Sweet revenge starts rap

By REBECCA BARRY

You wouldn't know it but the first verse Chali 2na wrote was a battle rhyme.

It was 1981 and the then 11-year-old was about to exact revenge on a trio of wannabe rappers who hung out under his building, drinking beer and practising their freestyling. One night the young 2na showed up.

"They murdered me," he says. "Murdered me. I looked silly in front of the neighbourhood girls, I felt really bad. So I got really mad at these guys and I didn't talk to them for a couple of days."

The Jurassic 5 MC laughs like Santa Claus down the line from his house in Riverside, California, as he recalls racing home to scribble his retort, and how a week later, he returned to deliver it.

"They were like, 'Whatever shorty'. I'm like 'For real!' They're like, 'All right, cool'. So the dude starts clappin' his hand and I start busting the verse I wrote and the whole crowd was like 'Ohhh!' and they could see that, damn, I could do this."

It was sort of cheating, he admits, but freestyling has never been his forte. 2na is best known for his deep, mellifluous voice and funky, rhythmic flow, a style that harks back to the simpler times of Treacherous Three or the Cold Crush Brothers, and lyrical themes that shun the confrontational style of his contemporaries. Likewise Jurassic 5 are respected for their warm, charismatic live shows. Both their albums Quality Control (2000) and Power in Numbers (2002) embrace jazzy, old-school sensibilities.

But how does positivity stack up in a scene consumed by the woes of the world?

"We from the ghettos of America, too, but everything is not all that in the hood," he says. "It's not all gun shots and gangstas, y'know. It's more about community living and everybody taking care of each other, doin' your part to make a change as opposed to trying to tell somebody how wrong they are, y'know what I'm sayin? Your mouth is closest to your own ear, so you gotta listen to what you say first and apply to yourself."

What's more, J5 "regurgitate" their hip-hop heroes: LL Cool J, Run DMC, Public Enemy to Grandmaster Flash, Serious 5, etc. Is there a risk the more innovative and experimental artists could surpass them?

"If you don't know your past, you don't know where you're headed, you know what I'm sayin'?" he says. "I'm sick of people getting into hip-hop without knowing the past. When I was in high school listening to Native Tongues and Run, some of these people were just born or weren't born yet. And now these are the cats who are runnin' hip-hop ... "

He continues to ponder this, damning the "consumer market" and the trends he believes have taken over the need for hip-hop artists to "pay their dues".

J5 paid theirs in the early 90s at a place called the Good Life Cafe, an open-mic space in South Central Los Angeles where he met his five bandmates - rappers Marc 7even, Zaakir and Akil, and producers Cut Chemist and DJ Nu-Mark.

"Talent would come up, they'd play their tape and they'd do their song and if you wasn't good the crowd would be like, 'Please pass the mic!' You'd get shot down."

Even now, 2na says he'd go mad without keeping busy, although he fits it around his wife and 13-year-old son (he even briefly interrupts the interview to discuss food with them). These days, like most of his bandmates he is putting the finishing touches on a solo album and working on the soundtrack for a cartoon with Marvel Comics creator Stan Lee.

As for a third J5 album, five songs are ready to go, and they are planning on one collaboration with American singer-songwriter Dave Matthews. In the meantime, they tour, even if they don't have a new product to promote.

"That's what we do," he says. "We love to be on the road and do shows. So when we don't got a record out we try and keep our name fresh and showing stage presence so that people do not lose track and thought of who we are.

"I love to work. I get a serious satisfaction out of it, like sex almost. It's a beautiful feeling."

Performance

* Who: Jurassic 5 (with support from Scribe)

* Where and when: St James, Sunday, 8pm