A FIRESIDE CHAT WITH DJ NU-MARK OF JURASSIC 5


Jurassic 5 is not a recent phenomenon. The guys have been around the way for a while now. It is just with the release of their new album that MTV has carjacked the J5 bandwagon when just yesterday they were MTV 2 material (whatever the fuck MTV 2 is). I sat down with DJ Nu-Mark and we talked about their newfound popularity (along with a lot of other shit) and how none of them can seem to count since J5 is actually six guys. Never the less, they, in the words of Stuart Scott, "take it to the house." I only get to the curb, but alas, as always, the shit is commercial free, unedited and in his own words.


FRED JUNG: Not to point out the obvious, but there are six of you.

DJ NU-MARK: Why is there six of you? It was kind of like a joke. When Chali (Chali 2NA) played the song that Cut (Cut Chemist) had both of the crews rhyme on, he said, "Oh, you guys think you're so fresh. You guys think you are the Fantastic Five. You're more like the Jurassic Five." So it stuck. We all thought that was a pretty good name. That and we had pretty bad math teachers growing up (laughing).


FJ: Let's start from the beginning.

DJ NU-MARK: There were two groups, Rebels of Rhythm and Unity Committee. I actually met both of them, later on, at a club called the Good Life.


FJ: Were you affiliated with one of those two groups?

DJ NU-MARK: No, I wasn't. I was just a freelance DJ, doing clubs and whatever, production and stuff like that. So, yeah, I met them later over at that club. Cut had a beat he wanted both groups to rhyme on and it turned out so good after they rhymed on it that we all decided to be a group.


FJ: What was your initial impression of these fellas?

DJ NU-MARK: Well, at the club I was at, the whole theme of the night was live instrumentation. There was a band in the house, live instrumentation with MCs, so I had seen a few different sets of bands go up there and do some stuff that was OK, but these two groups both got the crowd excited and both had really good rhymes and something about their character, it drew you to them. I knew right off that they had a lot of talent.


FJ: Why did you guys decide upon releasing an EP first rather than cutting a whole full length studio album?

DJ NU-MARK: We were having fun. We had a single deal with Blunt off that song that I was just talking about. Well, before that, we put it out ourselves. We sold five hundred copies hand to hand. We only pressed like five hundred of them and that is extremely rare. And then, we got picked up a year later from Blunt, TVT, and they were telling us that they thought we were just a novelty group it was a one time single thing and a one time group thing and they didn't really see a future in it, so we said, "OK, let us off the label." And so they did, but they didn't know the whole time that they were doubting us that we had an EP about a song away from being finished, so right when they dropped us, a few months after that, we were ready to go and we decided to. We wanted to make an EP because a lot of times, albums are too long to digest, especially for a DJ because we have to constantly pick up the needle and flip the record over because there is usually two platters for a full length now a days. So you don't really feel the album like you used to. We wanted to make it palatable for the DJ and for the CD listener and cassette listener as well. So we wanted to just do something to introduce us and not just throw a bunch of material at once. Plus, we wanted it to be tight and short and sweet pretty much.


FJ: I don't mean to rub TVT's face in it, but you guys sold quite a few copies of that little EP.

DJ NU-MARK: Oh, yeah. I mean, it has been redistributed again probably at like 300,000 out here in the States and it went gold in Europe.


FJ: Not too shabby for a novelty act.

DJ NU-MARK: Yeah, really.


FJ: Let's touch on the new release, Quality Control. Nice. Has college radio got wind of it yet?

DJ NU-MARK: Oh, cool, I am glad you like it, Fred. Colleges, we were like number one at Gavin and CMJ in hits for a while. All the college stations definitely support us so we have to say a big ups to the college stations out there.


FJ: Why do you think college radio seems to be the only thing on the cutting edge these days?

DJ NU-MARK: Well, because mainstream radio doesn't have deejays. They are calling themselves deejays. The station is calling themselves deejays, but the only deejays that are on mainstream radio are at night when they have mixed shows. The daytime radio is just a program director. My theory is that they should just have the program director be the deejay because that is all that is really happening.


FJ: Eliminate the middleman.

DJ NU-MARK: Yeah, they don't even need a mixer. They just need a record player and a guy with a suit and tie. They can just lose the equipment and all the mixed shows can be broadcast out of somebody's apartment or something. No, that is all that is going on. With us, we were on a show called Battle of the Beats and we won it longer than everybody had ever won it in L. A., but when it came time to adding us to daytime radio, it was really light, but all the other groups that won maybe once or didn't win at all, are played twelve times a day on the radio, so it has nothing to do with the consumer or the listener. It has nothing to do with the deejay, so the only person left is the program director. Basically, Fred, it comes down to this. If your stuff doesn't sound like everything else out there, it is not going to get played. That is all that is left. That is all I can think of. If you can think of something else, let me know because that is all that is left. If the people like us the most and we won three weeks in a row (laughing), it is like, seven days a week, winning everyday, different artists, for me, common sense tells me that that should be daytime radio just like Biggie or anything else that is being added at the time. It is cool. It is not a big thing sine we've never depended on radio for our sales anyway. We definitely didn't for the EP. There is no clean versions of the EP.


FJ: Do you prefer being underground?

DJ NU-MARK: We really don't call it underground. We do, but we don't. We're just doing what we're doing and I don't know what we're classified as right now. I guess it is underground. I look at it like this, Fred. We are doing music that feels good to us and we're touching on so many genres of music. Being old school is really just one one hundredth of what we do and if anybody really sat and listened to the album closely or the EP really closely, they would see that there is a lot more going on than just old school stuff. There is a blend of a whole new thing going on and it is not just old school that we touch on. We touch on eras from the past that are not necessarily that old school. We may touch on something that is from a main source era that felt good to us, but flip it in different ways. So what we did on this album was we were being labeled old school so much that we said, "OK, let's go old school," and I put like this Thirties theme in the album. I put something in the very beginning that has like a Thirties theme. "Swing Set" has a Thirties theme that me and Cut came up with. I don't know what we are, Fred. We appeal to a lot of different people. That is why I can't really call it underground. You would have to come to one of our shows and that is what throws you off. They want to call it underground because it is not played on the radio or it is not played on MTV. That is what classifies that and people take you out of that category once you are played on those stations. The word underground is so vague now. It is so hard to say. It is rough. The old school thing about it is, yeah, there is an old school vibe in it, but it is nothing deliberate. When I met these guys, they were doing that.


FJ: Quality Control has so jazz odds and ends in it, are you into jazz?

DJ NU-MARK: No, not at all. We've never sampled any bit of jazz ever, well, maybe a slight bit, but anything jazz related is the stuff on "Swing Set." It is not really jazz. It is more close to, it is a hybrid of jazz. It is like Dixie or like Thirties swing. But to me, we are flipping funk like Tribe flipped jazz. We are about funk samples.


FJ: Who is funky?

DJ NU-MARK: There are tons. I don't even know where to start with on who I love from funk, but the thing about funk that appeals to me is just straight off, there was no patterns played. If it was just one note, the texture of that one note is so much more than what is going on right now in live recorded music. There is something about the way they recorded material back then, I know the boards were different. The recording boards were different. The engineers were older and they were different. The instruments themselves, like drums, they were made out of wood back then. Now, they are made out of fiberglass and all this other shit. You could hear the earth in a drum kit back then. It is very texturized and that to me is more appealing than anything I am hearing right now. The actual material on the tape that they are making right now has more chemicals in it. It is a thinner, linear sound. Back then, it was way more wide. It has a wider appeal. So there is a lot of factors that came into play, just texture-wise alone. But then, you have got to think that they didn't have pro tools that we have back then. They didn't have half the technologies we have back then, but people still go back to the past to buy those records and those records are the most valuable right now because of the patterns on it and the musicians were actually putting in overtime. There is something about it that is appealing just straight up, everything from the way they did chord changes to the straight up drums because I grew up playing drums so that is what really got me into it.


FJ: Do you listening to anything current or do you stick with the tried and true old school material?

DJ NU-MARK: Well, I buy new stuff like new hip-hop and stuff like that, I guess, underground stuff, whatever I like even R&B. Anything that moves me, I go out and buy, but I find my inspiration from buying old music.


FJ: So are you always cruising for used record boutiques?

DJ NU-MARK: Oh, definitely. I have over thirty thousand LPs. I go into them as much as possible, but with touring, we really like to get a solid sound check in and our stage show is one of the most important things about us.


FJ: What is a recent gem?

DJ NU-MARK: I can't say what it is because it is a really rare title and I've had records sampled because I've said it in an interview.


FJ: No shit.

DJ NU-MARK: Yeah, I can't even say, Fred. I will tell you a different one that is a hip-hop title. I bought Wu-Tang's demo on vinyl and that was worth a lot of bread. It is the shit because they have an instrumental version of "Tears" on there and that is not on the album or any other single. I have one with the bar code and one without the bar code on Wu Tang Records.


FJ: That is some serious shit.

DJ NU-MARK: Yeah, that is the shit.


FJ: Let's talk about the Word of Mouth Tour, catchy title.

DJ NU-MARK: Thanks.


FJ: How long will you be on the road?

DJ NU-MARK: Seven weeks. We are excited. We just came off that last tour and so we are still recuperating (laughing). It is all good, Fred. We are blessed to have the chance. I just constantly think of it like that. I am really in production mode right now. I am coming up with some good stuff and I kind of wish like I didn't have to leave, but I got to do what I've got to do. You fall into these modes and we're into production mode or a performance mode and right now, I am definitely in a production mode.


FJ: You have to get your body fixed on long bus rides.

DJ NU-MARK: Yeah, yeah. This time around, it will be fear of crashing (laughing).


FJ: Whoa, back the truck up for a second. What?

DJ NU-MARK: Well, the last tour, did you hear about that?


FJ: I'm under a rock for most of the year.

DJ NU-MARK: Well, we crashed. Our bus driver, allegedly, fell asleep at the wheel and 2NA had to undergo surgery and everything. Three of us were injured. Akil flew out of his bunk and we were wrapping his head with a pillowcase. We were about twenty feet away from dying, ten feet away from dying because where we ended up, there was no shoulder and so had we fell off the road where we ended up, we would have definitely died. We would have tumbled. We got lucky and we didn't tumble. We slid off a smooth embankment and the driver stepped on the brakes and we landed in some trees. Everybody was all fucked up. There was shit everywhere and we could barely even get out of it. The doors were locked and we couldn't even get out. By the time we got out, there was like news cameras there because there was a driver behind us that was watching us swerve the whole time.


FJ: There was easier ways to get your names on TV.

DJ NU-MARK: Yeah, there sure are, but it is an interesting story. It had people talk about us a lot more (laughing).


Fred Jung is the Editor-In-Chief and doesn't leave home without it. Comments? Email Him