It’s hard to think of a more perfect setting for Jurassic 5’s good-time party vibes than twelve o’clock on a Saturday night in Vicar St. The venue is sold out and from the off, everybody is up and dancing for what proves to be a pulsating couple of hours’ entertainment.
Unlike, say, Public Enemy, J5 are not about unrelenting sonic assault. Rather, much like De La Soul and Arrested Development, they choose to convey their message via a funky brand of hip-hop that aims to move you through rhythm rather than polemic. They’ve got a message, sure (as attested to by the references to “those prisoners of bullshit wars around the globe” that precede ‘Freedom’), but really tonight’s a night to put on your red shoes and dance the blues.
Early on, after an admirable stab at a few words as gaeilge (with one member asking “Conas a ta tu?”) there’s a little doff of the cap in the direction of Kraftwerk, with the four MCs seating themselves behind a row of keyboards. Then the turntablist drops in the opening notes of the classic ‘Concrete Schoolyard’, which really gets the whole place jumping. They repeat the trick again on ‘A Day At The Races’, a hectic tune with torrential lyrics that come at you like machine gun fire (having four vocalists means the pace never slackens for a second).
And on they go, mixing in slivers of funk and soul with electrifying hip-hop beats, the audience with them every step of the way. It culminates in the defiant ‘Work It Out’ from their new album Feedback, after which the band offer peace signs and take their leave. Of course, we’re all screaming for an encore and they have no choice but to return and finish the job they’ve started, which means another lethal hip-hop number (interpolating snippets of Kool and the Gang’s ‘Too Hot’ - appropriate given the nuclear test site-like levels of heat in the room) and a salute from the whole crowd to the group’s sound man who, we’re informed, “has Irish roots and is in the country for the first time”.
I know what J5 did last summer in this very same venue - remarkably, this time around they’ve not only equalled that superb show but actually surpassed it.