Chali has a scar on his head, too. A couple of years ago, J5's tour bus slid off the road a few minutes outside of Nashville. Chali, who's too tall to sleep in a bunk, was thrown off a couch in the back lounge; a marble table clipped his skull, fracturing it and sending fragments of bone into his brain. The right side of his head swelled like a gourd. This rap s -- - is over for me, he thought. ''I couldn't hear out of this ear,'' he says. ''And that's so, so detrimental when we have to be able to hear each other in Jurassic 5.'' His audio came back, but Chali's now got a titanium clamp in his head, and his equilibrium is messed up.
When you learn about some of the ''trials and tribulations we've been through,'' as J5 rap on Power in Numbers, it's easier to understand why these putatively high-minded undergrounders wouldn't necessarily mind if a yacht pulled up tomorrow and took them all for a cruise on Lake Bling-Bling. ''Trust me, you give me a house in the Hamptons, ohhh, I'm takin' it. I'm right there with P. Diddy, gigglin', eatin' sandwiches,'' Soup laughs one morning as he sits on a park bench overlooking the Santa Monica pier. ''I'm out there playin' hopscotch -- whatever they doin' in the Hamptons, that's what I'm doin'. All the happy s -- -.''
But it's going to take a lot of work to purge this integrity thing. Case in point: A portly guy in a yellow shirt approaches with one of the oldest lines in the L.A. vagrant business. ''I'm sorry to interrupt,'' he says to Soup. ''I need to take the bus and I'm wondering if you have any spare change.'' Soup digs into his pocket, gives the guy a buck. ''If I don't see you getting on that bus,'' Soup says gamely, ''I'm comin' to get my dollar back.''
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