Good Morning to you! This is Jacob Braybrooke, and the time has arrived for me to take you on a ride in my musical DeLorean as we pay a small tribute to one of the seminal sounds of the past for ‘Way Back Wednesdays’ on the blog, which fits my theme of writing up about a different piece of music every day! Comprised of MC’s Charli 2na (Charles Stewart), Akii (Dante Givens), Courtenay Henderson (Soup aka Zaakir), Marc 7 (Marc Stuart) and DJ’s/Producer’s Cut Chemist (Lucas McFadden) and DJ Nu-Mark (Mark Potsic) – Jurassic 5 were actually a six-piece crew who came out the Los Angeles venue of Good Life and they were trailblazers on the global hip-hop scene, both critically and commercially, throughout the late-1990’s and the 2000’s. They were very much known for being old school and proud of it, with their lyrics mixing braggadocio rhymes with simple tributes to the art form of Hip-Hop and street poetry itself. There were no over-produced auto-tune melodies, no blatant money-waving, obvious misogyny, no outrageous grand-standing and just a sprinkling of swearing – but they simply packed out live sets throughout the UK and the US by encouraging a live crowd to get on their feet and interact with them, with most of their success coming directly from good word-of-mouth and a mixture of sought-after EP releases, to start off with, that were initially only available through Import in the UK. They had hits including ‘What’s Golden?, ‘The Influence’ and ‘Quality Control’ that made the likes of Charli 2na and Cut Chemist household names. Their highest-charting single in the UK is ‘Concrete Schoolyard’, which reached #35 and it was taken from their debut self-titled album released in 1998, but it also appeared on the self-titled EP release from a year prior. The Jurassic 5 logo’s that you can find on the front cover of the EP and the album were designed by Charli 2na himself, and NME named the album as their 9th best from 1998. Let’s play on the ‘Concrete Schoolyard’ below.
Although they offered something fresh to many listeners of all backgrounds, Jurassic 5 decided to call it ‘Quits’ in 2007 shortly after releasing their fourth studio album – ‘Feedback’ – citing creative differences as the reason, yet they returned to the stage and recorded some new material for a reunion during 2013 and 2014, and each member of the band has continued to release new music individually. As for ‘Concrete Schoolyard’, the core ethos of their message was “Let’s take it back to the concrete streets/Original beats from real live MC’s” as they aimed to provide their freshest Hip-Hop sound yet. At the time, Hip-Hop was decidedly either Dance Pop-oriented or Grunge-influenced in terms of visceral production, and so Jurassic 5 naturally decided to keep it simply by incorporating thick and floating Piano chords into their backing beats on ‘Concrete Schoolyard’ with a kick drum beat that makes the soundscape feel warm, but making for a slower tempo than a typical Hip-Hop release where elements of Soul and Baroque can peek in. It is melodic enough, however, with a final breakdown that increases the danceability of the recording. Refrains like “Playground tactics/No rabbit-in-the-hand tricks/Just that classic rap S**t from Jurassic” also provide a clear sense of clarity as the Alternative Hip-Hop collective make it their mission statement to disregard sleight of hand tricks or conform to pre-conceptual trends and place a larger emphasis on their influences instead. In conclusion, on ‘Concrete Schoolyard’ – which was reportedly recorded with Dave Matthews of all artists – Jurassic 5 were admittedly good and they were a much-needed breath of fresh air. There was no tropes and no tricks, just good old-fashioned MC’s with a solid sense of slight satire which was a clean cut above the rest.
That’s all for now! Thank you lots for checking out the blog that I’ve been working on today, and I’ll see you again later as we break down some more brand new music. Tomorrow, we’ll be listening to the album announcement track from a brand new artist who is based in London but originally hails from Calabar, Nigeria. He does a lot of interesting things with Afrobeat and his 2020 EP ‘Which Way Is Forward?’ landed a spot on my Top 5 EP’s list of that year, and he’s recently collaborated with Little Simz.
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