While Rat Race was more rooted in the fly-by-night nightclub culture, the Good Life carried its weight as a weekly event and meeting ground that lasted for over five years. “We may have all eventually met and worked together if it wasn’t for Good Life, but it was a very important place,” states Cut Chemist. He adds, “In the fall of 1991, a friend told me that there was a place in South Central where people were freestyling in a health food store. I couldn’t imagine any way that it could have been dope. When I finally went, after Marc 7 told me I had to, it was amazing. I had never seen anything like it. Freestyle Fellowship and First Brigade with Ganja K and Dr. Bombay were the first artists I saw get up on that stage. It was a life-altering event for me.”

Unity Committee became a popular act at the Good Life, as evidenced by their inclusion on the 1992 compilation Please Pass The Mic (a phrase chanted by the crowd when it was time for a current performer to exit the stage). Alongside artists like Volume 10, Mac-10, Big Al and a young Snoop Doggy Dogg, Unity was featured on two songs, both credited as co-productions but actually solely produced by Cut Chemist: “Who’s Gonna Be The Next Victim” and “The Fish Taste Superb” (with Superb SK). Cut also produced Volume 10’s song on the compilation, “Sho Is Hype (But Not My Type).”

By 1993, all members of what would become the Jurassic 5 were part of the Good Life world, in varying ways. Nu-Mark wasn’t as frequent of an attendee, since it was much more of a lyricist-centric event, but Unity Committee and Rebels of Rhythm performed as often as they could. “You could only do one song, and you had to get there early to get on the list, because it was only from 8 to 10 pm,” recalls Cut Chemist. “We would make songs during the week just to try them out at Good Life on Thursdays. It was a tough audience. If the people there liked something, it would stick. So we tried a lot of things out there.”

Chali 2na adds, “The thing with the Good Life was that everybody who liked each other there would try and work together. It was a meeting place. We [Unity Committee] liked Rebels of Rhythm’s style, because we were both pretty unique amongst that crowd.” Soup says, “Coming out of the Good Life, Unity Committee were the guys we [Rebels of Rhythm] connected with more than anyone else.”

By 1994, the Rebels of Rhythm had parlayed Soup’s industry connections and their experience at the Good Life into a “demo deal” with Relativity Records. This meant that they weren’t signed to the label, but Relativity had given them money for studio time, in the hopes that they would come up with some signable music. As Akil recalls, their regular DJ (T-Minus) had car trouble and couldn’t do scratches on their 4-song demo. At the last minute they called their Rat Race acquaintance: DJ Nu-Mark.

“Basically, by 1994, all of us were shopping demos separately, and nothing was happening,” Nu-Mark remembers. “Luke [Cut Chemist] brought that beat for ‘Unified Rebelution’ and everything really started to click.”

Cut Chemist sums up the lead-in to the true beginning of the J5: “In L.A. there are a lot of styles of rap, but Rebels of Rhythm were unique in how they did what I would call ‘Harmony Rap.’ Sing-songy types of rhymes, like the Force MCs and Cold Crush Brothers. They did it really well. And at the time, I was really digging into a lot of that real old-school, East Coast rap. I said, ‘I could really do something with those guys.’”

Marc 7 compares the two groups: “The common thing that brought Unity Committee and Rebels of Rhythm together was the type of hip-hop that we all liked. Rebels had a very old-school sound. They sounded like they was from the East Coast. That’s what we all loved. When you put us together, it just blended so well. And after we met Nu-Mark at Rat Race, he brought beats by Lucas’ spot and we all just hung out. There was never a time when we said, ‘OK, let’s put Nu-Mark in the group.’ It all just happened.”

Cut says, “I was really inspired by De La Soul’s ‘Area,’ off Buhloone Mindstate, and I could finger all the sampled elements that made up the song. The combination of those samples that were rooted in old-school rap was so inspiring to me that I went straight to my drum machine and made the song that would become ‘Unified Rebelution.’ I gave the song to the Rebels of Rhythm and said, ‘Do you think you could maybe also feature my guys [Unity Committee] on it?’ I didn’t even know Rebels very well at that point. I just liked what they did.”

Originally, all group members agree that “Unified Rebelution” was merely a song that they could all perform together at the Good Life. But after making it, it grew into something much bigger. “We all put the song on our separate demos,” explains Akil. “We still weren’t even a group at the time. We would do shows, and Unity would do that song with us, and they did the same thing when they had a show. So we kept building. When nothing was happening shopping our demos to labels, Cut said, ‘Maybe we should just put that song out ourselves.’ [Author’s note: Cut Chemist says he was influenced by the independent rap movement on the West Coast spearheaded by Good Life pioneers Freestyle Fellowship, who had self-released their debut LP, To Whom It May Concern, in 1991]. Basically we were all fed up with this industry shit.”

By the end of 1994, five/sixths of the assembled crew [Akil says he was too broke at the time to spare the cash] pooled their resources and pressed up 500 copies on wax. The first edition had a yellow label (and no cover); the second 500 were on light blue. At the bottom, it read: “Performed by Unity Committee & Rebels of Rhythm.” Two songs were produced by Cut Chemist [“Unified Rebelution” and “Lesson 4”] and two by DJ Nu-Mark [“Nu Mark’s Bonus Beats” and the spoken word skit “Quality Control”].

Chali says, “We had all been doing demos and trying to make moves with labels, so ‘Unified’ was another way for us to make a splash. It felt different. It just worked. We all felt the power of that song.”

Nu-Mark explains, regarding production between the two DJs early in their relationship: “When Luke [Cut Chemist] and I met each other, we looked at the other guy and said, ‘Wow, I can learn a lot from you.’ He had a bassline- and loop-driven production style, and I was more about chopped-up drums.”

The funky groove and loose-limbed, old-school leaning vocals on the song meshed together perfectly and the single began to get noticed. In fact, it sold as many in Europe as it did in the U.S., distributed overseas by the popular Mr. Bongo record shop in London. The attention, as well as a connection via Soup, led the TVT / Blunt label out of New York to sign them to a “single deal.” There was one problem, though: the group name they had on their own 12-inch was way too long and confusing.

And so, Jurassic 5 was born. And not in a terribly scientific fashion. Chali 2na explains, “My girlfriend at the time, my son’s mama, is a musician and I played her ‘Unified Rebelution’ to see what she thought. She said, ‘You think you sound like the Fantastic Five [the old-school group featured in the film Wild Style, aka Fantastic Freaks, featuring two DJs and five MCs], but you’re more like the Jurassic Five.’ And she walked away. [Laughs]. I told Marc 7 about it and then everyone eventually agreed on the name, even if it was ‘5’ and we actually had six people in the group.”

Akil adds, “In the movie ‘Jurassic Park,’ they took the DNA from something old, and brought it into modern times. And that’s exactly what we were doing. The name just fit, it was organic.”

The single, under the name Jurassic 5, was released with a cover (drawn by Chali 2na) on Blunt / TVT in 1995. This edition only had “Unified Rebelution” on it (with Radio/LP/Instrumental/A Cappella versions). “By then, a lot of good things were going on for us,” says Cut Chemist. “By the time the Blunt single came out, we thought of ourselves as one unit. It wasn’t a collaboration anymore, we were a group. We worked on new songs as a group and did shows as Jurassic 5.”

Unfortunately, things didn’t go as expected — or at least hoped — with Blunt. According to several J5 members, the label considered the song to be a “novelty” and didn’t push them. It was a bit of a Catch-22: the song wasn’t selling gangbusters, but the group says Blunt also wasn’t giving it a push. Cut Chemist says, “They kept asking us for new music, but we said we didn’t have any. Although we had been working on new stuff.” Interestingly, one of their new, secret songs was called “No Promotion,” and was about their situation. It was never released.

As a side note, by 1995 Nu-Mark was doing college promotions and A & R for the newly-minted label Correct Records, who put out artists including Al’Tariq [aka Fashion from the Beatnuts], Mannish and Black Attack. By 1997, the label was defunct, but Nu-Mark gained a great deal of industry experience with the label, which in some ways mirrored Soup’s own work in the music business.

Nu-Mark recalls, about the second go-around with “Unified Rebelution,” “When Blunt came along, the other guys were all excited, but I wasn’t. I wanted to stay on our own and wait for something better. I didn’t even sign the original Blunt contract, even though I was doing shows with them. I felt like there were bigger things in store for us. In the end, they didn’t promote us right and didn’t believe in us, long term.”