Jurassic Still Left Wanting For Return To Golden Age (Jurassic Five in general)

Member Name: Sugar Matty O

Product:	Jurassic Five in general
Date:	18/09/02 (153 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: One of Them - great nastiness that will pop ears open, Break - monster drum tune, Still one of the best crew collaborators in the game

Disadvantages: Nelly Furtado's appearance seems both contrived and wasted, Try and ignore the fact you'd rather want to hear the original J5 LP, At times tame and too predictable

JURASSIC 5 – ‘Power in Numbers’ – Interscope 2002 - out October 7th

J5, to a degree, seemed to have suffered for their art. The Jurassic 5 LP was and remains a superb collection of easy, effortless grooving, but in some quarters sophomore Quality Control was said to lack that key, free-flowing element of enthusiasm. In other words, it wasn’t a remake of their debut. It would be wrong to classify Power in Numbers as something of a make-or-break release as Quality Control was far from being trash, but those hoping to be taken back to the concrete streets while learning lesson 6 had better get used to the current J5 standing.

What’s for sure, they’ve never lost their funkiness, and there are plenty of jams fans will be purring over – not vintage J5 but undeniably sassy, streetwise and smooth. There’s even the odd smattering of angst to surprise people with, and vocally the group still are up there with the most pedigreed of mic-passers. Maybe saying this is the mature sound of Jurassic 5 is misplaced, yet at times it’s hard to get enthusiastic about what’s going on. Although the killer moments will get you up in arms, there’s that feeling that you wanna slip on the original J5 disc straight away afterwards.

Far from conjugating verbs and constipating nerds, obviously someone really got on J5’s nerves and inspired the fierce One of Them. Breathing fearsome lines like ‘the only bitch that ever loved you gotta call you her son’, calling out those wearing ‘pretty-assed earrings’ and the ones ‘concerned with looking cute’, One of Them generally revels in the ice-blasted fury that backs a whole lot of hating. Certainly a complete U-turn from the limply constructed Thin Line that has Nelly Furtado on guest vocals, sparingly used in getting some female angle on the whole ‘let’s stay friends/should we become lovers?’ scen
ario.

Plenty of J5 production punch keeps an interest with a suitably retiring track filled with spilling guitars and heart-tugged strings, but for pure drum rawness, Break gets busy on the kicks and drops a demon of a snare-splatterer dressed up as ‘candy for your ears’. Suggesting a nod towards Quality Control’s Monkey Bars with additional chorus guitar twangs, Chali 2na stirs things up by ‘using third optical tools to rock a few crews/you got it confused, methodically use raps to sonically bruise cats.’

On the racy, high-power A Day at the Races, Big Daddy Kane and Percy P take task to a cut sounding similar to King Bee’s Back by Dope Demand. A matching bassline with extra pace and rolling drums, Kane’s lyrical know how doesn’t desert him, explaining that ‘to compress a nigga means one less a nigga’ and dropping cutting, good old days verse - ‘you out of your league like Jordan was with baseball’.

Maybe to remind listeners of the formula that has made them memorable, If You Only Knew and Remember his Name both hang off of a flute loop – the key component that made Jayou so sneakily addictive. If You Only Knew – hailed as ‘pure unadulterated work progress’ - is a lot lighter but heavy on the jazz sways, the keeping it real theme let down by a chorus playing the card of ‘if you only knew about the trials and tribulations we’ve been through.’ Remember his Name is a fine, shady multi-way phone conversation description of an anonymous street shooting, the shimmering flutes/pan pipes really tightening the tension caused by turf wars, completed with an unexpected ending. High Fidelity, flutes this time getting funkier in a Beatnuts Watch Out Now method, has Zaakir promising to ‘never eat the cow if it ain’t Halal’. Mark 7even runs rings round the confused with ‘Mark’s the word/7 marks the spot’
and Zaakir comes back to ask ‘can it be the Casanova speech therapy that heavily puts the flava right where it should be?’

Acetate Problems is given the unenviable role of running away with the end track in the way Swing Set provided an extraordinary finale to Quality Control, but is a lot less exhilarating. Tightly programmed breaks get stretched over six and a half minutes with a range of tweaks slices and pastes but a distinct lack of enjoyment factor, with praise only for its professional enough execution. For thrills and spills, check the completely random Kool Keith forty-second freestyle instead.

J5 are still a phat crew and Power in Numbers is a worthy album. If this is your starting point for discovering their sound it’s as good as place as any to begin, and strength in depth of tracks suggests they can still funk and breeze through like no other. The dedicated following will grab it instantly, and with summer just disappearing, Power in Numbers, while not furnace-hot, is nonetheless a respectable slow-burner…

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