A Grounded Crew

It’s just days after the release of Jurassic 5’s debut album, “Quality Control,” and a week into the hip-hop group’s hectic campaign to win new fans on the Warped tour, which is dominated by such punk-minded acts as Green Day and Papa Roach.

Back home in Los Angeles for a brief stop as Warped makes its Southern California swing, three of the group’s four rappers and both of its DJs are crammed into a dark corner booth at a Mexican restaurant in Hollywood.

It’s already been a long day: The group performed midafternoon in Anaheim, and then signed CDs and posters for fans at the show for more than an hour. Tonight is the last chance to take care of business at home for more than a month--a trip lived largely on a bus that already has shown itself to be mechanically challenged. And that’s just the start of what they expect to be a lengthy process of touring and building fan support.

Still, everyone’s in an upbeat mood. This is something they’ve been working toward for more than six years since forming J5 in South-Central Los Angeles, and the banter turns to tales of life before the group came together.

Sipping on a nonalcoholic margarita, rapper Zaakir (real name: Courtenay Henderson) animatedly regales his colleagues with colorful tales of urban life, boasting about his past exploits.

But his aren’t standard rap dramas of gang life or urban terrors. Instead, Zaakir’s stories--played for laughs--are about conflicts with his boss back in his early ‘90s gig as a clerk at Sav-on.

Since rap started nearly two decades ago, it’s been hailed for reflecting the reality of the inner city. That’s the rationale given for violent, misogynistic gangsta rap and for flaunting the “player” lifestyle, with its big cars, fancy clothes and other material goods acquired via not always savory means.

But that’s not reality, J5-style. This group’s reality is jobs at Sav-on, raising families--all four of the MCs have kids--and reaching through cultural barriers with its multiethnic lineup. It’s about a slow, steady evolution that has taught its members about values, patience and integrity.

This is something they express in music that has neither the “thug life” outrage and shock value nor the empty party mentality of the most popular rap today--a difference that makes it a challenge for J5 to crack radio playlists and album sales charts, but one that has caught the attention of critics and fans looking for fresh, new attitudes.

In fact, not only do you get no boasts about colorful lifestyles, big cars and fancy clothes from Jurassic 5, but in the chorus of the song “Lausd” they also actually boast about not even wanting big cars and fancy clothes.

“We didn’t make a conscious effort to be different,” says Zaakir, 29, known in the group by his nickname, Soup. “With the gangsta stuff, I wasn’t no gangsta. That leaves that out. People in the streets know I’m no gangsta. As far as rapping about material stuff I have, well, I know a lot of people rap about stuff they don’t have, but I don’t want to do that. It’s just not what we’re about.

“We’re not downing anybody who talks about that. We’re just not doing it. On ‘Lausd’ we say, ‘We are no superstars/who wanna be large and forget who we are/Don’t judge us by bank accounts and big cars/No matter how bright we shine we’re far from being stars.’

“You’re average, brother. Even people on top of the world know they’re average, but sometimes you believe the hype. You lose sight of yourselves.”

The positive poetry of the lyrics and the tag-team delivery and four-part harmonies of the MCs may sound downright revolutionary to a generation of rap fans raised on thug-life heroes Tupac Shakur and DMX, but the approach is really a salute to several generations of rap’s East Coast old school--from the early ‘80s of Grandmaster Flash and the documentary “Wild Style” through the playful, positive forces of De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest.

At the same time, J5 builds on a good-vibe, communal foundation laid in the past decade in the L.A. underground by such groups as the Freestyle Fellowship and the Pharcyde, and such current acts as Black-Eyed Peas, whose second album on Interscope is due in September, and Dilated Peoples, whose first album was just released by Capitol Records.

Setting J5 apart from even those groups is the work of the two DJs, who veer far from the familiar stock of old funk records into more obscure territory to create some of the most inventive and musical collages to be found in contemporary hip-hop.

It’s not exactly the kind of thing that shoots straight to the top of the charts, though. At a time when it’s not uncommon to see rap acts debut in the national Top 40, J5’s album, which came out last month, only made it to No. 43. It is currently at No. 84--with total sales of 90,000.

And even in its hometown, J5 has only been able to muster a minor presence on KPWR-FM (105.9), L.A.’s dominant hip-hop station, with airplay largely restricted to off-hour “specialty” mix shows rather than prime-time rotation.

But KPWR music director E-Man, a longtime J5 supporter, says the reaction to the group among station listeners has been strong--largely because it stands out from the crowd. And he expects airplay to increase.

“We get a lot of [requests] for them and even just a street buzz about them,” says E-Man. “If anything, they’re freshening and rejuvenating the sound of hip-hop now. It’s something unique for the audience. I bet six months from now we’ll be hearing a lot more from them and they’ll be really big.”

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E-Man isn’t alone in believing that Jurassic 5’s major-label debut represents a wind of change--or at least a fresh new breeze--in hip-hop. The enthusiastic reception of Warped fans--not just in Southern California, but in such stops as Boise, Idaho, and Bozeman, Mont.--has underscored the group’s cross-cultural reach.

And the music press has been lavish in its praise. A recent Rolling Stone album review identified J5 as “the big cats of the about-to-blow-up West Coast underground, a place where innovation is key. . . . The lyrics are down-to-earth and positive--almost wholesome--but ‘Quality Control’s’ overall vibe is uncompromisingly intense and hard to resist.”

Nowhere is that promise more evident than in “Lausd.” With a title playing off the acronym of the Los Angeles Unified School District, the song is more than just a rejection of standard rap values. If the chorus is a mission statement for the group, the verses--with the MCs trading off on stanzas--are a panorama of L.A.’s patchwork cultural quilt and a caution to those lured by the “glamour and glitz and camera tricks.”

It’s sort of a hip-hop “Hotel California,” its affection for the area’s melting-pot blends overshadowed by sorrow over the false fronts that hide conflicts and inequities:

“The City of Angels’ wings represent people’s hopes and dreams/And the evil that men do that live life close to kings/And boast supreme, fancy car, coats and cream/Material things provoke more folks to scheme.”

Not that these guys believe they’re immune to the seduction of either L.A. or their own potential success. But they have some perspective on it.

“You never know, I could do that,” says Zaakir, about the prospect of succumbing to success. “But I know it ain’t about what you have. You still going to get sick sometimes. So then you have a nice car and you’re sick. I doubt if you sit in a nice car and you’re sick you go, ‘Oh, I’m feeling better, these leather bucket seats made me feel all better.’ ”

The group’s distinctive tone is furthered by its racial makeup. Representing the spirit of the “unified” L.A. reference, the rappers are African Americans based in South-Central, while Cut Chemist (Lucas Macfadden) is a white kid from Hollywood and Nu-Mark (Mark Potsic) is a Valley boy whose mother is of Persian heritage.

On their own, the DJs are fixtures in a thriving L.A. club scene that draws a heavily white and Latin audience. There’s even more cultural reach in the J5 extended family, as rapper Chali 2na (the absentee from the dinner due to duties with his 8-year-old son) and Cut Chemist are also part-time members of Ozomatli, the East L.A. group that encompasses just about every L.A. cultural base.

The members say this was not a conscious effort to be different, but just something that evolved naturally.

“I come from the same music culture as the others,” says Nu-Mark. “My mother and dad were big fans of soul music. Always had music going on. The only thing really different I brought was the Persian side of my family--a lot of belly dancing and Eastern music.”

Jurassic 5 formed in 1993 in the nurturing setting of the Good Life Cafe, an open-mic hip-hop club in South-Central anchored by the Freestyle Fellowship and the Pharcyde. Chali 2na (Charles Stewart), Marc 7 (Marc Stuart) and Cut Chemist were performing as Unity Committee, while Akil (Dante Givens) and Zaakir were teamed as Rebels of Rhythm. Sharing sensibilities, they combined their efforts, and soon, at another South-Central hip-hop launching pad called the Rat Race, they met Nu-Mark. (They’d already named themselves Jurassic 5, a suggestion by 2na’s girlfriend, and they didn’t change the number when Nu-Man came aboard.)

“Nobody tried to script it a particular way,” Zaakir says. “We just liked what each other was doing.”

The connection was instant, but the development proved slow. Though the combined groups recorded a single, “Unified Rebelution,” in 1994, there was little record company interest, and it wasn’t until 1997 that Jurassic 5 released a debut EP on its own. That release started a legitimate buzz about the group in L.A. and in England, where it was an instant hit, and sales reached a total of 200,000 copies. Appearances at various clubs and festivals in the U.S. and Europe built other pockets of fans.

At the same time, Zaakir had started working in the music business as an assistant, first at hip-hop label Loud Records and then at major Interscope, learning the ins and outs of the industry and making valuable contacts. By the end of 1998, J5 had a deal with Interscope.

The long buildup to the record deal and the album’s release, they say, has been a healthy process that has made for better music and a good perspective on career matters.

“I like moving slow,” says Nu-Mark.

Chali 2na admits that at times he’s been frustrated with matters, such as the long wait for a record deal. Now he too is fine with the way it’s going.

“I’m patient enough to wait my turn, God willing,” he says in a separate interview. “When we were younger, if anything like this [success] was happening to us, we’d be crazy, nuts. If that had been the case, today I’d probably be a janitor someplace. You take things like that for granted and step into a lot of holes where you don’t look first before you jump. To go through the stuff we went through early and be able to last and get our stuff to people has been an educational experience.”

And if the path they’re on takes them to the top?

“I was just talking with some of the guys today about not getting caught up in the hype of what’s going on,” says Zaakir. “People are starting to tug at us--not out of control like Britney Spears or ‘N Sync. But if it were to get to that level, I don’t know if it would be hard to maintain [our perspective]. Shouldn’t be. Our bus driver said, ‘You wouldn’t believe me if I told you J5 wasn’t [any good], so why would you believe me if I told you you were the greatest thing since wheat bread?’

“What I got from that is the days run the same course, good or bad. I got to walk the middle. I’m going to try to keep what he said in my quote repertoire.”