I still remember when I bought Jurassic 5’s album Quality Control. I had never heard of Jurassic 5 before, but it was the year 2000 and one of the things you did in the 90s and 2000s is look at the weekly ads to see what new music releases were coming out that week. This was prime CD era when Target and Best Buy dedicated aisles upon aisles of their store to physical media. I remember looking through Best Buy’s ad one Sunday to see what new music was coming out that Tuesday (yes, friends, new music used to come out on Tuesdays). In the ad that Sunday, for only $6.99, was Quality Control.

Quality Control album artwork from the group Jurassic 5

What would make me pick up an album for a group that I never heard of? Well, first, I loved the artwork. How could you not be intrigued by it? Six guys sitting around a tree stump with headphones plugged in and one of the coolest logos in Hip Hop. Second, it was only $6.99. While I can admit that prices have risen a lot since 2000, $6.99 was still cheap in an era where a lot of CDs were selling for between $15 and $18. The $6.99 price tag was worth the gamble. I wasn’t expecting that it would become one of my favorite albums of all time. It was a new sound from what I was used to in rap music and eventually led me on a journey where I discovered a bunch of underground hip hop artists. It truly was a magical time in music. Unfortunately, their subsequent albums never had the same impact on me as Quality Control did and the group no longer puts out music, but even almost 26 years later, I can still recite pretty much the entire album from start to finish.

I recently purchased Quality Control on vinyl as I’m building up my collection of favorite albums. It’s not the original release, which is fine. I don’t collect for value, I collect to listen. The version I picked up was from a rerelease but was still never opened. I’ve been listening to it all day and it’s bringing back so many memories of high school and college.

One other note about Jurassic 5, I was in St. Louis record store Vintage Vinyl a couple years after Quality Control came out and they had a copy of the Jurassic 5 EP for sale on vinyl. The EP was their first release that came out the year before Quality Control and is also fantastic. I didn’t have a record player at the time and vinyl had died and come back and died again. No one was predicting another resurgence. I really wish I would have bought it that day.