One of the special features on the anniversary DVD of Scarface taps into classic whitey dread: a Def Jam-produced minfomerical in which mainstream rap stars make a case for Tony Montana's sainthood, claiming him as the street equivalent of a traditional comic book hero. Jean Grae may traffic in "gangsta" tropes, but she also subverts them by taking a galactic (as opposed to merely earth- or hood-bound) view of materialism and depression. Born in South Africa, but raised in New York by her musician parents, Tsidi Ibrahim's current stage name (she initially went by What?What?) is based on the telekinetic comic book character Jean Grey (the one Famke Janssen plays in the films about the co-ed, non-Shabazz-affiliated assembly of mutants called X-Men). Grey's tragic mythos involves being soul-trapped in a kind of womb in Jamaica Bay by an evil force that took over her body, almost destroyed the world, and then committed suicide. Grey was assumed dead, but she busted out of the womb-thing and got married, only to have to cope with her husband's being killed by a heavy heel named Apocalypse. The character's a fine match for Grae (though she threatens to change her name to Crystal Meth) because her material is obsessed with battling, mourning, self-murder, mind-weapons, alienation, and armageddon.
Mr. Lif's labyrinthine concept album I, Phantom ended with an all-star, nuclear-devastation-hindsight jam entitled "Post Mortem" on which Grae upstages Lif, El-P, and Akrobatik: she regrets dying with a deficit of malice. If she'd known she was going to perish in a corporate-sponsored holocaust, she says she'd have taken pills, stolen guns, and assaulted women, concluding, "I wish I'd done more sin.../ Let the devil come for me." That darkness and despair continues throughout much of this "EP" (which, at 66 minutes, trumps My Morning Jacket's previous length record). Leadoff cut "Hater's Anthem" is unfortunate, with the dumb chorus, "Fuck you fuck you fuck you hold up/ Fuck you fuck you fuck you wait nah/ Fuck you fuck you fuck you okay/ fuck you fuck you fuck you everybody." Even the aping of Tony Montana by Scarface on the Geto Boys' "Fuck 'Em" was less creatively bankrupt, partially due to its propulsive samples; Grae, meanwhile, is hampered by soundscapes that recall the GZA/Genius formula: plodding beats matched with classical or keyboard-demo loops that never change.
A last-will-and-testament song is guaranteed on Grae's releases, and her current entry, "Take Me", almost constitutes a self-read last-rites: though praying and using King Jamesian diction, Grae still begs to die (and yes, Notorious B.I.G. haunts the whole project, and is even overtly channeled). Don't fear the rapper: On "Code Red", love is dead. On "My Crew", rap is dead. On "Swing Blades", God is dead. The megamix "Chapter One: Destiny" begins with a choose-your-own-adventure killing spree, before spiraling into a cut-n-paste showcase of loose-style party grinds, older works (Natural Resource's "Negro League Baseball"), and reappropriated (resurrected?) beats by such artists as Mobb Deep, Jay-Z, and Nas. This cavalcade dares to have fun.
The previously-noted production limitations (man, some of this percussion is straight off the generic Drum Crazy series-- I've even dropped mad wackness over it!) are occasionally transcended by piercing soul samples that could provoke the listener to purchase all vinyl in sleeves that feature reclining Afro-sporters. The tension of the Wu-tro stuff serves Grae's unsettling vibe well, though, as she decries terrorism, militarism, commodity fetishism and nicotine, as well as her own masochism and schizophrenia, cramming more logos into a line than Bad Religion, all the while out-alluding MF Doom (reffing entities as disparate as Steve Buscemi, Born on the Fourth of July, and a crass spiritual cocktail that summons both Pascal's wager and Ned Flanders' scattershot approach).
She knows she's impossible. In a rebuttal to critic Oliver Wang (whom she also disses in her liner notes, along with Northern State), she disqualifies herself from the roster of hip-hop gamepieces: "Not a thug, not a drugseller, not a gunshooter/ Not a stripper, sex symbol or anything you're used to/ Marketing nightmare, I don't fit into categories/ I just rap, make beats, and shit and sleep all these stories." This anxious rapper brags and then requests therapy; her closest historical complement would be the no-frills MC Lyte (because Grae has little in common with the regal poses of Miss Melodie and Queen Latifah, and even less to do with contemporary or old-school good-time girls). Grae's videos should feature refugees breakdancing while an Escalade outfitted with a weedeater plows through Gethsemane. These confrontational cries for help are worried woman blues.
