Chali 2na Q&A

Chali 2na, a hip-hop renaissance man, who wears the hats of an artist, photographer, actor and of course, founding member of the legendary hip-hop groups Jurassic 5 and Ozomatli, took a tour across Canada this fall to show his fans that, somewhere between his old-school style and new-school industry mentality, that he’s still got it. With a new EP series and plenty of artwork, the hip-hop legend is giving back to the fans that have been rocking with him for decades.
HOW DO YOU ENJOY PERFORMING SOLO AS OPPOSED TO A GROUP DYNAMIC? To be honest, I just enjoy performing. It’s not really a ‘I’ll take it or leave it’ in any way. It is more so, if I can get a chance to do it, I’m down. It’s an honour to say that I love my job. I’m satisfied being this old still doing this shit.
HOW HAS THE RESPONSE BEEN TO YOUR LATEST PROJECT, AGAINST THE CURRENT? Against The Current is basically a series of EPs that I’m going to try and put out. The first one, I put out earlier this year, the next one I’m trying to put out in November. The response from it has been phenomenal from the way that I put it out. This is some new stuff for me. I’m an older guy part of the old school way of the music business, which is, being attached to a label, having them dudes take all of your money, and all of that stuff. We were definitely slaves to Interscope and Universal Records for nine or 10 years for sure, but that’s what you were supposed to do back then if you wanted to get your stuff heard. Now, the internet has infiltrated and it not only wrecked the music business from what it used to be, but it created an avenue so that artists had to become business men and had to take responsibility for their own shit.
Because of that, a lot of us have learned and a lot of us have fell off, but a lot of us have prospered beyond our dreams. All I did was sit back and go, ‘Okay, there are no more record labels, there are no more record stores, the record store now is iTunes, Amazon, Spotify and Soundcloud, so the way that people consume music is not the same.’ It is not an album worth of material. People are going to iTunes, looking at your album, and picking four or five songs. I thought it would be dope to give them a series of EPs based on that principle, five or six songs of my best material.
YOU’VE BEEN DOING YOUR THING FOR A MINUTE, WHAT STORY DO YOU HAVE LEFT TO TELL ON YOUR NEXT PROJECTS? Some of these dudes get caught in the romanticized aspect of entertaining and being a celebrity and me personally, I’m more in love with being a regular dude and displaying that regularness to people in a celebrity fashion. My motto is not star to fan, but rather man to man. I think that just keeps me more grounded than anything.
IN YOUR OWN WORDS, HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE THE LEGACY THAT YOU HAVE LEFT IN HIP-HOP? I’m hoping that my legacy is based on honest, positive, conscious vibes; something that makes people think about something that is able to help them change. The media toys around with the word ‘jihad’, but that word actually means ‘war with the self.’ It’s all about cleaning house and that’s my own personal jihad is just trying to keep this thing clean and hopefully when I’m gone, that my son and his friends and when he’s gone, his son and his friends will be able to reach back. I want to leave something that is undeniable when my name comes up.