Photo: Jurassic5.com -- GO THERE!

by Scott Thill

Life isn't fair; sometimes it's downright wrong. Too often the people who don't deserve any credit end up walking away with the girl and the phat bank account while those who are striving to make a difference or break a cycle end up with loose change and rejection letters. This is the type of jacked-up mathematical constant I think of every time some flavor-of-the-month like 50 Cent makes MTV News, the cover of The Source, or a guest spot on Saturday Night Live, etc.

What's sad is that Jurassic 5 so often fit this mold of unheralded artistry. And no matter how many times their songbites show up on Fox Sports, ESPN, Honda commercials or elsewhere, J5 has had to work hard to grab some proper respect in a musical landscape now almost fully armored against anything not involving Escalades, thug glamour, hordes of honeys shaking ass, and more ice than Rakim wore on the cover of Paid in Full. And the irony is bitter, because while many pigeonhole J5 with narrow-minded terms like "throwback" or "old-school", most hip-hop headz these days don't realize that everything they see and feel as "real" or "new" has already been done and sometimes overdone.

In other words, J5 is by no means completely original in its integration of past hip-hop aesthetics, nor do their lyrics assert that: they've just chosen to emulate righteous cats like the Native Tongues posse, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, and other similarly conscious artists than the more ubiquitous could-give-a-shit bangers like the Geto Boys, 2 Live Crew and Compton's Most Wanted. So it doesn't make sense to worry about teasing out how J5 might appear too "soft" for an African-American audience, as more than a healthy share of mostly (white?) reviewers have. These guys cut their teeth at the Good Life, after all; they've got nothing to prove to anyone. And the unspoken implication -- that artists should change their art because the general population isn't aligned with them -- in that dangerous equation is counterproductive to the extreme.

Photo: Jurassic5.com -- GO THERE!

But this is sometimes the headache you can create when you buck the trend and release a disc as full of philosophy as Power in Numbers. People don't want to be criticized for their positions or, worse, their consumer choices. So when Chali 2Na slams them on "Freedom" -- "Got people screaming, 'Free Mumia Jamal'/But two out of three of y'all will probably be at the mall" -- people who see themselves as represented in that group of apathetic mallrats are gonna take it hard. But that's their loss, because Power in Numbers has this type of protest mainlined into almost every song, and it's something the world needs to hear in these crazy days of unelected presidents bombing the shit out of Third World poorheads to better grift their oil.

True to form, the politically powerful Power in Numbers keeps the topical fires burning, but some of its time signatures are a bit too close to each other. Indeed, this is the only fault some listeners might have with the album: the diversity of its sound has been ratcheted back a bit further than on Quality Control, where turntablists like Cut Chemist and Numark ran wild, creating more multidimensional beats heard in one place since Fear of a Black Planet.

Which is not to say that Cut and Numark are left out on Power in Numbers. Cut's frenetic soundtrack for "Day at the Races" (the finest hip-hop song of 2002 and 2003 so far, in my opinion) and Numark's fresh production on "What's Golden" are head-bobbing paeans to technical, lyrical and musical artistry. And the hip-hop history hiding in their grooves only helps to further engineer their timelessness. Rap immortals like Big Daddy Kane and Percy P bring not just a silky smooth delivery but also a heady measure of rap cred on "Day at the Races", while Public Enemy's "Prophets of Rage" hook keeps "What's Golden" hurtling forward like a runaway train. And when J5's resident rappers kick back and let Numark and Cut flourish on "Acetate Prophets", hip-hop's future is most ably captured. Because that exhilarating fusion and tension between DJ and rapper is what's been keeping hip-hop alive for over three decades, and that's never going to change. Because hip-hop as an art form will die the day it does.

PICK UP POWER IN NUMBERS HERE

Don't get me wrong, Power in Numbers is the finest hip-hop album released since Blackalicious' Blazing Arrow (which itself was the finest hip-hop album released since J5's Quality Control). It's just that J5 has (thankfully) set the bar so high, and since so many of their songs are conscious condemnations of apathy and ignorance, people are going to be watching them closer than cats like 50 Cent. That's just the price of genius, something J5 possesses in excess. They've just gotta make sure they've got their creative cash handy all the time, everywhere they go.

25 March 03

Scott Thill usually finds the time to write on everything that does not include those fearsome words, "boy band". He's also a gainfully employed editor who writes for XLR8R, Popmatters, All Music Guide, AOL and others. His first novel, The Dangerous Perhaps, should be done by the time the War on Terrorism is over.

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