Like most, my first experience with Chali 2na came through his groups such as Ozomatli and Jurassic 5. As part of the seven member crew, 2na traveled the world, released three major label albums, and made his baritone voice a staple of underground Hip Hop. Jurassic 5’s breakup came as news to many fans as well as 2na himself, who told me that he heard about Jurassic 5’s end via a magazine. Since then, 2na’s pursued a solo career, pushing forward with his proper LP Fish Outta Water and a popular mixtape series The Fish Market. On the heels of The Fish Market 2, we chopped it up with Chali about the new music as well as Jurassic 5’s legacy and criticism of being too preachy. He also touches on Little Brother’s recent split, and how he can relate to the way in which it LB’s fans that are taking the breakup the hardest. Lastly, we discuss Chicago Hip Hop, and what’s it been like for Chali 2na to see his city blossom, cheering for them from the West Coast where he launched his career after moving relocating from Chicago’s south side.
RubyHornet: Getting into the Fish Market 2. Listening to the album, it feels like you’re in a new comfort zone or creative space as someone that’s listened to your music throughout he course of many years. I’m wondering if that’s true and what it felt like putting this together?
Chali 2na: It was cool to be able to put part two of the Fish Market together because my goal for the first one was to accumulate a gang of songs that I had done as collaborations and put them all in one spot so fans could find them. Part 2, I wanted to display a bunch of fun s**t and do a lot of collaborations, and do a lot more exclusive material instead of stuff that was on other people’s albums. I just wanted to put together something that was easy listening that rolled all the way through, and it felt like a mixtape because initially it kind of was. It was more so I wanted the feeling of fun to come off of it, for you to laugh and bug out, that kind of thing. I didn’t want people to take me as serious as anything from Jurassic or Fish Outta Water. More so, this is to have more material from me that you could listen to, pop in, and like.
RubyHornet: I definitely got that. I also wanted to know if it also reflects where you’re at in your career now? Has this changed at all from when you were starting out or younger, do you think about what fans reactions will be now? It just seems to that there is a carefree vibe and I think people will take this project as just really dope. The Fish Market title fits. It’s something fresh and different and real organic and cool.
Chali 2na: I appreciate that… I’m comfortable doing it like this. It’s a whole bunch of different ways to answer that. I feel like, yeah, I’m aware of what people think and what they might expect from me. At the same time, I’m a fan too! I think I’m more open minded and eclectic where I wouldn’t mind seeing my favorite artist trying some different s**t. A lot of people get stuck in… ‘I love Elvis. I don’t ever want Elvis to sing a rap song. All those rappers they sampled Elvis, why did they do that?’ I’m more on some, ‘I’d love to hear my favorite artist try new things, and I want to be that artist that is allowed to experiment.’ My whole career has been experimentation from Jurassic, Ozomatli and all these collaborations and all these things were going on during the years of Jurassic. Jurassic being my foundation, I always tried to established the fact that I liked to do all kind of things. I would just hope that people are willing to go with me, move with me, at least pay a listen and if they say, ‘you know Chali, I’ don’t like that one’… That’s cool, I can understand that. But not condemn me for something that I wanted to try, but people felt I shouldn’t be in that space. If I’m doing it, it’s cause I like the music and I wanted to try how I sounded on top of it.
RubyHornet: One of the tracks that you released ahead of the Fish Market was “Step Your Game Up”, and piggy backing off your last answer, after being part of seminal groups like Ozo, J5 and doing your own solo thing, how do you continue to come up with ways to improve? There’s a lyric in that track you’re trying to make every record better than the last one, which is something that a lot of people say, but it’s harder to put into practice. How do you continue to push yourself and not rest on your laurels so to speak?
Chali 2na: I heard this quote that I kind of live by. Years ago I heard it, while I was in high school. It’s ‘practice until practice becomes second nature’. So, for me, I was like, ‘oh that’s word.’ Like a Samuri Sword, the holster is made to be a sharpener as well as a holder for the dagger. When you put it in and pull it out, it’s sharpening. So daily I’m going to try to sharpen my sword. Daily I’m going to practice until practice becomes second nature. And I think that just fueled me. From being a painter and after finishing a painting the feeling is ‘ok cool, what’s the next thing I’m working on?’ That’s the work ethic I’ve been able to bring to the table when it comes to music.
RubyHornet: You’re from the South side of Chicago, which is where I’m from. While a lot of people know that, Hip Hop wise your sound and style is associated very much with Cali where you came up. I’m wondering if you check in on Chicago’s Hip Hop scene from time to time and what’s it like when you see Hip Hop artists like Lupe Fiasco, Common, Kanye West, Rhymefest break out and carry the Chicago flag. What’s it like to see that from The West Coast?
Chali 2na: I love it man. I moved to the West Coast when I was 16. I’m almost 40 now. It’s crazy to have been able to see Hip Hop, you know I have a lyric on Fish Outta Water… “I watched Hip Hop escape from New York like Kurt Russell.” It’s true. I watched it as it spread West like a virus, airborne. I’m out here on the West watching this s**t change from dookie chains to beads, from conscious rap to ‘gangsta’ rap, the only thing is that I never saw a representative from my home town. A lot of my life changing events had happened before I moved out West, so I never felt comfortable claiming the West like the next person would. I definitely acknowledge the West for the cultivation of my craft. I definitely had buzz as a West Coast emcee in certain instances. But I’m repping the South side of Chicago til the death of me though.
RubyHornet: Have you ever thought about moving back to Chicago, or even coming to the city for an extended period of time?
Chali 2na: A lot of my family’s there still so I’m always back there. My father’s there, a lot of my uncles, a lot of aunties are still there. So I’m always back. I have a 19 year old son, the minute that he was born was the minute that I said ‘I can’t really move back to the Chi.’ I had to raise my son, and being with his mom at that stage in my life I had to make sure I had my food, clothing, and shelter situated correct. I had to make sure he was fed. I could starve, but he had to be fed. For a long time, and my mom will tell you, I tried to get back to the crib because that’s where all my friends and family were. Living in Cali I was encountering a lot of bad dudes that were fitting the stereotypes of what they say California cats are like now. There’s a lot of cats that I met out here that are my lifelong friends and I would go even deeper to call them my brothers. There’s a lot of stereotypical phony cats, and a lot of cats I was running into fit that stereotype to the T. So for me, it was like, ‘man, I don’t have to peep this s**t out in crib, I could leave.’ I tried to get back, but my grandmother knew and part of the reason I moved out here was just to escape a crazy-ass situation as far as violence, gangs, drugs. My grandmother knew that if I went back I was going to fall right into the rabbit hole. She made sure that I didn’t until I was grown. Once I was grown, 18, 19, I was about to have a son. I had to change how I thought. I had to start living for him instead of just for myself.
RubyHornet: I wanted to talk a little bit about Ozomatli, and Jurassic 5, where you really broke out. Are there things and experiences of working with other musicians such as those that made up your groups that prepared you for solo success? Did it take any time after J5 ended or you left Ozo to gather your thoughts so to speak, or decompress?
Chali 2na: Well, that’s a difficult question. Decompress, maybe. I always made music, and if you dug deep enough you’d probably hear some of the pain that I was going through in those years. Many of my songs will answer those questions for you to tell you the absolute truth. Instead of throwing people under the bus in interviews, or airing people’s dirty laundry, I just express myself through song. Yeah, I mean, leaving Ozomatli was a choice I had to make because of me not necessarily getting along with their management at the time more so than the brothers themselves. Those dudes are my brothers til the death because I believe the choice I made, which was ‘I’d rather stand side by side with you guys as brothers if anything else than to be standing side by side with you on stage and hating you all, or being mad at the siuation.’ So I stepped because I wasn’t able to get both crews to see eye to eye. Contractually I was able to do both things, but the members of both groups didn’t necessarily want to help me in accomplishing that task. I had to choose at that time and what I chose was the foundation, the group that was there before anything, Jurassic 5. A lot of Ozomatli’s existence was based off of certain things that Jurassic did. Their first single was the same song as our first single. It’s just one of those things, and our groups were intertwined just from all of us knowing each other at some point. I think, decompress, I guess in some instances… I had to fight a battle with Interscope and that was a battle that almost took me out. I was ready to say ‘f**k this and get a regular job.’ Fighting a big wig like that, I had to make a real live stand. And to walk away without scars and still with the things that I own was a beautiful thing, but it took me forever.
RubyHornet: Little Brother recently released their last LP and officially broke up. I talked to Pooh and Phonte and they both said that it could be their fan base that took the break up harder than they did. I’m not sure, but I think that the J5 breakup may have been the same, I think a lot of the fans took that really, really hard and I’m wondering if you can relate to Little Brother and may have any advice for them as they pursue solo careers.
Chali 2na: Those two guys, you can tell their friendship is a lot tighter than say the guys in Jurassic 5. You can tell whether they’re in the group or not, they’re always going to be affiliated with each other, doing msuic with each other. It doesn’t seem like their breakup was a breakup because they had irreconcliable differences between them that caused them to have bad blood or s**t like that. I know some things run their course, and I know how that goes. My mom used to always tell me that pain is temporary and so is pleasure, so just be prepared when both of those things end. I applaud them for the work that they put in and I appreicate the fact that they’re relevant forces in this day and age in the type of Hip Hop that I participate in. I enjoy their music and have all their albums. I can’t ask for anything more. Yeah, I’m a fan and wouldn’t like to see them break up and I get how there are fans that have taken it harder than I’ve taken it. I know these fans don’t know the inner-workings. J5 is a group that never exposed anything to the world other than our message. We didn’t want you to worry about us as regular dudes more than the things we were doing and stood for. That meant not airing each other’s dirty laundry and crying to the public, ‘aw, these motherf**kers are tripping.’ I don’t think we ever practiced that. A couple of us have stepped out of pocket and said some s**t to interviewers in my opinion, which I think is bogus. That’s the way the group broke up. I found out Jurassic 5 broke up from a magazine. It wasn’t from each other. That’s neither here nor there, I’m just saying we weren’t in the practice of airing our dirty laundry as a rule.
RubyHornet: You mentioned the kind of Hip Hop that you participate in and how people know J5 from what you stood for in your music. I was reading your wikipedia page and it says, “Jurassic 5 are frequently criticized by a certain segment of the hip hop community, who believe they are preachy and too-traditionalist.” My first question is if that’s an accurate statement, and if you guys have actually felt that criticism. If so, what would be your response?
Chali 2na: I’ve felt like we pushed a hard line about how we felt about Hip Hop and certain things that have happened in Hip Hop to a point where people probably grouped us into the category of this little preachy s**t or what have you. At the same time, all we were doing was trying to regurgitate the kind of Hip Hop that we knew and that we loved and made us fall in love with this artform. All of us are damn near 40 years old if not 40 or more, so we were there when it was born. We know the ethics and we take the ethics for what they really are. The rules and the laws, the unspoken rules of Hip Hop, we really think these things exist! Whereas those things have faded when it comes to abiding by the rules of Hip Hop in this day and time. I just think people have their own opinions about what we were able to do. I know certain groups respected our grind and our hustle because we would be in places that they couldn’t be. They didn’t necessarily respect our music, and I used to always be baffled by that. But at the same time I didn’t really care because I got a chance to express myself musically. I had a chance to do some shit that made a difference. I wasn’t really tripping. I couldn’t speak for everyone in my group, but I wasn’t tripping. Critics love to doubt you and often talk about you. It’s like whatever because in the end you’re not able to do what I’m doing. If you are able to do what I’m doing and do it better, then do that instead of compalining about that shit. A lot of cats used to think we were talking about a day when Hip Hop wasn’t this shiny s**t, and in a certain way we were. We didn’t fit in that mode so instead of fitting in that mode, we talked about from a perspective of where we stood.
RubyHornet: What I was really impressed with and love about your music is that while that’s one of the toughest criticisms, your fan base loves you for sticking to your guns. You lend a voice to a segment of Hip Hop that can be pushed to the side at times and brushed off.
Chali 2na: Exactly and that’s a trip. It’s a blessing and a curse. The minute you get known for that I can’t try a dubstep song. Fans are like, ‘what the f**k are you doing? That’s horrible.’ It’s not that the song is whack or the sound is whack, they criticize just because that’s not what they expect me to do. So, those things are the hinderances but I’m willing to accept those things just to be able to make a difference.
