Jean Grae has always been a fascinating if somewhat perplexing presence in underground hip-hop; as an artist and lyricist, she's capable of both traumatic vivid imagery and lighthearted just-fuckin'-around comedy, quick-witted tongue-twisting and conversational observation, send-you-home-crying battle raps and gripping narrative storytelling. Unfortunately, every time she's seemed on the brink of some major breakthrough, something somewhere gets thrown off the rails. Jean has every right and reason to be as well-known as, at the very least, the Roots and Talib Kweli (who she's collaborated with successfully over the last few years). But for whatever reason-- bootleggers, disillusionment, label jerk-around moves, the industry's inability to properly market a female artist who operates more as a superhuman MC than as a sex symbol-- she's wound up operating closer to the fringes than someone with her experience and skill deserves, wavering between contemplations of retirement and selling 16-bar guest appearances on Craigslist.
So it's easy to wonder what things'd be like for her if Jeanius came out as scheduled, way back in 2004, rather than earlier this summer. That's because it's the kind of album you pull out when you want to convince a friend that this rapper he hasn't heard can do all this incredible shit, a potential career-definer that people can turn to when they want to quickly and definitively sum up the qualities of an artist with one easily-recommendable release. Longtime heads have known this for a while now; when the album leaked four years back and subsequently got shelved, it became one of those cause-celebre great lost albums like the Ghostface/MF DOOM Swift & Changeable collab or Q-Tip's original 2006 draft of Live at the Renaissance. When Jeanius finally did drop legit on Kweli's Blacksmith label with little changed but some of the track titles, the familiarity had already set in-- which means this album's had a presidential term's worth of time to establish itself as a contemporary classic.
Jean the battler is in top form, and the half of the album where she goes about the business of shit-talking is superb: "You don't like the way I flow/ 'She needs more emotion, though'/ I'll give you emotion, it's you, holdin' your broken nose"; "controversy works, and plus I got a pussy/ But even with that, people scared to push me/ Who's a pussy first?"; "Fuck the hearsay, please, Jean's superior/ Y'all yellow, same color of your bladder's interiors." But her ability to convincingly go from supreme self-confidence to moments of doubt and personal tragedy reveal what a complete, relatable and human MC she is-- whether it's something like the self-aware battles with her own hard-headed personality traits on "Don't Rush Me", or "My Story"'s harrowing confessional of her post-abortion experiences-- or on "Desperada", where she pledges to overcome it all and come out stronger on the other end. Jean's been accused of sounding cold and monotone by dudes who apparently forgot what made slick, collected cats like Guru and Erick Sermon great, but to these ears her flow sounds like a laser-focused, clear-spoken declaration of strength and perseverance.
All these emotional facets need a solid, consistent sound to keep them tied all together, and 9th Wonder is at the top of his game here, providing the bulk of Jeanius' production (with a couple tracks from fellow North Carolinians Khrysis and Fatin). At their best, 9th's beats do a good job of carrying tracks without making themselves the center of attention, but here they stand as some of his finest work because of how well he balances between heart-pulsing, head-nod beats and moody, grey-skied atmosphere: the piano/choir loop in "Don't Rush Me" sticks with you because it somehow pulls off the trick of sounding triumphant and mournful at the same time, and the way the "Top Billin'"-in-a-straitjacket drums complement the recurring dubbed-out mournful vocal snippet from the Marvelettes' "Uptown" gives "Billy Killer" a strong, chilling undercurrent of jealous fury that Jean's lyrics etch into stone. Word has it Jean Grae and 9th are working on a grip of tracks for an upcoming release, Phoenix, and if that album's anywhere near as good as this one, we should finally stop having to ask "what if" and move on to "how far."
