Hanging on with the Beatnuts

ILLUSTRATION by LUKE MCGARRY

The Beatnuts only hit the mainstream once—smooth and cool back in ’97 with Big Pun and Cuban Link at their side. But Lester Fernandez (Psycho Les) and Jerry Tineo (Ju-Ju) never seemed to care much. After all, they’ve always been more known as producers than emcees—never quite comfortable behind their mics, usually content to patch together loops and samples instead. It’s not surprising, then, that somewhere along their path as the Beatnuts (once a trio), Les and Ju-Ju got a bit lost, stuck behind the likes of Nas’s Illmatic, Biggie’s Ready to Die, OutKast’s Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik, and the rest of the hip-hop’s busy rebirth. So the Beatnuts had to live off the rest of their Native Tongues crew for a while, handing over beats and inspiration to De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest. But because of all of that high-profile practice, beats became something that Les and Ju-Ju excelled at—jazz fills cut up and stretched out into lean, clean head-nodders. As it is, the story goes that Les and Ju-Ju were named the Beatnuts because the Jungle Brothers tried (but couldn’t) wrap their heads around some of Les and Ju-Ju’s work. That is, after all, their trademark: beats spun out of everything from aerobics records to droning religious chants. And so it’s not just chance that the duo has hung around for nearly two decades while others burn out and fade away. For Les and Ju-Ju, the Beatnuts just go on.

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