Jurassic 5

Quality Control
 (Interscope)

Rappers like the megaselling Jay-Z and Big Tymers are solely of the here and now; listening to them rhyme, you don't hear much of an old-school influence. Which is fine for them, but Jurassic 5 are different. They show a clear love for that famous school and its legendary professors, and they infuse that passion into invigorating new-school flows. Because of this, they don't exactly click with the rap mainstream, and they show it: opening for Fiona Apple, doing time on the Warped Tour (imagine how J5's positive messages of harmony and ghetto kinship go down with the poo-poo-pee-pee Blink-182 audience). And now, in case it wasn't clear enough that they're different from the mainstream, the stunning Quality Control is the final brick in the wall separating Jurassic 5 from the mainstream.

The four Jurassic rappers knock out remarkable, tight, we-in-this-together harmonies in songs like "Great Expectations" and "LAUSD." The beats'n'scratches, assembled by dual DJs Nu-Mark and Cut Chemist, sound perfectly refreshing, like a wrenched fire hydrant on a hot summer day. The rhymes express a naked yearning to take it back to the concrete streets J5 elegized on the EP - "Nowadays, when you sampling shit, you got to clear it," MC Zaakir ruefully accepts. All this, plus Quality Control isn't 70 minutes long, it isn't murderously angry, it contains references to Kurtis Blow and Wild Style - yes, this is an old school hip-hop sermon.

But while Jurassic may talk about bringing it back, their flows are wonderfully current, more dope than fresh, more Boogie Down Productions than Run-D.M.C. Like true leaders of the new school, the four MCs have a clear appreciation for their past ("Without the elements / It's all irrelevant"), but they aren't in a hurry to rap like Whodini. The MCing is uniformly terrific; anyone who can drop a line like "Handsome? Never, not even as a kid / The girls used to say, 'Yo, his nose is too big'" (as Zaakir does in "Twelve") earns a special place in my heart.

Admitting that you're not attractive enough to be a big-pimpin' ladies man isn't a popular sentiment for a rapper to offer up nowadays, but it's hardly surprising considering J5's utter uniqueness. Like comparable rap outfits The Freestyle Fellowship, The Pharcyde, and A Tribe Called Quest, Jurassic favor wordplay to Top 40 airplay, extended metaphors to gang shootouts (check the rapping-as-b-balling allegory "The Game"). Hopefully, Jurassic 5 will stick around longer than those defunct groups will, because what they've done on their debut album is truly singular. By delving into the very DNA of hip-hop music, J5 have crafted the best straight-ahead, no-jokes hip-hop album since Things Fall Apart, an album that will still sound fresh long after Juvenile has pawned off his ice and Lexus.

Rating: 9

Matt Ozga

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