What have you been up to recently because you seem to have been bouncing through a mass of different groups and projects?

Yeah, well I’ve just been trying to keep busy. That’s the main objective. I’m an extreme lover of music and I’m trying to continuously engage in relationships. [laughing]

Musical relationships?

Yes, yes.

It’s not that I’ve moved on. We still work together but at this particular time we can’t do what we used to do when Ozomatli started.

I’ve done some stuff with Swollen Members. I’ve done some stuff with the Long Beach Dub Allstars. Those are some of the bigger things.

Are you getting involved with the music side of things or just focusing on the lyrics?

I’ve got a little bit of equipment at the house I’ve been trying to work on but I’m not the maestro yet.

Everybody from Grandmaster Caz, the Cold Crush Brothers, to Sade to Beanie Man. There’s so many different aspects to myself and the other guys as well and tha’ts what I think makes us who we are when we bring it all together.

I was there. I witnessed a lot of it. I came and started attending the Goodlife not soon after its conception and I was there until its closing. It was college. It was like us being there constantly, watching people, learning from people, getting up there, teaching people. It was cool. We were learning ourselves and honing our skills as live performers so that’s why a lot of the groups that come out of the LA underground are extreme live performers.

Oh my god, yes. Some of the best times were when we performed there we did this song called “7 O’Clock Bus” with a couple of friends of ours called the Dark Beat??. We all sat in chairs like we were at the bus stop waiting for the bus and whoever rocked up next would stand up to look for the bus ‘cause the bus was late. The place was packed and John Singleton was in the house. He complimented us and stuff. From something as good as that to something as ruthless Fat Joe, when he first came out here he tried to do his first single “Flow Joe” a capella and he got booed off the stage because they were that ruthless.

So I guess being able to stick around in that environment would mean you had your shit together.

[laughing] You had to have it together. If you didn’t you’d know. You’d go home with your feelings hurt.

What about the period before that as far as you as an MC?

I’m originally from the south side of Chicago and I got into hip hop by a dude named Dave 3 who moved to Chicago from the Bronx. He was a grafitti writer. He used to have a lot of the old school Harlem World tapes that I would hear, park jams, just basically exposing me to the era before it actually hit Chicago and the era of extreme house music in Chicago. So I got into it through him. I’m a graffiti artist at heart. I started painting with him and he taught me a lot about the whole elements of hip hop. I saw it blooming in Chicago and I moved to California when I was 14 or 15 and I kind of caught it as it was breezing through California as well. It was cool. I got a well-rounded exposure to hip hop in an American form if you know what I mean. That basically influenced me to rhyme.

What prompted the move to California?

Oh man, Chicago is a very hell-holish place if you will. Certain aspects of it will suck you under. And my family was going through a whole bunch of different things and if I would have stayed I would have been either a drug dealer or a drug user or dead – one of the three, because of where we stayed at the time. So my grandmother was moving to California and she asked me: “You can stay here with your mum or you can come with me if you want.” And at the time a friend of mine had got killed maybe four months before my grandmother had moved so I decided to leave with her.

And that was when you were 14? That must have been a few years after your voice broke because it must have taken a while for your voice to get that deep and booming.

Well actually, man, I guess that’s a gradual thing. I had the high-pitched voice when I was a youngster as well…

Have you got any tapes of that?

Yes and they probably will surface so when it comes out please don’t laugh at me. Just enjoy what I’m saying.

You have kids yourself don’t you?

Just one son.

And has he taken to hip hop as well?

Oh yeah definitely. My son loves it all. He’s an eclectic guy. His mum sings too so it’s cool.

How has Quality Control been going for you as a group?

It’s going well. We just on this journey again and learning newer things about each other and about ourselves and trying to translate it to tape, man. So it’s been going good. As you listen to the newer stuff and you listen to the older stuff, you see the growth, you see different directions, you see us being ourselves at the same time. It’s amazing. I’m liking what I’m doing.

Well, Akil does a lot ot things. He has a group called The Tone of Justice. He has a group called the Unabombers. Marc7 does a few solo things here and there. He’s done a few things that are going to come out with the Beat Junkies. Zakir sings and he acts. I think everybody is talented in different areas and is just trying to get into it in different areas.

Have you been watching Cut Chemist at these infamous Brainfreeze sessions?

Definitely. I’ve been around Cut Chemist since he was about 14 years old so you know, I’ve seen the growth.

Yes, I did two shows with him. I performed. That was cool. Those guys are amazing. It’s amazing to me that people can come out and see DJs like that.

What were doing?

He kind of dropped something that is an original to what Jurassic did and we just did the song. It was cool. I won’t really give it away because he may want to come to down to Australia with it.

Yeah definitely.

I know you are doing a few separate shows from the festivals but the festivals seem so perfect for your sound and energy.

Yeah I hope so. I’ve been hearing only good stories so I just can’t wait.

You guys are known for rocking parties but what tracks do you think display you on a deep and meaningful level?

Well Jurassic 5… the song “Contribution to Life” is one of my favorite, heart-felt songs we’ve ever written because a lot of that stuff was actually elements of our lives as individuals when we were children. That’s one for sure. Some of the newer stuff we’re writing right now on this new album we’re just expressing real deep feelings. One of the songs is about a platonic relationship with a girl that could be somebody that you could spend the rest of the life with but it’s about maintaining that friendship. We have a song about the word freedom itself. Just different things we do to try to express feeling and evoke emotion.

So tell me about the word freedom then.

It’s a misconstrued word. It’s a small word that encompasses so much and yet is used more as a mask than as a cleansing material. There’s so much stuff you know. You’ll hear the song.

Where do you source material from? Do you read? Life experience?

Life experience, man, which includes reading. But also just us loving the music we do and loving a certain sound and wanting to create that sound.

Have you perfected that?

Nah, you never perfect anything.

Stealth Magazine is the first and only full color hip hop magazine in Australia with a CD-Rom. It was established independently in 1999 as a zine and has grown ever since. Currently, Stealth Magazine is distributed in over 12 countries including through Tower Records worldwide. Editorially Stealth’s mission is to act as an historical documentation of hip hop culture around the world – not as a product catalogue. Each issue sees coverage of artists from many different countries and continents all with one thing in common – a passion for hip hop culture.