rap musician
Personal Information
Born Tsidi Ibrahim in 1976, in Capetown, South Africa; took the name Jean Grae, 2000; daughter of Abdullah Ibrahim (jazz musician) and Sathima Bea Benjamim (jazz singer)
Education: Attended New York University, music business, 1992.
Career
Rapper, producer, 1990s-; Group Zero, rap group member (as What? What?), 1990s; Natural Resource, rap group member, 1996-99; Makin' Records, co-founder and producer, 1996-99(?);
Life's Work
From the moment she picked up the microphone in the early 1990s, hip-hop aficionados have proclaimed the genius of Jean Grae. Her in-your-face raps were fueled by literary lyrics and visceral imagery. Her rise to stardom seemed assured, but the limelight eluded her. Despite putting out several acclaimed albums and earning the respect of the most-respected of her rapping peers, Grae was still waiting for major success a decade into her career.
Raised from Musical Roots
Jean Grae was born Tsidi Ibrahim in Capetown, South Africa, in 1976 to Abdullah Ibrahim, a world-renowned jazz pianist, and Sathima Bea Benjamin, a jazz singer. Both of her parents traveled worldwide, performing with legends such as bandleader Duke Ellington. Regardless of their musical stature, Ibrahim and Benjamin were blacks during the dawning of apartheid in South Africa, and therefore second-class citizens. In protest, they joined the African National Congress (ANC)--the anti-apartheid party led by Nelson Mandela--but when the ANC was legally banned in 1960, the Ibrahims found themselves facing possible arrest. As oppression increased, they decided to go into exile.
Grae and her family arrived in New York City in 1977. The Ibrahim household became a destination for both exiled South Africans and world-class musicians. "I grew up in a home full of music," Grae recalled on her Web site. As independent artists, both Ibrahim and Benjamin struggled to stay true to their musical identities while forging careers. "I remember [my mother] doing her press kits and taking me around to the pressing plants to press up her own records and start her own label, to be independent and make the music she wanted to do," Grae told Jive Magazine.
Grae's mother taught her to read by the age of three, setting off a life-long love of reading and writing. The cover photo for Grae's 2004 album, This Week, featured her surrounded by books, writing. Grae also began dance classes at a very young age. At 13, she became the youngest dancer ever to earn a spot with the Alvin Ailey Repertory Ensemble, the second company of the famed modern dance company, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre. Meanwhile, Grae excelled in school, soaring through an advanced junior high program and landing in the LaGuardia School of the Arts as a vocal major where she learned to read and arrange music. By the age of 16, she felt she had learned enough and, with her mother's support, she dropped out. After earning a GED, she took a six-month music engineering course and then enrolled in New York University as a music business major. After two months, Grae quit, telling herself, "I've lived this all my life...why is my family going to waste the money on this?," she recalled on her Web site.
Forged Career of Cameos
By her early teens, Grae had begun to hang out in New York's West Village, home to musicians, poets, and emcees. Grae recalled on her Web site that there were "beats everywhere," giving rise to some of rap's most respected performers, including Mos Def and Talib Kweli. In the early 1990s, Grae formed rap group Ground Zero and changed her name to What? What?. She left in 1996 to join Natural Resource. The group's self-produced 12-inch single "Negro League Baseball" went to number one on the college radio charts. The group also launched the record label Makin' Records and Grae produced tracks for local artists such as Pumpkinhead.
After Natural Resource broke up in 1999, Grae was determined to pursue a music career. "I wanted to start over and establish myself as a solo artist, and pretty much just as a grown woman," she told Eye Weekly. However Grae would not go solo just yet. Instead she earned the nickname "cameo queen." "I threw myself into any studio that I could get into for the next couple of years, doing appearances whenever asked," she wrote on her Web site. In 2001 she recorded three tracks for the album Pity the Fool by Mr. Len. Though a commercial flop, the album was critically acclaimed. It was also a turning point for Grae. "Len's album gave me the push to stop waiting for that perfect song in my mind and just put myself out there," she wrote on her Web site.
During the years of appearing on other people's albums, Grae earned praise for inserting uniquely female perspectives into the gritty realm of testosterone-driven rap. "She was a protective lover on Masta Ace's 'Hold U'; a covert assassin on Immortal Technique's 'The Illest'; a chillingly rendered molestation victim turned psychopathic schoolyard killer in Mr. Len's epic 'Taco Day,'" wrote a reviewer for the Minneapolis/St. Paul City Pages. "With these characters, Grae demonstrated her ability to tell stories male MCs couldn't, lending a voice to the heavier elements of the female psyche that hip hop rarely ventured into."
Found Limited Recognition, Maximum Frustration
Early in 2000, Grae adopted the name Jean Grae, based on an X-Man comic book character who possessed telekinetic powers. Grae released her first solo album in 2002, Attack of the Attacking Things. Recorded in her tiny New York apartment in just two weeks, the album was rough around the mixes. Nonetheless the lyricism of the songs came through loud and clear. "What it lacks in flam and polish," wrote a Village Voice reviewer, "Attack makes up for with the determined and singular power of a compelling personal vision." The album struck a chord with those lucky enough to hear it, and despite no promotion, barely any radio play, and scant representation in even the most independent of record shops, Attack managed to sell over ten thousand copies.
Grae's way with words continued to impress on her second album, produced in 2003, The Bootleg of the Bootleg. "Grae's lyrical skills are deft in every sense of the word, period," wrote a reviewer for Vibe. The reviewer continued, "[Grae] employs tongue-twisting, gut-wrenching metaphors and with sheer ferocity declares that she's back on the scene with a vengeance." Grae also showed emotional diversity moving from the fury of "Hater's Anthem" to the soul-searching of "Take Me."
Grae described the album to Vibe as "dark." In it she lashed out against the recording industry and rap in particular. In the song "My Crew," she chanted, "Rap's dead, rap sucks, and thanks to y'all for killin' it // Grillin' it down and spillin' its guts and fillin' it back up with trash // Wait, I mean cash." It was a common theme for Grae. She felt immense anger at the recording industry for praising her music while at the same time refusing to represent her.
Poised to Become Future Rap Star
In 2003 Grae's career arced upwards. She did a successful tour with hip-hop heavyweights, The Roots. "It was incredible to get on the road and just be out there with so many talented people," Grae told Prefix Magazine. "[Having] a live band and hearing your music replayed. It just gives it a totally different feel, a totally different emotion." The following year Grae appeared on The Roots's hit album The Tipping Point.
Grae released This Week in 2004. A musical crawl through a week in Grae's life, it gained immediate praise in the urban culture press. In contrast to the hard-hitting venom of Bootleg, This Week featured danceable raps such as "Going Crazy" and tender tracks like "Supa Luv." However, her characteristic fury was still present in songs like "Whatever." Grae also used the album to apologize for the anger she had spat out for so long. Of the song "P.S." she told Prefix Magazine, "[It's about] the difference from the first two albums, which would be sort of holding a grudge and having more of a negative outlook on things and realizing that when you get older it doesn't pay to keep those feelings."
By 2005 Grae was busy touring, both as a headliner and with other artists. The venues were still small, the record sales still limp, and the struggle for recognition still uphill. Yet, there was hope. Her fourth album Jeanius received heavy pre-release buzz and Grae was voted Plug Independent Music Award's female artist of the year. After a decade of performing, Grae was still the next-big-thing, waiting to explode into mainstream, MTV consciousness. She was okay with that. "I've come to terms with the fact that no matter how many times I proclaim quitting, get frustrated with measly financial compensation for my work, or just plain hate what I do some days, this is what I was put here to do," she wrote on her Web site. "Music. It's the only thing that can bring the most beautiful or horribly ugly emotions out of me. Anything that can do that has got to be worth loving, worth fighting for and worth living passionately about."
Awards
Plug Independent Music Awards, Female Artist of the Year, 2004.
Works
Selected discography
- Attack of the Attacking Things, Third Earth, 2002.
- The Bootleg of the Bootleg, Babygrande, 2003.
- This Week, Babygrande/Orchestral, 2004.
Further Reading
On-line
- "Amazing Grae," Eye Weekly, www.eye.net/eye/issue/issue_05.15.03/thebeat/extended.html (March 11, 2005).
- "Biography," Jean Grae, www.jean-grae.com (March 11, 2005).
- "Grae's Anatomy," Minneapolis/St. Paul City Pages, www.citypages.com/databank/24/1194/article11599.asp (March 11, 2005).
- "Jean Grae: Going Against the Grain," Jive Magazine, www.jivemagazine.com/article.php?pid=2281 (March 11, 2005).
- "Jean Grae: Growing Pains," Vibe, www.vibe.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=519 (March 11, 2005).
- "Jean Grae, She Wants to Move," Prefix Magazine, www.prefixmag.com/features.php?t=interview&f=Jean_Grae_%20PartOne (March 11, 2005).
- "Jean Grae X-ecutes the Competition," Vibe, www.vibe.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=137 (March 11, 2005).
- "Not Your Superwoman," The Village Voice, www.villagevoice.com/music/0238,allen,38392,22.html (March 11, 2005).
— Candace LaBalle
