This week on People’s Party with Talib Kweli and Jasmin Leigh, we dive deep with the ever-talented DJ Nu-Mark. DJ Nu-Mark is a turntablist and producer of the incredible LA indie supergroup, Jurassic 5, as well as offering other banging production for Murs, Ice-T, and Incubus among others. He is respected as a no nonsense DJ and a purist when it comes to capturing the hardest edge of boom-bap rap.
“Uncle Nu” is also unquestionably an artist who paid heavy hip-hop dues with Jurassic 5 in the early days. J-5 toured a lot, but sometimes creatively it was a mismatch for the upstart crew as they were often paired with indie, punk, and even folk bands. He recalls once opening up for Fiona Apple and other artists who were far from the essence of hip-hop. Nevertheless they were just working to get the stage time and experience as a crew. But one day at a festival, things hit an unthinkable extreme while on tour with one of the biggest punk rock bands ever. They got switched out and put on stage in a slot that was supposed to be for Green Day/
The crowd was… not happy. A cascade of beer bottles rained down heavy on J-5.
Describing the full blown chaos Nu-Mark recounts “Somebody threw a bottle of half orange soda, half sand at my turntables…. The bottle hit my turntable, scratched my vinyl, and I immediately jumped on my SP 1200 [beat machine]. I played a beat the same tempo of the song- the MCs rhymed through it. I’m seein’ dudes get hit in the face with bottles and the MCs are just pushing forward [through the set]. We just pushed through all the way. Then the crowd just went crazy for us! It was insane. This was the most pivotal show of our career. There were not a lot of groups that could f*ck with our live show. We were in there to murder s*it — and we did!”
For more stories from DJ Nu-Mark listen to the full episode of People’s Party with Talib Kweli and Jasmin Leigh.