The Witzard

Ozomatli are a Los Angeles -based 6-piece " Latin/Funk/Hip-Hop and everything in-between" band, who are currently celebrating their 22nd year creating genre-eschewing music together. Ozomatli's current line-up consists of Wil-Dog Abers on bass guitar/background vocals, Ulises Bella on saxophone, clarinet, Requinto Jarocho, keyboard, melodica & background vocals, Raúl "El Bully" Pacheco on guitar, tres, Jarana & lead vocals, Justin "El Niño" Porée on percussion/Rap vocals, Asdru Sierra on trumpet, keyboard & lead vocals, and Jiro Yamaguchi on drums, tabla, percussion & background vocals. Although, at one point in time, Ozomalti 's line-up famously included Chali 2na & Cut Chemist , who would later, go on to form one of my personal favorite Hip-Hop crews, Jurassic 5 , together; both Chali 2na & Cut Chemist appeared throughout Ozomatli 's 1998 self-titled debut and would later appear separately on Embrace The C...

"I went to an event called Baltimore Beat Club that I played beats at and had an open mic cypher. I don't think Izaac lived in the city, but came to this Beat Club and to the next one—that I couldn't make. He produced his own stuff on GarageBand, but I sent him some beats that he liked. [He] sent me this one and I tweaked it a little. But since then, he's deleted his Soundcloud, Facebook, and Twitter. ACTUALLY, I tried to look him up again and he changed his Rap name to Mick Boche and relocated to San Diego," Baltimore rapper-producer Jumbled, who moonlights as high school engineering teacher Mr. John Bachman , revealed during our featured interview a few months ago. Since conducting that fateful Jumbled interview, I've successfully gotten in touch with the man, the myth, the legend, Mick Boche (formerly known as Izaac) and fellow Baltimore multi-instrumentalist and Folk-Pop artist, Jordan Parrish (Birds With Teeth). Boche relocated to San Diego, California d...

"The Audience's Following is a 10-year anniversary fan club edition version of The Audience's Listening. I like to call this the bizzaro version follow-up to [The Audience's Listening], as it features songs that never made the cut and demo versions of songs that did. There are also B-sides from vinyl singles, plus a special mix of the original song sampled for "What's The Altitude" by Curtis Knight[-Zeus] . Have fun listening to the album that was almost released 10 years ago. It's the follow-up and the audience is still following and listening and... whatever else," world-renowned DJ Lucas "Cut Chemist" Macfadden wrote within a short 7/11 Bandcamp description attached to The Audience's Following. Now, I don't mean to get all fanboy here, but I've been actively wishing and working on scoring an interview with Cut Chemist for about 3-5 years now; I can remember purchasing Jurassic 5, Cut's on-again off-again and recently...

Aside from the Beastie Boys of course, I think it's pretty safe to say that Jurassic 5 were my first favourite Hip-Hop group that I discovered entirely on my own; if I'm not mistaken, "What's Golden" was featured on some sort of early 2000's basketball game for either N64 or PlayStation . Power In Numbers (2002) still remains in heavy rotation in my car stereo and is without a doubt one of my all-time favourite Hip-Hop albums. I remember having a burned CD-R copy of the album released either directly before of after Power In Numbers , which was always an enjoyable listen, too. After releasing four positive "Conscious Hip-Hop" albums and one EP between 1993-2007, Jurassic 5 decided to part ways and unveiled one final album recorded without previously departed DJ Cut Chemist , Feedback . Following the under-the-radar release(s) and luke warm commercial reception of a few side projects, including Ron Artiste and a compilation of 1980's ...

Brainfreeze 45 extraordinaire and Jurassic 5 DJ Cut Chemist was temporarily locked up for unspecified reasons in recent years, but now he's back with a long-awaited new [compilation] album, Funk Off ; partially previewed during "an excellent mix for the Stones Throw Podcast called Cassette Culture using four cassette decks and tracks from a release he was working on called Funk Off ," it's a quasi-collaboration with 1980's French New-Wave groups Vox Populi! & Pacific 231 . Cut Chemist unleashed two non-album singles leading up to Funk Off 's October 29th release, "Outro (Revisited)" and "Work My Mind." The latter is essentially a re-imagining/remix of [Vox Populi!] album track "Alternative Fresh," which features select verses by Jurassic 5 frontman Chali 2na and Hymnal . "Work My Mind" is more or less a self-described "future-primitive analogue thriller," complete with a music video directed ...

Gotta admit, I'm pretty STOKED on the [possible] idea of hearing more music from these 2 newly-formed Hip-Hop groups: Miguel Street and Ron Artiste . Almost simultaneously announced on this fairly quiet Monday afternoon, Miguel Street consists of Heems and Big Baby Gandhi , who's debut track features them rapping over a re-tweaked version of "Call Me Maybe." Ron Artiste on the other hand, is the latest nom de plume of former Jurassic 5 leader, Chali 2na and veteran emcee Roc "C" ... either paying homage/goofing on the infamous basketball player who now goes by Metta World Peace . I'm not really sure which one it is just yet, but I think they're LEGIT tried and true ballers! Much like Heems & Mike Finito 's "Teenage Dream" (Katy Perry) remix from last year, "Call Me Maybe" has that same sort of "so, are they like kidding or are they serious" type of vibe going on. Hot 97 , the also SUPER-FRESH dual pro...