Thursday is a perfect day to reflect, look back to the past and appreciate the songs that started it all. So many artists that defined their genre of music and inspired the next generations of musicians are still making and performing music today and this gives us a great opportunity to go back and groove on the originals.
The timing of this is perfect. In two days I finally get to see Jurassic 5 perform live, just two kilometres down the road from me. I cannot wait. Their live performances in Australia are a thing of legend especially when they performed at the 2002 Big Day Out. I didn’t make it, but anyone that saw them claims it was one of the best gigs of their life.
Quality Control came out in 2000 and for me it was one of those albums that helped me start to appreciate that rap music was more than the bubble-gum, almost novelty songs of the 90′s. Jurassic 5 were ten times more talented than Sir Mix-a-lot or Young MC and the production, created by legendary producers, Cut Chemist and DJ Nu-Mark, gave them a solid footing. Jurassic 5 consists of four very talented and charismatic emcees, and it’s that charisma that really set them apart along with their amazing lyrcism.
Up, I love the power of words, nouns and verbs
The pen and the sword, liquid stick on award
No folklore or myths in my penmanshipThe Panther Scholar Warriors is what I present, uh
Verbally decapitating those against a
Jihad [Foreign Content] words make sense
You gots to get up on your vocab, you gots to have vocab
Letters makes words, and sentences makes paragraphs
Listen to the album again today and you get a sense that it was something special, even now. It’s old school, it’s funky, it’s melodic and it’s accessible, which meant it made it easy for people to listen and learn. I believe that it can be placed up there with the great albums from The Beastie Boys, Mos Def and A Tribe Called Quest.
Get to the Enmore on Saturday if you can, cause it’s gonna be a hell of a party, but until then, chuck this on repeat…