Some rap is revered as poetic and brilliant in beats, and some rap sounds like all other rap songs, such as is the case with Jean Grae’s new album This Week. Grae has shown promise as a rising rap star, but on This Week her lyrics are weak and her beats repetitive.
Born in South Africa, music was always a fundamental part of Grae’s life as her father and mother were both jazz artists. She moved to New York City after being accepted to Alvin Alley, a prominent modern dance company.
Living in New York City she met a lot of people from the underground hip-hop scene and she began to form her own identity among them.
Grae’s first musical venture was Natural Resource, a band she started with friends in 1999. Together they released a 12-inch LP that turned a lot of heads in the underground scene.
After one success the Natural Resource disbanded and Grae was free to work on her own music. She made many appearances on others albums, which led to people calling her the “Cameo Queen.”
In early 2003, Grae made her first solo album Attack of the Attacking Things. Later that year, she made another EP, The Bootleg of the Bootleg EP. The attention from Bootleg led the Roots to ask Grae to join their “OkayPlayer” tour and the band as a permanent member.
While joining the Roots was on hold, she was in the studio working on her second full-length album called This Week, just recently released. On this album, Grae shows potential to be a great rap artist with her impressive rhythm, but her lyrics fall short of her talent and the beats seem to repeat from one track to another.
The album becomes increasingly disjointed from sound-bits piped in during tracks, such as a woman running, obviously scared and crying, or another women screaming at the end of another track.
The track “Not Like Me” opens with a woman crooning in a nice airy voice and a little introduction made by Grae. Soon she just starts singing “Its not likely/and anyway you’re gonna not like me/and its not easy/just to come across a girl like Jean.”
As she begins to rap, she talks about what she wants in a man, that “hood rats” can’t make it. The beats in the background are full of bass and simple, repeating over and over, throughout the chorus and when she raps. She seems to force her rhythm on the beats as though she is trying to say too many things at once.
In the song “Before the Spot Skit” the track opens with a beat and people talking about a cashed bowl, how bad it was, and Jean Grae cursing at what seems to be a bouncer. The whole track is just Grae talking to a friend, blatantly a man who is pretending to speak in a woman’s voice, and telling the friend to “Shut up” because “she” is drunk. This track leads into the next called “You Don’t Want It.”
It seems that Grae uses the same synthesizer-type beat in all of her songs, the same tempo in all of her songs, along with same bass-filled beat. What she is talking about is seemingly ambiguous, about what she wants to do and what she wants from the listener, which is unclear.
In a chorus she chimes, singing decently, “Everybody get your hands up/and if you’re ready to rumble with Jean stand up.” Maybe Grae should focus on singing and add some more instruments instead of the rap game.
The album sounds repetitive and without substance. Grae’s lyrics need fine tuning, as though she wrote them and decided right then that they were good enough.
