Old school rap is not dead. It's alive and well, in California of all places. Los Angeles-based hip-hoppers Jurassic 5 are strangely a six-member crew consisting of four emcees and two DJ's, who have successfully fashioned their style after an old school hip-hop aesthetic.
The only problem is that since the late 1970's to the early 80's, so much has changed for this art form and its native land as we cautiously approach 2003.
Back when it all began, hip-hop music donned an ethic of partying, having a good time, and keeping focused on positive things. The whole presentation of old school rap was so carefree that it seemed as if all you had to do to make your worries disappear was clap your hands, stomp your feet and sing along.
Now that the art form has grown well beyond its teens, life is not so simple, and many artists have pointedly made mature contributions profoundly marking hip-hop's intellectual development. The fact that Jurassic 5 have constrained themselves to such a premature stage of their art's development is one, amongst many, essential problems with the retro niche they have chosen for themselves.
Producer and DJ Cut Chemist is a wizard of sound and the creator of these extremely great-sounding beats. This makes him an essential factor in what has made J5 such a success. Each single the group cuts makes dedicated promoters out of DJs (radio and club DJs), and subsequently creates droves of young fans.
There is no doubt that the emcees Chali 2NA, Zaakir, Akil and Marc 7 are all quite competent flow-wise and rhythmically, but collectively they lack content. Making endless allusions to "the way it was," "party-people" and other such overused old-school rhetoric leaves the listener unimpressed.
Every single that J5 have released has had at least one great track on it, but when they pack their songs together into a nine-track EP, the melodic chants and verses of repetitious surface-value content quickly gets tiresome. Therefore, "Power In Numbers" has an effect opposite to the one its title suggests: the power actually decreases as the numbers increase on the CD player.
When Jurassic 5 does attempt to tackle actual subject matter ("Thin Line") they not only seem hindered by having to stretch the song's scope of specificity across four lyricists, but their use of prepackaged messages comes across as clich?(c)d and simple.
For the beat lover, the lyrical lack on this release is excusable, because Cut Chemist on production (accompanied by DJ Numark on the scratching and cutting) is brilliant. I would take the hand-clapping reheated old-school sounds of Jurassic 5 "Power In Numbers" any day or night of the week over the glamorous hip-pop devoid of substance, which incessantly bombards us through commercial media.
"Freedom" and "Hey" are the notably fresh-tracks on this release. "Power In Numbers" hits stores Oct. 8. For more info on the group, go to www.jurassic5.com.
