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Jean Grae - This Week
- If ever there were a female emcee to blaze the trails lit by MC Lyte, Queen Latifah and Lauryn Hill (before she went acoustic), Jean Grae would fit the bill. The honesty that drips from every word she spits is enough to make a boy scout jealous. Yet it is this honesty that keeps her away from the mainstream success that most other rappers have. "This Week", her latest album, finds her dealing with (and sharing with the listener) the ups, downs, joys and pains that make her tick.
The album's intro, with its blaring horns and East Coast boom-bap beat lets you know that royalty has arrived. The Queen of the Underground wastes no time in fulfilling your expectations, because by the second track, "A-Alike", you’ll be bowing at her Queen-like (or even King) command of the microphone.
Jean keeps things moving with the old-flow feel of "Style Wars", and her clever use of a Funkadelic sample on "Whatever", but it's songs like "The Wall" that bring us closer to the Jean we all know and love. Never afraid to pour her soul onto the record, she questions her own sanity, confronts her dependency on alcohol, and admits that under the tough exterior and behind the hard words, she’s a lot more insecure than she lets on. It’s rhymes like these that allow the listener to get to know her, and to feel like they’re not the only ones who go through daily problems as well.
Even on "Give It Up", where she spends the entire song chasing a guy, it’s the fact that she’s uncertain about feelings (hers and his) that make this a winner.
However, when she's in serious "chase a man" mode, like the uninspired "Not Like Me" and the erratic "Supa Luv", she sounds really uncomfortable, and she should. She built her rep on insightful, soul-bearing rhymes, her sense of humor (displayed on skits planted throughout the album) and being able to knock most male emcees off the mic. And for the majority of the album, she lives up to it.
By dealing with a variety of topics, "This Week" actually sounds like a week in the life of Jean Grae. While it may not be album to finally give her the well deserved spotlight, it does nothing but build on her already strong reputation as being one of the best emcees (male or female) that’s in the game right now.
Reviewer: Ray Anderson
new
Reviewer's Rating: 7.5
Reader's Rating: 0
Reader's Votes: 0
Added: 15-Oct-2004
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