Jurassic 5 - Jurassic 5

Jurassic 5 - Jurassic 5
This was a breath of fresh air when it was first released in 1998. This six man crew was a welcome injection of positivity when it seemed that hip hop was becoming mired in machismo, violence and negativity.

In The Flesh is a great opener. It has a flat sounding snare beat which rides a neat, jazzy guitar lick, and a memorable group rapped chorus. Each MC takes turns to rap, four distinct voices, all with a great flow. MC Chali 2Na is their trump card. His deep bass voice marks him out as different, and he comes across like a B Boy Paul Robeson. Jayou follows the same pattern vocally, but is much more danceable with a funky beat and a jazzy flute sample.

Lesson 6: The Lecture showcases DJs Cut Chemist and Nu Mark's skills and they are considerable. It mixes chemistry lectures with spoken word lessons in DJing and is very innovative, frequently shifting in styles and tempo, and making use of some great scratching and samples which are played at different speeds.

Concrete Schoolyard is probably the most well known track here. Like most of the tracks, it sounds retro (as opposed to old school) with its Motown style piano. If hip hop had emerged in the '60s, this is how it may have sounded. Action Satisfaction has a funky blaxploitation style bassline whilst Without A Doubt is the most modern sounding track with its contemporary, for the time, gangster-esque beat (think Scarface or Ice T).

A few of the tracks are reprised as short intervals which is unnecessary but this is still a fine album. Listening to albums like this makes me despair for modern hip hop which, to these ears, has a much poorer lyrical flow and is musically uninspired and over produced.