This story detailing the formation of Los Angeles-based hip-hop super crew Jurassic 5 and their 2000 major label debut Quality Control is included exclusively in a new deluxe Wood Box 4LP edition, presented by vinyl reissue masters Get On Down. As you will read below, J5 shrewdly retained vinyl rights to the album when they signed to Interscope, and this new project was completed in full collaboration with all six members of the group.
The set will be available in stores only on Record Store Day: Saturday, April 18. To find a local retailer, visit RecordStoreDay.com. Jurassic 5 are also selling limited autographed copies of the Wood Box on tour dates this year.
Liner Notes for Hip-Hop Junkies
By Brian Coleman
In many ways, Los Angeles’ Jurassic 5 were the ultimate hip-hop crew. A perfect example of — as stated in the title to their second official full-length — Power In Numbers.
J5 featured complicated vocal schemes and acrobatics — funky, forward-thinking, wide-ranging music and searching, positive lyrics that belied the chest-puffing usually attributed to the genre. Overall, they were a nearly perfect rap package for intelligent fans that cared about the art form and the culture that gave it life.
Perhaps appropriately, the group’s formation story was as complicated as the six-headed monster itself. It was a Brady Bunch-style coming together from three separate directions in the mid-1990s. When the smoke cleared, six men stood side-by-side: DJ and producer Cut Chemist [Lucas Macfadden]; DJ and producer Nu-Mark [Mark Potsic]; MC Chali 2na [Charles Stewart]; MC Zaakir (aka Soup) [Courtenay Henderson]; MC Akil [Dante Givens]; and MC Marc 7 [Marc Stuart].
These men embarked on a unique journey that, over the course of the next decade-plus, took them through a surprising breakout single, an acclaimed EP, four albums, worldwide tours, robust album sales and boatloads of critical acclaim.
The first part of the story to tell is that of the Unity Committee, which gave the J5 Cut Chemist, Chali 2na and Marc 7. First forming around 1987, they came together despite geographic disparities — Cut was an Angeleno, but Chali and Marc both transplanted in the mid-80s, from Chicago and New Jersey, respectively.
Cut Chemist caught the hip-hop bug at an early age, thanks in no small part to pioneering hip-hop radio station KDAY, which became part of his life around 1983. In December of that year, he recorded a station broadcast of a Run-DMC show at the Pasadena Convention Center — which also featured the crucial L.A. hip-hop crew Uncle Jamm’s Army — and, as he states, “That was it. My mind was blown and my life changed forever.”
He already had vinyl collecting tendencies before being infected by the rap bug, but learning how to dig for records and being influenced by DJs he heard on KDAY like Jam Master Jay, Hitman Howie Tee, Cutmaster DC and Grandmixer D.ST drove him to add a second turntable to his arsenal and begin a new phase. “I was always more into scratching than mixing,” Cut explains. “By 1986, older DJs would bring me to parties as a ‘secret weapon’ scratch guy. At that time it was definitely a novelty to have a white kid scratching the way I was.”
He attended LACES [Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies] for both middle and high school, “in the Mid-City area,” and met future producer Thayod Ausar there, around 1987. Thayod was a nice guy, for sure. But just as importantly, he had a sampler, something the young DJ had never seen up-close before. That opened up another important avenue for Cut: production. He eventually bought Ausar’s Roland S-10 unit and was off to the proverbial races. “That sampler, my record collection and my dad’s 4-track became the beginning of me as a producer,” he recalls.
Chali and Marc 7 went to Marshall High School in the Silver Lake neighborhood of L.A. and had formed Unity Committee before Cut Chemist joined up. In early 1987, Cut met Chali at a Silver Lake Recreation Center party, introduced by their mutual friend DJ Cass. Early Unity Committee member Marvski was at the same jam. A mutual love of James Brown started the group’s coalescence, and by the late 80s they were making demos together — with another early member, Json aka Son Doobie of Funkdoobiest, who had moved on by 1990, along with Marv. For these early recordings, they converged upon a side room in Cut Chemist’s mother’s house, not far from Silver Lake.
This unassuming room would go on to play a critical role in Jurassic 5 lore. Christened The Red October Chemical Storage Facility, it would become the group’s clubhouse, recording studio and escape from the music industry for more than a decade. “It was a glass- and wood-paneled room where my mom used to hang plants,” Cut laughs. “You wouldn’t think it would work, but it had a nice ambient reverb on the vocals. Which was good, because there was no vocal booth. My parents were night owls and they liked the music and the energy. They were OK with us working there, day or night.”
Continuing with the genealogy of the Unity Committee [which Cut Chemist and Chali both note could also be spelled as “U.N.I.T.Y” — for “United Nations of Intelligence Teaching Youth”], Chali 2na arrived in Los Angeles in 1986, from Chicago. “A lot of turmoil was going on around me in Chicago,” he explains. “My grandmother just lost her brother and son, we was just about to get kicked out of our house, and a good friend of mine had gotten killed right next to me. I had friends dealing drugs, gang banging, going to jail. That was all around me, but it wasn’t in me. I was more of an artist.”
He moved with his siblings and grandmother to his aunt’s in Silver Lake. “Meeting Marc 7 at Marshall [High School] helped me a lot, because I was really homesick when I got to L.A. We were both from outside of town and had come here through similar circumstances. We clicked right out the gate.”
Chali was a graffiti artist beginning in his early teens — as some fans know, he drew Jurassic’s early logos and did artwork for the group. “In 1986 I dabbled with rapping, breakdancing and DJing,” he says, “But I was more of a graffiti artist. I didn’t get more serious about rapping until 1987.”
According to Chali, by 1990 U.N.I.T.Y. was the hip-hop group, with himself, Marc 7 and Cut Chemist. Unity Committee (sans acronym) included a wider range of people, including Marvski, Json/Son Doobie, as well as Volume 10 and Dark Leaf. When it came down to lyrical subject matter as the group came together as a threesome, Chali states, “We were trying to be the exact opposite of the gangsta rap movement at the time. We weren’t pro-Black since we had a white guy in the group. But I would definitely say we were ‘pro-right.’ We were conscious rappers.”
Marc 7, who says he met Cut Chemist through Marvski, explains, “Unity Committee was a movement. We did a lot of stuff together, starting with going to Lucas’ [Cut Chemist’s] house to listen to music.” He adds, “Son Doobie was an original member of the group, we used to run together. It ended up with me and Chali as MCs, but we had more people in our extended crew.”
Five miles away, in South Central Los Angeles, another faction of the Jurassic 5 was incubating at Manual Arts High School: The Rebels of Rhythm. The Rebels would give the J5 Akil and Soup [aka Zaakir], who met in high school around 1987. They also included a third MC, Shawny Mac [aka Afrika], who rhymed with them through the early 1990s. Akil and Afrika were on the mic first; Soup came in with bars a little later on. The crew also included breakdancers and graffiti writers. Akil produced the group’s early demos.
Akil describes his early years: “I was in South Central until my mid-20s. I came from right where the [1992] Riots started, Florence and Normandie. Hip-hop came when I was a teenager. I used to pop and lock and do the robot. I have always been an entertainer.” His father was a DJ for neighborhood gatherings (“More of a selector than a DJ, really,” Akil says, “He didn’t speak on the mic. He made reel-to-reel tapes that he would play at parties.”), and a neighbor’s brother was a more serious cut-and-scratch DJ.
Akil even considered going into the service at one point. “But by the late 80s, I had turned to MCing,” he explains. “Conscious groups like Public Enemy had come out. I wasn’t trying to be in the Army at that point, I chose to pursue hip-hop.”
The Rebels of Rhythm, still featuring Shawny, made a two-song cassette in 1992 that was printed up in a very limited batch and sold at gigs. It contained two songs: “Jessica” and “Da Rhythm.” The group’s uniqueness sprang from their combination of socially-conscious, positive rhymes and a true throwback vocal style. “Our content was different,” Akil explains. “Zaakir tried to sing a bit. We harmonized. We had a great live show, like Unity Committee, and we loved the same hip-hop — the classic stuff.”
Zaakir — alternately known as Soup, a teenage nickname — also grew up in South Central, and also had a music-loving father. Drawn to funk at an early age (“When I was five, I was obsessed with ‘The Funky Worm’ by the Ohio Players,” he says), he switched his allegiance to rap by the time Fatback Band’s “King Tim III (Personality Jock)” and the Sugarhill Gang entered his eardrums. “It was a lightbulb for me,” he explains. “From then on out, if it was hip-hop, I was on it.”
Besides his love of music, Soup’s experience in the music industry would help the Jurassic 5 in various ways as they began to get more serious. Starting as an unpaid intern with Loud Records after high school, he went on to do college promotions at Immortal Records, Loud (for a second stint) and then Interscope. It was experience that would be useful to the group, since they started off releasing their own records. “The connections I had definitely helped once we started,” he says. “I got our stuff charted on college radio. The funny thing was that most of the people I knew and eventually talked to about Jurassic 5 didn’t even know I rhymed and was in a group.”
Throughout the late 80s, Soup was always around the Rebels of Rhythm, but he didn’t dream of being an MC. “Originally, I didn’t want to rhyme,” he says. “I was into singing. So I wasn’t an original MC in the Rebels of Rhythm. I wanted to be a hype man, if anything. But Akil heard me freestyling at a show and he wanted me to rhyme more. So I gradually got better.”
The third and final faction of the Jurassic 5 was a solitary one: DJ Nu-Mark. Growing up in North Hollywood and eventually residing in Mid-City and Silver Lake, Mark was a drummer by age 12, playing in the jazz band at school and entering drum battles in junior high. He recalls, “I had a friend in junior high, Chris Cook, he was a bassist. He was really into hip-hop and his uncle was a DJ, so that combination completely spun my head around. Once I started hearing hip-hop samples and drum programming, the rock breaks I was trying to imitate on drums just didn’t seem so bad-ass anymore.”
By 9th grade, Nu-Mark had bought a Roland TR-606 drum machine, invested in dual belt-drive turntables, and had started digging for records to scratch and — eventually — sample. He also joined a DJ crew called Bumrush Productions. Money earned with Bumrush allowed him to upgrade to the industry standard: Technics 1200s. “We did a lot of house parties and some clubs,” he recalls. “That’s where I cut my teeth.”
On the DJ front, his drumming experience yielded a predictable result: “I always gravitated to more rhythmic records, and I scratched in a more rhythmic way than other DJs.” By the early 90s, he had left his jazz and rock drumming dreams behind. “Hip-hop was just raw to me,” he explains. “Rock wasn’t. [TR-] 808 beats were raw, Melle Mel was raw. I couldn’t go back to being a rock or jazz drummer at that point.”
Mark, like most Angelenos raised in the 1980s, also cites KDAY as a huge influence. He says, “Those DJs defined what it meant to be a selector. They took chances with the music they played. KDAY just spoke to L.A. And it really revealed hip-hop culture to people.”
Some histories of the Jurassic 5 have stated that they first came together at the famed Good Life — a weekly, Thursday night MC and poetry gathering held at a health food store in South Central, starting in late 1989. That is partially true. In reality, all six of them first met at a lesser-known club night called Rat Race. Either way, Good Life and the atmosphere that it created held the most influence over them as they became an entity in 1994.
Nu-Mark explains, “Being there at Rat Race was a good example of me being in the right place at the right time. It was a night that moved around to different small spots, a lot of people wouldn’t even remember it. It combined a live band with MCs that they would invite. I was the DJ. And because of that, I finally met MCs who knew as much about hip-hop as I did, like Soup. It was the last piece of the puzzle for me.”
Nu-Mark also recalls, “The first time I met Luke [Cut Chemist] was also at Rat Race. He called me ‘DJ Hendrix’ because I was scratching with a wah-wah pedal. [Laughs]. That’s where I met all of the guys, even though I think they had met each other previously at Good Life.”
Akil says, of Rat Race, “Bigga B was part of that night, he picked different MCs he thought were tight enough to perform with a live band. He used us [Rebels of Rhythm], Unity Committee, Medusa and some other people. We rehearsed for Rat Race at a spot on Pico in South Central, across from Roscoe’s Chicken & Waffles, right near where we took the cover photo for Quality Control.”
While Rat Race was more rooted in the fly-by-night nightclub culture, the Good Life carried its weight as a weekly event and meeting ground that lasted for over five years. “We may have all eventually met and worked together if it wasn’t for Good Life, but it was a very important place,” states Cut Chemist. He adds, “In the fall of 1991, a friend told me that there was a place in South Central where people were freestyling in a health food store. I couldn’t imagine any way that it could have been dope. When I finally went, after Marc 7 told me I had to, it was amazing. I had never seen anything like it. Freestyle Fellowship and First Brigade with Ganja K and Dr. Bombay were the first artists I saw get up on that stage. It was a life-altering event for me.”
Unity Committee became a popular act at the Good Life, as evidenced by their inclusion on the 1992 compilation Please Pass The Mic (a phrase chanted by the crowd when it was time for a current performer to exit the stage). Alongside artists like Volume 10, Mac-10, Big Al and a young Snoop Doggy Dogg, Unity was featured on two songs, both credited as co-productions but actually solely produced by Cut Chemist: “Who’s Gonna Be The Next Victim” and “The Fish Taste Superb” (with Superb SK). Cut also produced Volume 10’s song on the compilation, “Sho Is Hype (But Not My Type).”
By 1993, all members of what would become the Jurassic 5 were part of the Good Life world, in varying ways. Nu-Mark wasn’t as frequent of an attendee, since it was much more of a lyricist-centric event, but Unity Committee and Rebels of Rhythm performed as often as they could. “You could only do one song, and you had to get there early to get on the list, because it was only from 8 to 10 pm,” recalls Cut Chemist. “We would make songs during the week just to try them out at Good Life on Thursdays. It was a tough audience. If the people there liked something, it would stick. So we tried a lot of things out there.”
Chali 2na adds, “The thing with the Good Life was that everybody who liked each other there would try and work together. It was a meeting place. We [Unity Committee] liked Rebels of Rhythm’s style, because we were both pretty unique amongst that crowd.” Soup says, “Coming out of the Good Life, Unity Committee were the guys we [Rebels of Rhythm] connected with more than anyone else.”
By 1994, the Rebels of Rhythm had parlayed Soup’s industry connections and their experience at the Good Life into a “demo deal” with Relativity Records. This meant that they weren’t signed to the label, but Relativity had given them money for studio time, in the hopes that they would come up with some signable music. As Akil recalls, their regular DJ (T-Minus) had car trouble and couldn’t do scratches on their 4-song demo. At the last minute they called their Rat Race acquaintance: DJ Nu-Mark.
“Basically, by 1994, all of us were shopping demos separately, and nothing was happening,” Nu-Mark remembers. “Luke [Cut Chemist] brought that beat for ‘Unified Rebelution’ and everything really started to click.”
Cut Chemist sums up the lead-in to the true beginning of the J5: “In L.A. there are a lot of styles of rap, but Rebels of Rhythm were unique in how they did what I would call ‘Harmony Rap.’ Sing-songy types of rhymes, like the Force MCs and Cold Crush Brothers. They did it really well. And at the time, I was really digging into a lot of that real old-school, East Coast rap. I said, ‘I could really do something with those guys.’”
Marc 7 compares the two groups: “The common thing that brought Unity Committee and Rebels of Rhythm together was the type of hip-hop that we all liked. Rebels had a very old-school sound. They sounded like they was from the East Coast. That’s what we all loved. When you put us together, it just blended so well. And after we met Nu-Mark at Rat Race, he brought beats by Lucas’ spot and we all just hung out. There was never a time when we said, ‘OK, let’s put Nu-Mark in the group.’ It all just happened.”
Cut says, “I was really inspired by De La Soul’s ‘Area,’ off Buhloone Mindstate, and I could finger all the sampled elements that made up the song. The combination of those samples that were rooted in old-school rap was so inspiring to me that I went straight to my drum machine and made the song that would become ‘Unified Rebelution.’ I gave the song to the Rebels of Rhythm and said, ‘Do you think you could maybe also feature my guys [Unity Committee] on it?’ I didn’t even know Rebels very well at that point. I just liked what they did.”
Originally, all group members agree that “Unified Rebelution” was merely a song that they could all perform together at the Good Life. But after making it, it grew into something much bigger. “We all put the song on our separate demos,” explains Akil. “We still weren’t even a group at the time. We would do shows, and Unity would do that song with us, and they did the same thing when they had a show. So we kept building. When nothing was happening shopping our demos to labels, Cut said, ‘Maybe we should just put that song out ourselves.’ [Author’s note: Cut Chemist says he was influenced by the independent rap movement on the West Coast spearheaded by Good Life pioneers Freestyle Fellowship, who had self-released their debut LP, To Whom It May Concern, in 1991]. Basically we were all fed up with this industry shit.”
By the end of 1994, five/sixths of the assembled crew [Akil says he was too broke at the time to spare the cash] pooled their resources and pressed up 500 copies on wax. The first edition had a yellow label (and no cover); the second 500 were on light blue. At the bottom, it read: “Performed by Unity Committee & Rebels of Rhythm.” Two songs were produced by Cut Chemist [“Unified Rebelution” and “Lesson 4”] and two by DJ Nu-Mark [“Nu Mark’s Bonus Beats” and the spoken word skit “Quality Control”].
Chali says, “We had all been doing demos and trying to make moves with labels, so ‘Unified’ was another way for us to make a splash. It felt different. It just worked. We all felt the power of that song.”
Nu-Mark explains, regarding production between the two DJs early in their relationship: “When Luke [Cut Chemist] and I met each other, we looked at the other guy and said, ‘Wow, I can learn a lot from you.’ He had a bassline- and loop-driven production style, and I was more about chopped-up drums.”
The funky groove and loose-limbed, old-school leaning vocals on the song meshed together perfectly and the single began to get noticed. In fact, it sold as many in Europe as it did in the U.S., distributed overseas by the popular Mr. Bongo record shop in London. The attention, as well as a connection via Soup, led the TVT / Blunt label out of New York to sign them to a “single deal.” There was one problem, though: the group name they had on their own 12-inch was way too long and confusing.
And so, Jurassic 5 was born. And not in a terribly scientific fashion. Chali 2na explains, “My girlfriend at the time, my son’s mama, is a musician and I played her ‘Unified Rebelution’ to see what she thought. She said, ‘You think you sound like the Fantastic Five [the old-school group featured in the film Wild Style, aka Fantastic Freaks, featuring two DJs and five MCs], but you’re more like the Jurassic Five.’ And she walked away. [Laughs]. I told Marc 7 about it and then everyone eventually agreed on the name, even if it was ‘5’ and we actually had six people in the group.”
Akil adds, “In the movie ‘Jurassic Park,’ they took the DNA from something old, and brought it into modern times. And that’s exactly what we were doing. The name just fit, it was organic.”
The single, under the name Jurassic 5, was released with a cover (drawn by Chali 2na) on Blunt / TVT in 1995. This edition only had “Unified Rebelution” on it (with Radio/LP/Instrumental/A Cappella versions). “By then, a lot of good things were going on for us,” says Cut Chemist. “By the time the Blunt single came out, we thought of ourselves as one unit. It wasn’t a collaboration anymore, we were a group. We worked on new songs as a group and did shows as Jurassic 5.”
Unfortunately, things didn’t go as expected — or at least hoped — with Blunt. According to several J5 members, the label considered the song to be a “novelty” and didn’t push them. It was a bit of a Catch-22: the song wasn’t selling gangbusters, but the group says Blunt also wasn’t giving it a push. Cut Chemist says, “They kept asking us for new music, but we said we didn’t have any. Although we had been working on new stuff.” Interestingly, one of their new, secret songs was called “No Promotion,” and was about their situation. It was never released.
As a side note, by 1995 Nu-Mark was doing college promotions and A & R for the newly-minted label Correct Records, who put out artists including Al’Tariq [aka Fashion from the Beatnuts], Mannish and Black Attack. By 1997, the label was defunct, but Nu-Mark gained a great deal of industry experience with the label, which in some ways mirrored Soup’s own work in the music business.
Nu-Mark recalls, about the second go-around with “Unified Rebelution,” “When Blunt came along, the other guys were all excited, but I wasn’t. I wanted to stay on our own and wait for something better. I didn’t even sign the original Blunt contract, even though I was doing shows with them. I felt like there were bigger things in store for us. In the end, they didn’t promote us right and didn’t believe in us, long term.”
“We wanted things to work out with Blunt,” says Soup, “But then they started bullshittin’ around, and we knew it wasn’t going to happen. I knew what bullshit sounded like, from my experiences with Loud and Immortal Records.”
By 1996, group members exhaled a sigh of relief when Blunt released them from any contractual obligations. They were free agents again, with a collection of previously hidden songs that were ready for consumption. And so, back they went to the indie release route — this time christening a new label, Rumble, in collaboration with L.A. hip-hop artist T-Love’s Pickininny Records.
The group’s debut EP, simply entitled Jurassic 5 (or, alternately, EP) was released in 1997 and featured five full-length songs, with four shorter interludes / beats. Songs like “Jayou,” “Concrete Schoolyard,” “Action Satisfaction” and Cut Chemist’s DJ feature “Lesson 6: The Lecture” remain fan favorites to this day. Yet again, the release started to find its way into the crates of hip-hop fans from L.A. to Japan. It was eventually expanded into a full album on PAN / Play It Again Sam in 1998, still called Jurassic 5, with two new songs and two updated versions of songs from the EP.
Even though most tracks were produced by either Cut Chemist or Nu-Mark, Cut Chemist notes that Jurassic 5 listed both men as co-producers. On the group’s true full-length debut, Quality Control, production credits were spelled out more precisely. “Nu-Mark wanted to do that on Quality Control,” Cut says. “I was down with whatever. It didn’t matter that much either way. We were never really that competitive as producers, we each had a different expertise. Mine was records, his was drums. Mark is an amazing drum programmer, and I specialized in loops and samples. But we both influenced each other, we always respected each other’s lane.”
Looking back on what had transpired as the group came together, it might seem like it was a complicated task to combine four unique MCs together as a unit. Each one had to fit his own personality within a quartet unison attack, when needed. Akil explains, “We worked hard to make all the rhymes we did cohesive. A lot of that came from the fact that we all liked similar kinds of hip-hop. We all played our part, and it usually worked. We had no set way that the MCs would work on lyrics and themes for songs. Sometimes one person would have an idea and we’d all work on a song together, but a lot of times we’d work on our own.”
Soup adds, “There was never a formula as to how we came up with concepts or choruses for songs. All concepts were always considered by the group.” And Chali states, “From my perspective, all the MCs were on a team. We had our roles, and we all wanted to win. I only wanted to be better than the last thing I said. That was my competition.”
Like “Unified Rebelution,” the EP and Jurassic 5 album were also recorded at Cut Chemist’s childhood home (aka Red October). The reason was simple: familiarity and comfort. “We stayed there even through some of Quality Control because it was the last bit of innocence we had left,” says Nu-Mark. “People and labels started wanting a piece of our pie. They wanted to pull us out of our element. At the same time, we didn’t want to pay for studio time when we were just laughing and goofing around. The sound quality at Lucas’ spot wasn’t always crackin’, dynamically, but it was enough. The music was there. It was the vibe.”
Soup explains, “Red October was just where it all started. It was like our first girlfriend, on the recording side. We got our first experience there. Plus, it was free. Lucas’ mom was so great, she was on the team. Even when we got more immersed in the game and things changed, we still always loved being there.”
Aside from Soup’s and Nu-Mark’s industry gigs to help pay their own bills as Jurassic 5 grew, Cut Chemist and Chali had their own side gig: the popular Latin/rock group Ozomatli. Both men joined up in the mid-90s with the dynamic live band, which was led by bassist Wil-Dog Abers. They first met Wil around 1991, when Unity Committee was experimenting with using live players. Cut Chemist became the group’s DJ, and Chali was their rapper. Both are featured on “The Cut Chemist Suite,” a single off Ozomatli’s self-titled debut album from 1998 (Almo / Interscope).
Cut and Chali were gone from Ozomatli by 1999 — Cut Chemist says he left first during the 1998 Vans Warped Tour, handing over his tour duties to DJ Z-Trip. Chali held out longer, touring with the group until J5 duties could not be juggled concurrently anymore. He recalls, “I don’t think Lucas signed the Ozomatli contract, even though he was always there. I had a son, so I signed it, I wanted that stability. And as long as the Ozomatli stuff didn’t interfere with Jurassic 5, I was down. Overall it didn’t interfere. It was a great experience.”
As evidenced by the multiple pressings and labels with Jurassic 5, by 1998 it was undeniable that the group had something unique going on. In fact, they had been there for a year or two by the time Interscope came calling to sign them for their actual debut album. “The U.K. embracing the EP is really what established us,” says Nu-Mark. “By 1998 we were playing to 12,000 people at festivals in Europe. It was all happening by then.”
Akil adds, “Around that time we met Grandmaster Caz and Charlie Chase [from The Cold Crush Brothers] and Dot-A-Rock [from Fantastic Five], and they sanctioned us with what we were doing. They loved it, and that gave us a lot of energy to keep going.”
Speaking of energy, the group built the loyal fan base it still retains today by more than just skillful vocals and excellent music. Their live show was one of the best in the rap game, and outdid many rock groups as well. “We definitely rehearsed more than our peers,” says Cut Chemist. “We felt like we had to. We were inspired by hip-hop artists who always impressed their fans. Doug E. Fresh coming out of a pyramid. LL Cool J coming on stage out of a huge radio. Plus at the Good Life, you had to come correct or you’d get ushered off the stage.”
He adds, “A lot of the reason that we crossed over and had the appeal we did was because of our live show, plain and simple. We entertained, and that got us on the bill for a lot of unique shows. Honestly, we connected with non-hip-hop artists more than with hip-hop ones. Indie and artsy rock people really liked us. We toured with Green Day and Fiona Apple. How many other hip-hop groups did that?”
By 1998, as Jurassic 5 continued to sell very respectably (especially for an old-school leaning, positive and intelligent group), their next stage was set. Interscope first came into the picture by re-releasing the song “Improvise” that year, a song which was originally done to extend the Jurassic 5 EP into an LP. Other labels were courting the group, but there were a couple reasons that Jurassic 5 went with Interscope. First, Ozomatli was distributed by Interscope, so Cut Chemist and Chali knew some of the people there, and approved. (Soup says that his previous Interscope tenure didn’t influence him either way).
Just as importantly, Interscope allowed the group to keep the vinyl rights to the album (which they licensed to Rawkus Entertainment in 2000). Unsurprisingly, a group with two DJs found that very appealing. “That was major to us,” says Cut Chemist. “For us back then, in the independent, Fat Beats era, that was important.”
By mid-1999, the group was in a great place: signed to a major label powerhouse and officially recording their first full album — the culmination of more than a half-decade of very hard work together. The group rolled up their sleeves, originally back at Red October. But they soon realized — despite Cut Chemist’s purchase of a pricey Neumann microphone and Manley compressor — that they needed to be at a “real” studio for their next big step. Being sensible from years of indie experience and budgeting, they didn’t go the usual “I just got signed” route at huge, expensive rooms. Instead, they landed at Undercity (which members of the group also call “Power Plant”) for most final tracking, and mixing with Rich Costey at NRG.
“Once we got with Interscope, they didn’t pressure us, but we definitely knew that we couldn’t fuck around,” recalls Cut. “We knew we had to change, while also staying the same in some ways. It could be a fragile balance at times. We had to keep having fun, but we also had to take it up a notch. In the end, I think we achieved that.”
“It was taboo back then for an indie group like us to sign with a major [label],” says Nu-Mark. “You were somehow supposed to stay indie forever. But we wanted videos, we wanted to blow up. Shit got real with Interscope. In a lot of ways, it was the beginning of our loss of innocence. But you can’t stay the same forever.”
Marc 7 recalls, “Even after we were on Interscope, we didn’t do the big huge studio thing, with the million dollar engineer. Where we ended up was better than Red October, but it wasn’t extravagant. That was important. It was a vibe that we were used to, and it helped us stay creative. Honestly, it didn’t even feel like work.”
Speaking of natural, the album’s cover was a unique one, and the process of making it happen was a lot more involved than fans were likely aware. Featuring all six members of the group seated around a mammoth, J5-inscribed tree stump in the middle of a South Central intersection, it was a great concept. To further bring their personality to the fore, the stump even had a turntable for a top — this idea was based on a photo on the back cover of Jethro Tull’s 1977 album, Songs From The Wood.
Marc 7 recalls, “We went to northern Cali, to a forest outside of the Bay, to find the stump for the cover. We picked it out ourselves. There was a spot we found that had nothing but tree stumps. We looked around for an hour until we found the right one. Then our manager, Dan Dalton, found a guy to carve our logo in it [Ryan Cameron]. And Nu-Mark had the idea to make it into a turntable. We had it shipped down to L.A. for that picture. I think Dan Dalton still has the stump in his yard. It probably has moss all over it at this point. [Laughs].”
“We all came up with parts of that album cover concept, as a team,” says Chali. “We knew we had to kill the game with our cover. We gave the guy who carved it a list of what we wanted for the stump. He was some super hippie guy that Dan knew. I wasn’t there when they picked it out, but I know they did it at night. I saw pictures. I had created that logo with help and input from the fellas, and it was a proud moment to see that shit come to life on a tree! [Laughs].”
After some stump selecting and art directing, and about six months of steady studio work, Quality Control was ready for release. It hit record shelves in June of 2000 and, according to Nu-Mark, went on to sell just shy of gold, which was great with everyone involved. They toured the world and cemented their fan base — a group of music lovers who still flock to J5 performances to this day.
One major tour at the time, which brought them tens of thousands of new fans, was the 2000 Vans Warped Tour, alongside Weezer, NOFX, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones and Papa Roach. Chali says, “Hip-hop and punk were born in the same era, they both come out of teen angst. I had been on the Warped Tour in 1998 with Ozomatli, so I knew what it was all about, and how much it could help Jurassic 5. It showed promoters and fans that we could perform with damn near anybody. We were respected in the music world after that, not just the hip-hop world. A lot of groups just couldn’t hang where we was hanging.”
Chali also points out one of two tragic events that happened to them around the album’s release [for the second, see song comments for “The Game,” below]: the group almost perished in Tennessee in early August of 2000, when their tour bus went into a ditch. Chali himself almost died, and was in the hospital for several weeks with a skull fracture. Other group members suffered injuries as well.
Thankfully, Chali and the group recovered. And although 2000 was a trying year in some ways, they most definitely ended it in triumph mode.
Chali 2na intones, “That album was our milestone. It was a triumph for us. Like, ‘We did it!’ That’s how it felt. It solidified that we were actually in the music business, even after how well the EP had done. We got to do pretty much everything we wanted to do on Quality Control and it felt amazing. It sounded like one song to me, like how I heard [De La Soul’s] 3 Feet High And Rising for the first time. Everything flowed.”
“The way that we put Quality Control together was great,” beams Akil, looking back. “Every song has its own flavor, and it all just works together. It felt very cohesive to me.”
Soup says, “Recording that album at Power Plant [Undercity], seeing our name on the studio schedule, seeing that big mixing board. It made everything really real, finally. Everything just meshed together, and it wasn’t even intimidating. Quality Control was more musical than the EP, it was a step forward. It was exciting, and I think that excitement came across on the record.”
And Marc 7 puts in the final word on that era: “We grew so much from the EP to Quality Control. We got bigger and better as song creators. We took a big step up, musically, and we really started to understand our sound, and who we were.”
The Tracks
How We Get Along (Intro)
[Produced by DJ Nu-Mark]
Nu-Mark: That bassline was from an instructional VHS about how to play drums, by Bernard [“Pretty”] Purdie. I did a lot of VHS sampling back then, especially for dialogue stuff. VHS was a place that a lot of beat diggers weren’t hitting yet.
Cut Chemist: We mention Bigga B on there. He was always around in the scene. He was around for Rat Race, he started Unity [the live hip-hop night], he worked at Loud Records. He was a visionary. He took the Good Life mentality of dope local MCs and what he was doing at Loud and brought it all together in larger venues. Everybody from Wu-Tang to Common to Freestyle Fellowship. I think he passed away in 1999, he had a heart attack. We all miss him.
The Influence
[Produced by DJ Nu-Mark]
Soup [Zaakir]: I got do so some acting in the video for “The Influence,” at the beginning. The guy who directed it [Marcos Siega], he gave us a treatment for it, along with other people who were pitching to direct it. He had a portable DVD player, and I had never seen one. I really liked it, because I was a movie guy. And he said, “If I end up with the video gig, I’ll give it to you.” I didn’t say it out loud, but I said to myself, “I gotta make sure he gets this video!” [Laughs]. He mentioned a Hugh Grant movie or something [in the treatment], where the guy was walking and the seasons and background changed behind him. Marcos also gave me my first acting gig on TV, a show called Fastlane.
Nu-Mark: That song started off with the loop and the Hi-Los [vocal sample], then the guys had the hook from Busy Bee [from the 1983 film “Wild Style”]. That song was less about drums for me, which was a different thing. I liked that video, I liked the simplicity of it.
Cut Chemist: That’s one of my favorite songs. It went through so many different phases as we were making it. And that’s still my go-to track when I DJ today. It just encapsulates so much of what Jurassic 5 was about. We might have talked about that being the first single off the album at one point, but it came out as our third single.
Great Expectations
[Produced by DJ Nu-Mark,
co-produced by Cut Chemist]
Akil: That song was a bit weird. Soup actually disses us in his verse. We never even addressed it [afterwards]. I love the track, but not his verse. But everybody got to tell their story — where they came from, what the expectations were. We don’t perform that one too often.
Soup: Me and Nu-Mark used to clash, early on. He never gave me much feedback on my rhymes, and I wasn’t ever sure if he liked my shit. My verse on that song was the last one [to be finished], and it was dedicated to the group. The “Whether you love or hate it” line was for Nu-Mark. I liked my verse on there, I don’t regret it at all. I put it right on wax. When it was done, I didn’t hear anything from Nu-Mark, but Cut told me that Nu-Mark thought it was hot. And that was all I wanted. [Laughs]. That’s probably my favorite verse on the album.
Nu-Mark: I forgot about that song. I like that beat. That maybe could have been a bigger song if it had had a better hook. I like how the loops weaved in and out and were perfectly in key. Cut had a guitar thing that he added on there.
Chali 2na: That was a crazy song. We were each talking about the expectations that we had versus the reality that we was facing at the time. And it was cool to hear everyone’s perspective. I had no expectations, so wherever it took us was where I was going. [Laughs].
Quality Control
[Produced by Cut Chemist]
Cut Chemist: That was the first album single. The template for the song was originally a promo for “The Wake Up Show” [hosted by Sway & King Tech, which started in the Bay on KMEL in the early ‘90s, before moving to LA]. I made the beat in 1995 and it blew up as a promo. They played it all the time, like it was a new single or something. So from that, we knew it should be expanded. I had no idea how the MCs would make it into a song that had nothing to do with “The Wake Up Show,” but they totally killed it. At that point, I said to myself, “I’m in exactly the right group.” That video was on MTV “Direct Effect” and won against whatever the other video was. It was on Power 106 [in LA] playing against some Jay-Z song, and winning. That was all so crazy to me, because it was such a rugged, niche, underground song.
Akil: I wrote a lot of that song, including the chorus [he recites the whole thing]. My verses would sometimes end up as choruses, for whatever reason.
Nu-Mark: Cut is so great at getting right to the meat and potatoes of making a beat that will rock in a live setting. Not everyone would grab that bassline like he did. There are lyrics on there about mainstream versus underground and that goes back to KDAY, if you ask me. We had an old-school mentality where we wanted to be on the radio, but by doing it our way. Like how De La Soul got broken on KDAY. We knew it was possible.
Contact
[Produced by Cut Chemist]
Cut Chemist: That was my little Bomb Squad thing, a short piece to make the album more fun.
Lausd
[Produced by Cut Chemist]
Marc 7: I remember Akil and I were talking on the phone one time, about L.A. and how things are different here. Something led us to people being lost, and then Akil came up with the chorus. We never perform that one, but I would really love to start doing it again. I wasn’t from L.A. for my whole life, so I had a different perspective. Where I came from, Patterson, NJ, was pretty much an all-black environment. In L.A. it was a real melting pot. Being in L.A. broadened my mind. The dark side of L.A. is definitely the gang influence, that was the scary part. You really had to watch your back, everywhere you went, whether it was to a club or a house party. It was always over your head. As a youngster, that was scary.
Cut Chemist: The title of that one came first, I think. I remember being pretty specific about the capitalization [Author’s note: It is the only song on the back cover listing that is not in all caps, and is instead written “Lausd.”]. I came up with the double-entendre title. The lower case letters were important to me because I didn’t want people to read it as an acronym but as a word that was pronounced “Lost.” It was also a reference to “Los Angeles Unified School District.”
Akil: That’s definitely one of my favorites. You have to respect L.A. It’s like a rose, and it has thorns, too. I live in Georgia now, I have sons and I needed a change. I was brought up in South Central, but I didn’t want my children to be there, especially since I was on tour a lot and not there with them all the time. With three sons, it was rolling the dice [that all of them would turn out OK], so I got out.
Chali 2na: I wasn’t born in LA, and honestly the things that made me the person I am today happened when I was still in Chicago, before I got to LA. “Lausd” gave me the chance to talk about how if you come from somewhere else, L.A. can swallow you up if you aren’t wise to some of the tricks that can happen. I got that Sherman Hemsley drop that we used at the end of that song. I always had my voice recorder with me. I was on tour with Ozomatli and Lenny Kravitz and Sherman came to the first show, in Toronto. I walked up to him and asked him for an autograph, but I asked for a verbal autograph.
World Of Entertainment (WOE is me)
[Produced by DJ Nu-Mark]
Akil: That’s a slept-on song, I love the music on that one. I loved it so much that I wrote the majority of [the lyrics] when I heard the music, even for the other guys. We only did one verse [writing] all together on that one. I was just so amped that I went directly home and it all just flowed. It’s not like I wrote for the other guys because they couldn’t do it, or didn’t want to. I took the melody of that Dimples D song [“Sucker DJs (I Will Survive)” from 1983] and it all just went from there.
Cut Chemist: I really like the music on there. I love the “Sucker DJs” reference. The guys nailed it, with all the harmony changes. We did a video for that, it’s interesting. [Laughs]. Jeff Richter, who directed “Quality Control,” did it. He had some new, 360-degree camera and wanted to use it. We made it on our second “Word Of Mouth” tour. [Tourmates] Dilated Peoples makes an appearance. The video got released, but it didn’t garner as much attention as its predecessor.
Soup: That video was all right, I don’t hate it. I remember we shot it right after we had done a show. We stepped off stage and went to a soundstage near the venue. Akil wrote a lot of that, and we rocked with it. He did a really good job, and we just split it up. I like the trading off [vocally] we did on there.
Monkey Bars
[Produced by DJ Nu-Mark]
Nu-Mark: Originally that was supposed to be a “DJ workout” thing of mine, with no MCs. Kind of the yang to [Cut Chemist’s] “Lesson 6” [from Jurassic 5]. Cut played the music for “Monkey Bars” for the group and they just really wanted to rhyme on it. So we did it, and I liked it.
Marc 7: We gangstered and just took that song from Nu-Mark. [Laughs]. We wrote to it without telling him. We knew it had to be so tight that he couldn’t deny it. And he gave it up. That’s one of my favorites.
Chali 2na: We all wanted to rap on that beat, for sure. We did it behind Nu-Mark’s back, and when we showed it to him, he was like, “Oh, damn.” [Laughs].
Jurass Finish First
[Produced by DJ Nu-Mark]
Chali 2na: I was on tour with Ozomatli when that track started. I was in Cleveland or somewhere like that, in a baseball stadium. We was on the Warped Tour, in 1998. I was writing that [vocal] pattern out, and thinking how dope it would be if the whole group wrote to that same pattern. As I was writing it out, I said to myself, “This is something me and Marc would do, back in the day.” I remember picking up a payphone and calling Marc, and I spit the verse to him. This was before we had any music for it. When I got back home, Nu-Mark had the music and I had the whole idea already.
Nu-Mark: That’s the sleeper on the album. We love to perform that one. That one was done in the middle of recording the album. I think Soup and Akil didn’t like the beat, that’s why they weren’t on it. With the vocal snippets from Soup’s dad and Chali’s mom at the end of that song, originally we were trying to formulate a skit with our parents talking shit about us. My mom flubbed it, and most of them weren’t great. But Soup’s dad’s thing was great, even if he wasn’t talking shit. We wanted more skits on the album, but they didn’t work out.
Marc 7: Akil and Soup weren’t big fans of that beat, as I recall. But me and Chali loved it. So we jumped on it. I remember recording a version of that at Ice-T’s house. Akil knew him. I can’t remember if what we did at Ice’s place was the final album version.
Soup: For Chali and Marc, that was just right up their alley. They took it and just ran with it. I just couldn’t figure out how I would be on there, I couldn’t figure out what to say. My dad is on the end there, he wasn’t going to talk shit about me, no way. He wasn’t going to be negative, because he knew I was doing something positive.
Chali: My mom is at the end of that song, speaking. She was serious about that shit, too! [Laughs] “You got to get yourself a job.” That was a real message on my answering machine.
Cut Chemist: Oh, I love that song! [As soon as the title is mentioned]. That was a Unity Committee throwback for sure. Marc and Chali are playing off each other like they did back in the Unity Committee days. They don’t do it like that when other MCs are involved.
Contribution
[Produced by Shafiq Husayn]
Akil: I knew Shafiq [the song’s producer]. He was doing his thing before Jurassic 5, when we were in high school. Shafiq was in a group called Nile Kings, they were signed to Rhyme Syndicate [Ice T’s production / management crew]. It wasn’t weird to me if we brought in an outside producer. That one was a bigger [sounding] record, it out-bumps the usual J5 beats. So that’s what I wanted.
Chali 2na: I like both of Shafiq’s songs, they were both cool contributions to what we were doing. That song was about all of the conscious shit we was trying to do. That song has my favorite line: “The most that you can spend on any child is time.” I love that one.
Nu-Mark: The MCs wanted to introduce songs that had more low end in them. Cut and I were more about textures, our sound was more raw. Shafiq was a great producer and record collector. The original demo version of “Contribution” was really dope. I didn’t love the strings they added on top [for the final version]. The original was killin’.
Twelve
[Produced by Shafiq Husayn]
Chali 2na: That was a song where we could just flex some rhymes, party stuff. That chorus was a Unity Committee thing from way back, but we never used it on anything. We would always say how nursery rhymes was the illest, those were the easiest to remember [for fans]. So it was like, “One, two, buckle my shoe.”
Soup: That beat was hard [hums it]. At first, Chali had, “One, two, buckle my shoe,” and I was like, “We can’t sound like kids.” So we changed it to, “One, two, Jurassic crew.” That beat was dope, I really liked it.
The Game
[Produced by Cut Chemist, co-produced by DJ Nu-Mark; featuring Shawny Mac and Marvski on vocals]
Cut Chemist: That song was a full-fledged “Unity Committee meets The Rebels of Rhythm,” a posse cut. The concept was pretty basic — passing the mic like a basketball. It was easy to add those extra MCs back into the mix. That was definitely one of the most fun sessions we did.
Akil: I think the “Are you ready to play the game?” sample at the beginning got the basketball theme started. Shawny Mac was on that, he passed away. We was both from South Central. I met Shawny, who went by Afrika, in 1981, playing basketball. We both built the Rebels of Rhythm. Shawny was there at Rat Race, we did a dope show there and then two days later he got caught up on some drug shit, out of town. He got out of jail around when we were doing Quality Control and I wanted him on that track. We were on tour in Europe in 2000 when I heard that he had gotten killed. I was even going to pay for him to come over and tour with us.
Soup: I loved that song, it was really creative. But I couldn’t listen to that for a loooooong time. I would always skip over it. Shawny passed away and he didn’t even really get to hear the song before he died. It’s still tough for me to hear.
Marc 7: I have a lot of great memories recording that song. That one came very naturally. Lyrically, we were just passing the mic. We brought Marvski and Shawny Mac on there, both of the additional extra members. Everybody ripped and that session was just a great vibe. You can hear it in the lyrics, people were having a ball.
Improvise
[Produced by DJ Nu-Mark]
Nu-Mark: That was done earlier [it came out as a single on Interscope in 1998], I was still trying to find my voice in the group back then. I didn’t want to sound like Luke [Cut Chemist], but I wanted it to work for the group. The UK company we licensed the EP to, Play It Again Sam, really wanted us to extend the EP into an LP, to increase profit margin. [Laughs]. Not that we saw that profit. [Laughs]. So we played along and did that song in 1998. I love that one, I think it’s the best that the guys have ever sounded together on a song. We use it at every sound check, to get everybody “in tune.” They all drop into tune with that one.
Soup: I like that one. The rhymes on there were like Melle Mel, going way back, he’d trade off with Kid Creole [in the Furious 5]. We were still kind of new when we made that, so we would introduce ourselves with our rhymes. No groups from L.A. had ever done that style before. We weren’t really influenced by anyone locally when we did that style.
Swing Set
[Produced by Cut Chemist and DJ Nu-Mark]
Cut Chemist: A lot of that song was recorded at Red October. It started with me DJing around with the Sandy Nelson record [“Big Noise From Winnetka”]. I remember doing a live improv performance on the radio with Nu-Mark, and he threw a Spiderman record over the Sandy Nelson, and I used that moment as the impetus for the song. We built it pretty equally between us, in the same room, going back and forth. Bringing records back in, to answer other records. It took a couple of weeks.
Nu-Mark: Once we finished that song, that’s when I knew that it was locked in with us as a group. We can do all six of us and smash it, or it can be just me and Cut Chemist. We can do everything. We put so much work into that song, going back and forth. It was a lot of teamwork. The way it was conceived was hilarious. I can’t remember who, but one of us wanted to do a swing-influenced DJ set, and one of us wanted to make a swing-influenced song. So we had both been compiling crates of swing records, independently of the other guy. I think Luke [Cut Chemist] said, “We should do a swing song.” And I was like, “Dude, I have a whole crate, ready to go!”
Chali 2na: The first time I heard that one, I lost my mind. I said, “This shit is crazy!” With Ozomatli, we toured with Cherry Poppin’ Daddies. That swing shit was really poppin’ at the time, and I could enjoy it on both ends. We played with the Brian Setzer Orchestra, too, and I understood how that music affected people. The J5 song was a perfect interpretation of that swing vibe, within the context of hip-hop.
If you enjoyed reading this, please log in and click “Recommend” below.
This will help to share the story with others.
Photos provided by B+ and Cut Chemist. Design by Alfredo Rico-Dimas.
Brian Coleman is the author of Check The Technique Volume 2: More Liner Notes for Hip-Hop Junkies. Purchase Check The Technique Volume 2 today:
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | iTunes | GetOnDown | Powell’s
Follow Brian Coleman on Twitter @GoodRoadBC
