No. 148 - Jurassic 5’s “Quality Control” changed my life

Wes Fox goes down an early internet rabbit hole, and ends up on the beach

Jul 03, 2026

This Song Changed My Life is an independent music publication featuring weekly essays from people all around the world about the songs that mean the most to them. Created (and illustrated) by Grace Lilly.

Enjoying the series? Support here to keep the good stuff coming 😊

Quality Control by Jurassic 5 album cover

• 5 min read •

I don’t quite recall where my love, or fascination, with hip-hop started. I grew up in a household with parents who listened to The Beatles, Clapton, and Otis Redding, and a father who idolized Bob Dylan. I love these bands and artists. I still enjoy them to this day; nothing has changed in that regard. At some point, though, something clicked. It might have been “Jump Around” by House of Pain — my father bought the CD because he enjoyed that song. It may have been “Insane in the Membrane.” Hell, I might have been down with O.P.P. I’ll never know.

Fast forward into the early 2000s. The world went through changes. Music went through changes. I was no different. For years I had a hustle of scamming Columbia House and BMG out of a dozen or so CDs for one dollar every year, but when my parents finally caught on, the jig was up. Eventually the internet gave us Napster. Any song (or computer virus) you wanted at your fingertips. Clogging up our house’s landline and feasting on this new technology became an addiction.

At this point, I had heard of Jurassic 5. Specifically, I had come across a short 45-second segment of a song called “Improvise” on a Funkmaster Flex mixtape. The tune has a catchy Guy Jean “Sitting by the River” hook that grabbed my attention, so I decided the group was worthy of a search on this newfound, illegal music library that I had access to. The first result rendered was none other than “Quality Control.” A click on “download,” an impatient three-minute wait for it to complete, a double-click on Windows Media Player, and my ears were never the same again.

Wes Fox and his parents sitting on the couch with snacks and beverages in the early 2000s — Wes Fox and his parents in the early 2000s

The song starts off with ten bars of the group’s four vocalists giving us a glimpse of what they are capable of: a rhythmic commotion that seems to blend hip-hop with orchestra. This isn’t the chorus or the hook. This is the group delivering on what they promised on an earlier album. “We take four emcees and make ’em sound like one.” The Blowfly samples (from “Outro” and “One Less Dick”) drive the melody in a funk-jazz hybrid. “We can rule the world without Kurtis and still blow.” A Kurtis Blow reference, you say? These cats are killing it just 45 seconds into the song! Did I just say “cats”?

“Soup, you plan on rocking something fierce?” “Oh, am I.” A hypothetical question spun up by the group and answered by Zaakir with Ric Flair-esque confidence sets the tone for what’s to come. “The verbal acupuncture from the dope old schooler.” Boasting and bragging about oneself is hip-hop 101. Most MCs, according to themselves — totally unbiased, of course — are wealthy beyond our wildest dreams, respected or feared in their neighborhoods, and/or experts in all things sexual. When I heard THAT line, I thought, “What the fuck did he just say?” And as the first verse was wrapping up, I thought, “Where have you been all my life?” I now chuckle at the idea of a 17-year-old saying that to himself. You ought to laugh at it, too. It’s laughable, but it’s how I felt and still feel.

Wes as a teenager, making funny faces with a friend — Teen Wes (right) clowning around with a friend

I’ll spare you a deep dive into rest of the lyrics. Prior to the internet becoming what it is, we didn’t have every lyric of every song at our disposal. Sometimes guessing or rolling over those lines you weren’t 100% sure of was fine. One of those lines for me was, “Coming verbally Hardison as if my name was Kadeem.” Kadeem Hardison from A Different World? My ears weren’t worthy of such poetry. It was everything that I knew I loved and everything that I was learning to love about hip-hop on a brand new track. I couldn’t wait to hear more. I couldn’t wait to tell anyone who would listen.

In the decades since, I have yet to cross paths with anyone who “doesn’t like” Jurassic 5. Perhaps you’re simply not a fan of hip-hop, which is A-OK. It takes all kinds. But for anyone who enjoys it at even a cursory level, J5 seems to check all the boxes.

In early 2014, J5 announced that they were reuniting for a countrywide tour from July to August. They didn’t officially call it a farewell tour, but fans had a sneaking suspicion that this was it. The tour was accompanied by a new single, “The Way We Do It,” which was produced by the late, great Heavy D. You might remember him from songs like “Now That We Found Love” and “Nuttin’ But Love” (that music video with Rebecca Gayheart and Cynthia Bailey still gives me chills).

When I caught wind of the tour, I noticed the group was going to perform at Baltimore’s Pier Six Pavilion — a lovely, semi-covered, outdoor waterfront venue that holds about 4,500 people. My dilemma? A preplanned, long weekend vacation that same weekend in Dewey Beach, Delaware — one of my favorite beach bum towns in the country. My choices? Go as planned and miss the concert or go to the concert and cut the vacation in half. I put some feelers out to see if anyone would want to join me at Pier Six, but after about 50 inquiries, I struck out. It was like a bad dream; one of those dreams where you need to do something or get somewhere, and for one reason or another just can’t get moving. Car keys are nowhere to be found. Your shoelaces seem impossible to tie. Your dead uncle wants to chat about rotary engines.

My FOMO got the better of me, and I opted to go to the beach instead of braving the concert as a loner. I still regret it. I don’t have too many vivid memories from that vacation, but one sticks as a consolation prize for missing the only opportunity I’ll ever have to see one of my favorite groups live. My best friend’s younger brother, a J5 fan as well, joined us at the beach. What we didn’t know at the time is that he would only be with us for another five years, as he passed far too young in 2019. He was introduced to J5 by yours truly. Sun shining on our backs, a calm wind on our skin, and cold beers in hand, a battery-powered speaker played some J5 tunes as a soundtrack.

It was as lovely as it sounds. ◆