The Lecture is the first of the Cut Chemist’s instrumental tracks on the album.
It’s true turntablist alchemy, this one, an audio collage harkening back to the pioneering days of like Double Dee and Steinski, while also invoking contemporaries like DJ Shadow. (Shadow and Cut Chemist would later collaborate the following year on the mix album Brainfreeze.)
It’s a vibrant sonic joyride that playfully smushes together music from a huge variety of sources, teaches you basic chemistry and poses important questions like, “do you think that Led Zepplin and Frank Sinatra would go together?”
[edit]no, combinations in music…[/edit]
…wait for that flute sample straight after… gives me a big silly grin every single time.
After that interlude we’re back to the rapping with Concrete Schoolyard where the crew “take it back to the concrete streets.” A nice laid back one this.
Another short musical interlude called Setup follows before Action Satisfaction, which provides plenty of both as the crew rap over a bassline sampled from Alan Tew.
We get a short skit called Sausage Gut followed by Improvise, which once again shows J5’s flair for “taking four MC’s and make them sound like one.”
Blacktop Beat is just a short little instrumental interlude but I’m including it here because I just love the beat, so simple yet so funky.
The last rap track on the album is Without A Doubt, where the MCs turn the party out and the beat, wow the beat – love the extended snare rolls on this one, quality.
Lesson 6 (Reprise) is a short reminder of the Cut Chemist’s early piece. No samples here, just the basic sounds for just over a minute and a half.
The album then finishes on a dub version of Action Satisfaction, though even without the rapping this tune’s beat on its own satiates the soul.
It also gives us a chance to appreciate the music on its own for a while sans MCs because, let’s face it, there’s a lot of lyricism to digest on this album.
Without A Doubt
Jurassic 5’s debut is one of the best hiphop albums of the 90s, one of the best debut albums of all time and one of the best examples of pure hiphop culture to be found anywhere, full stop.
The record felt like Rappers Delight for the 90s; upbeat, positive get-the-party-live music but sooooo much better in execution.
Jurassic 5 certainly borrowed from the old skool, but yet, once this album dropped, all other rap crews sounded positively prehistoric in comparison.
It’s feel good funky music, with lyrical tightness, perfect execution, technically flawless but seriously entertaining, firing on all cylinders from start to finish.
It’s an album you can play over and over and over and never tire of it. Wherever you are, whoever you’re with and whatever you’re doing, it always delivers good vibes.