The Third Coming
I have a vested interest in making this review as enthusiastically convincing as possible. This is partially to do with the little shrine I've constructed (out of old CD cases and the odd candle) in the corner of my room, dedicated to my editor for sending me this album off her own back when the record company failed; an offering of payback. Mainly though it's because I sincerely believe that Jean Grae is one of the greatest things to happen to hip-hop, ever, and if I could contribute in some small way to finally bringing her some of the success she's fought so long to achieve then perhaps I'll have paid the art back minutely for the ways it's moved and changed me over the years.
Jean's been around since she was known as What What, blowing instrumentals by The Herbaliser and Mr Len away in the early '90s. Locked into the game before and since, her newer pseudonym has a solo album and EP to her name, and she's recently started fleshing out her cult status with appearances on joints by The Roots -- who, rumour has it, asked her to become a member -- Talib Kweli and Immortal Technique that showcase the breadth and depth of her talent and personality; from gleamingly vicious barbed wire braggadocio spitting to gorgeous and tender singing, her delivery an effortlessly arresting and varied vessel for everything from raging alcoholic nihilism, sadistic bile and ragged self-hatred to carefree partying, deep affection, warm cameraderie and depictions of life (both general and specific) that combine extraordinary perceptiveness and attention to detail with raw, unsentimental empathy. It's this ability to take the full spectrum of her persona, the charming assassin equally at home playing chess whilst listening to Marvin Gaye as she is drinking malt liquor and wilin' out to MOP (both equally valid dating pastimes, going by "Not Like Me"), and then express it with razor-sharp intellect and self-awareness that makes both her flights of fancy and her more emotionally earnest subject matter so effective. Jean Grae the MC is no stereotype but a creation of the person behind the pseudonym ("that's just a name, you see") whose only limits are self-imposed; complex, alluring, disturbing, real. And still "thicker than Tom Selleck's facial hair", "so under the game/ my name should have a hyphen above it" (nice Jigga reference there).
I'd just like to point out briefly that the enjoyment so evident in Jean Grae's fresh delivery and the fluidly spontaneous nature of her writing style are both doubtless part and parcel of her recording session technique; habitually turning up a few hours before recording a track and then ripping the whole thing out of the air whilst the backing track booms on loop. That's right, she writes instant classics like "My Crew" in the time it takes most mainstream MCs to get stoned apathetic enough to lay down their ghostwritten generica. Fear her.
But enough about Jean Grae's ability to exploit and subvert the teleprompted griot's stage act that modern hip-hop has become, because you can hear all about it on "The Wall", arguably This Week's conceptual centrepiece, where she waxes introspective about the mind games and virtual intimacy of her artist/audience relationship; mournful and triumphant at once, she clearly relishes the paradox inherent in making us empathise with her most just when she vows to shut us out. Nor should much time be wasted on the fact that she's female, even though Jean's part of a scene crying out for an intelligent, articulate female presence with something more to offer than an appeasing reflection of materialist misogyny; as she herself has pointed out, reducing her to "best female MC" status would be an insult, not a compliment. Although when she rhymes "the opposite of sanitary/my adversary's vocabulary/smack it like I was Wesley dating Halle Berry/...well that was fucked up/I'm lacking in tact/I'm just upset I never heard of Halle/smacking him back", it's hard not to cheer for the equal right to lyrical arms. The fact that she's also flyer than a twenty-foot bluebottle is likewise irrelevent, but does make her determination to make her name on talent alone all the more admirable.
No, what matters is that her third release under this moniker is rock solid, thought-provoking, entertaining and frequently wonderful, and should be solidly lodged in the number one spot of your "If I Only Buy One Hip-Hop Album This Year" lists. Granted, you'll need to be able to stomach gleefully graphic, eerily invasive fantasies borne of the most complex and compulsive collection of character quirks this side of Aesop Rock, and if you're a fan of deconstructed glitch-hop the chunky-funky production (by a roster including G-Unit beat provider Midi Mafia) may seem offensively appealling. But hell, surely what's killing hip-hop as a commercial genre is this misconception that you can't mix being fun with being more deeply involving? Jean is the solution. Watch her go off like a daisy cutter over the fried guitar licks of "Give It Up" before making fun of her own bad-assedness, feel with her as she paints relationship vignettes with affecting finesse on "Supa Luv" and "Whatever", get creeped out by her urban paranoia as she goes Eminem-oogly on "Going Crazy", toyed with by the sincere reminiscing/public address/e-mail concept of "P.S." and utterly won over by her superb summation, on the 9th Wonder-produced "Don't Rush Me", of where she stood mentally, physically and artistically when she made this album. Not since a man named Dante made Black On Both Sides has the commercial scene borne witness to a personality this compelling whilst simultaneously as soulful, skilled and dangerous as an MC.
I've gone on far too long already, but the fact is that Jean Grae gives me hope for the future, musically and otherwise, and that's inestimably valuable. When was the last time you got that from a hip-hop artist? She made me want to rhyme again (and almost caused me to embark on the lunatic scheme of rhyming this entire damned review, because I could and wanted to), and in fact the album as a whole is so fresh and uplifting that I couldn't let myself listen to it whilst writing this due to inevitable outbreaks of freestyling and irrational joy. Part of this springs from the knowledge that, as Jean herself informs you on the record, she's finally got all parts of the equation nailed down, so the only way is now up; and with one 9th Wonder collabo LP, Jeanius, already in the bag and another, Phoenix, in progress, Jean's near future is taking things skyward like a multiple-stage lunar launch.
One very last thing (I promise): for those of you not up on your X-Mythology, Jean Grae the psychic intellectual ends up evolving into a being known as the Phoenix. It's one of the most powerful forces in the universe. Fiction is the lie that tells the truth, right? If you don't know, now you know: the future's looking good.
— 18 November 2004
