update: Widely acknowledged as one of the more innovative groups in hip-hop, Jurassic 5 [ tickets ] will join an all-star group of performers that includes Third Eye Blind, Sugar, Ray, Run-DMC, Crazy Town and Nikka Costa for a breast-cancer benefit concert set for Oct. 27 at the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles.

Co-promoted by the Step Up Women's Network and Third Eye Blind singer Stephan Jenkins--the son of a breast-cancer survivor--the event will feature unusual pairings such as Crazy Town and Sugar Ray, Nikka Costa and Third Eye Blind, and Run-DMC's Run with Jurassic 5.

LiveDaily caught up with rapper Chali 2na of Jurassic 5 to talk about the benefit and his group's most recent release, "Quality Control."

How did you get involved with the Breathe benefit?

As far as I know, the people that are throwing this thing called our manager and asked us to participate. I immediately said yes, because I had an aunt that died of breast cancer, so anything I can do.

What do you think of the bill?

It’s amazing. The most amazing part of it is that people are willing to perform together. That trips me out. These people are humongous stars. For us to get a chance to perform with Run-DMC--to actually perform with them, and to be at that press conference, and to be able to sit and talk to Seal--it was like it was no thing [to them]. I love these people and I was like, "Whoa." I was a little star-struck.

You were in a bus accident last year. Have you fully recovered?

I’ve got a big-ass scar on my head and a couple plates in my dome. I got a huge scar, it’s my Warped Tour scar. That’s what I tell everybody. If I don’t drink enough water--because sometimes I forget--I get a serious headache. Other than that, I’m good. I thank God I’m still here, able to breathe, able to see my son, still being able to participate in Jurassic. I’m definitely a grateful guy.

I almost died. It was a wake-up call, too, because at times you get so caught up in the things you do in this life that you forget the fact that nothing is absolute except death. You never really focus on that s--- until something like this happens. Me, I’m such a workaholic that I get so caught up in what I’m doing that I forget about the world around me sometimes. I couldn’t hear out of my right ear for a long time. I thought I might not be able to hear out of my right ear anymore. I was prepared to go to McDonald’s and get a job. I got a son and life goes on--I’m not living for myself, but I’ve got mouths to feed. I’ve got a wife and a child.

More than a lot of hip-hop groups, you seem to be closely involved with the live element. How much of that would you attribute to performing at the Good Life in L.A. when you were just starting out?

The Good Life was like college for us. It was the school of hard knocks. It was more hostile than the Apollo at times. We’d watch the s--- at 2:30 in the morning, "If that s---’s wack, get the f--- off the stage": that was the attitude of the whole place. If it was wack, it was a universal chant in there, everybody in the place would start singing, "Please pass the mic." You never wanted to hear that on your turn. It definitely inspired us. It helped us hone our showmanship.

I saw you at South by Southwest, and [Jurassic 5 DJ] Cut Chemist was wearing his turntable like a guitar and you guys were all over the stage. It made for a pretty great show.

That’s the first thing we focus on. And that’s one thing that is methodical about us. When we do new songs, the first thing we think about is, "Is the song going to be performed in the show, and if we could, what are some clever ways we could do it?" Our whole existence is based on performing live. We started that way, and I believe it will end that way. If we ain’t selling records, we can always perform.

For a while, hip-hop lacked that. Back in the day, Run-DMC had that concert at the Long Beach Convention Center that got out of control and all those people got stabbed up and things of that nature. That put a serious damper on hip-hop as far as shows are concerned. Every venue wanted to hike up the insurance, to two, three million dollars, knowing that these rap shows didn’t have enough money to pay for the insurance. So basically they killed off live rap shows for a long time.

In my opinion, out of sheer [inability to find a concert venue], a lot of rappers forgot about it and got more into the studio aspect of it and the video aspect of it. You know how they say video killed the radio star. My thing is, I don’t want to come to your show and see what I saw on the video. Or hear what I heard on the CD. I want to hear a little extra, I want to be entertained, all of my senses. Not just an audio thing.

We were extreme fans before there was any kind of writing rhymes for us. It was all about Run-DMC, LL Cool J, Dougie Fresh, all the cats who would get on stage and perform. You got cats like the Cold Crush Brothers, the Fantastic 5 and the Crash Crew back in the day when rap was only known on the East Coast. They were performing and they had no video. And that was what it was about for us, to take it back to that. So if you saw our video and came to our show, you’d get a different satisfaction out of both.

With six people in the band, how do you write songs?

There’s no real manufactured process. We get together, and if one of us has got an idea for a chorus, then we build a song. It’s just one of those things, there is no process, it just happens.

Our last album, we just tried to work as much in odd hours and in odd spaces and times as possible--you never know what you’re going to come up with. Sometimes a DJ might come with ... the idea on tape or a CD beat, and that might spark a song. It’s a real open thing.

I’ve read where people think hip-hop is going through the same thing punk went through, where a lot of it has been co-opted and brought into the mainstream. Does it frustrate you when you hear rappers going on about diamonds, girls and cars?

It doesn’t necessarily frustrate me, it shows me there is room out there for people like me. There’s a lot of people out there that are not doing that. Me and my crew take pride in trying to making you think and shake your ass at the same time. I don’t get frustrated per se. Some of the stuff I listen to, and some of the stuff I like. Some of it I don’t.

On the song "World of Entertainment," it kind of seems like you guys are taking a shot at the rappers who aren’t paying attention to the basics.

Yeah and no. "World of Entertainment" was a shot at those people who are not necessarily paying attention to basics, but at the same time it was basically about how, through the popularity of hip-hop--you know how art is supposed to imitate life--now we’re bringing about a situation where life imitates art. Some of these people are taking the thug s--- serious and the bling-bling and all of that. It’s like that’s what we were trying to address as well. "Lights, camera, action" is the language. It ain’t real.

Is that really your mom lecturing you at the end of "Jurass Finish First"?

That’s her. ... That’s a real conversation, her being mad at me. [Jurassic Park rapper] Mark 7even used to live with us, and that’s all we would do was write rhymes, play the same beat over and over and over again so we could get the song right. S--- like that. Preparing ourselves for the good life. That’s her talking s--- to me. "I’m tired of this. Go get you a job."

Was that from before? Had you saved that?

Yeah. She’s very proud of me, that I have the success and the balls to stick with this stuff even though there were times it didn’t look like it was happening at all, and even though there are still times like that.

We are a success story in the sense that when we first started, we didn’t think we’d be able to get this far. Then you look around at the atmosphere you’re surrounded by and you’re like, "OK, we’ve still got a long way to go." I’ve never really wallowed in our success. I always focus on the road ahead.

I get reminded about our success through my mom. We’ve got a gold record overseas and I can’t even hang that thing at my house man, I won’t do it. It’s hanging at my mom’s house. It’s like that.