Back in 2007 after the release of their fourth album, Feedback Jurassic 5 announced that they would no longer be recording or performing together for the foreseeable future. Then after a triumphant return at last year’s Coachella, the group’s six original members – Akil, Zaakir, Marc 7, DJ Nu-Mark, Chali 2na, and Cut Chemist are have been crossing the country on this very special jaunt. The group is in top form, and definitely on top of their game. They have also released a new single, ““The Way We Do It.” Marc 7 took time out of his busy schedule to chat about the upcoming U.S. tour, video games, and more.
The group took quite a bit of time off, what has it felt like coming back together?
It’s been a lot of fun. I think the time off was good. It was good as far as everybody individually doing what they wanted to do. Musically and spending time with family. When we went on our run, I had just had a daughter and I had to watch her walking on the computer and things like that. So you miss those things, but I’m ready now. We’re ready now, we’re good.
You touched on having a daughter. Most of you have had kids in the past few years. How has becoming fathers impacted Jurassic 5’s music or musical creativity or drive in any way?
I’ve always rapped about what I’m passionate about, which keeps me honest, so that does play into it, speaking just for me.
How was Heavy D involved in J5’s new record since coming back together, “The Way We Do It?”
God bless the dead. Before he died he wanted to work with us and at the time we used the opportunity to sit down with him and hop in the studio. We made about four songs or so. We sat and we bonded and the connection of us working with him and vibing in the studio. So that’s one of the songs that came out of that session.
How do you guys collaborate with one another as a group to get from idea, to lyric, to beat to a full production of a song?
There’s no science to how we do it. Kind of the way you just said it, is how it happens. Sometimes it might be the beat that sparks it, someone might have a line, it might be the chorus; you know what I mean? It’s never anything forced, it just happens. I could speak of different songs like “What’s Golden” started with Nu-Mark like, “Yo I got this beat,” then he played the beat and Charli or somebody said something about, “man we should use that part from Public Enemy,” and we all thought that would be kind of dope and from that we put the hook around it. So that’s one of the ways of how a studio session or the creative process will go down.
So 2007, you guys parted ways. Did you all remain friends, but were just musically separated or was it a clean cut?
Some dudes were talking some dudes weren’t to be quite honest with you. It was that kind of split. It’s like families fight, brothers fight, they don’t want to talk with one another, don’t come to my room and I won’t come into yours. It wasn’t pretty.
*I believe the first time I personally caught wind of you guys was with the video game, and still one of my favorites to this day, Jet Set Radio Future, with your track “Improvise” and then your album Quality Control. Two part question. How did you end up working with the creators of Jet Set Radio Future ?
Yeah man, a lot of people got into us because of that. It was actually a really cool game. I’m an avid gamer, Akil as well. At the time, when it came to marketing and us getting stuff out, we knew we were limited, but we did know that we had fans that were skateboarders, snowboarders and gamers. Therefore, it just made sense for us to reach out and put a song through games because everyone was playing video games. It just made sense if anything simply from a marketing stand point.
What were or are the video games of choice?
I’m a huge EA Sports fan. I play all of them from Madden to basketball and baseball on the bus; anything that’s sports related. I’m big on FIFA as well as the mental games and puzzle games. The sports definitely dominate the bus because we like to run tournaments while on tour.
Who’s dominating the FIFA sticks right now?
I can’t really get them to get into FIFA. I can only play when I go overseas. It’s like everything out there; I never have a problem getting someone to play FIFA when I go overseas. But if it’s just me, I can’t get them to play. I’ve been trying to tell them how tight it is. Once I get them on the sticks, they’ll be addicted.
I’ve often wondered, who came up with the name Jurassic 5?
At the time we were looking for a name, the mother of Charli 2na’s girlfriend at the time made a joke and said, “Think you sound like the fantastic five, you sound more like the Jurassic 5.” She said that as a joke and we thought it was dope.
So jumping back to the present, I hear there are talks of a live album possibly being released. Can you talk about that?
We have full control of everything right now so we have the choice to do whatever we want. Nine times out of ten we’re not going to go through a label. If anything we might just get the Marketing and distribution from a third party, but that’s about it. We’re going to see. We’re going to start with this single and figure out time wise what everyone is doing and we’ll see. We’re going to talk after this tour when we have some time off.
What advice would you give to up and coming artists?
I think artists right now today, in 2014, are in a great place. Better than we were in some sense because the technology is at a level where you can literally have a studio in your closet. You have the whole world at your fingertips and you can really take advantage of it. With Bandcamp and all of these digital distributions, you are your own label. You have everything at your fingertips. You just gotta do it.
