Jurassic 5

It's always an amazing feeling to walk into a venue and know the headlining act is guaranteed to blow the roof off the place. With four MCs that rock mics like a hip-hop barbershop quartet, you can't go home disappointed when it comes to the energy of a J5 performance. The Los Angeles crew followed basically the same set list they ripped up twice last year when they were in town to promote Power in Numbers, but few seemed to mind as they tore through classics like "Quality Control" and their incredible disco mix of "Jayou." The four MCs did manage to drop their Nelly Furtado slow jam, "Thin Line," much to the approval of all the ladies in the audience, who also squealed every moment Chali 2na flipped deep-voiced verses. Some new material even managed to leak out during the night's performance, in the form of an upcoming cut from DJ Nu-Mark's solo mix, which sounded like what you would expect from Jurassic. Instead, they should have thrown out their new club jam, "Linguistics," and thrown everyone for a loop while shaking their arses at the same time, or dropped some ancient "Unified Rebelution" for the real heads, as they did during their visit last year. What made this experience different from past shows wasn't actually what they added, but what was missing. Cut Chemist, busy working on his solo effort, was sadly not present, leaving all the wax manipulation duties in the steady hands of Nu-Mark. The lone DJ also made the most of the spotlight by warming the crowd with a stunning pre-show mix that seemed to sail over the heads of the non hip-hop attendees, with usual crowd-exploders like Biggie's "Unbelievable" greeted with the sounds of crickets chirping. Still, the fans went bonkers when Jurassic were in command of the stage and that's all that matters, because an unbelievably hype crowd is just the fuel J5 needs to wreck shop.