Jean Grae
This Week
Orchestral/Babygrande

It's not easy being somebody's poster child. South Africa-born, New York-bred rapper Jean Grae is a talented MC who operates in gray areas and flexes serious gray matter, slinging disses, confessions, boasts, and love songs, swinging her sense of humor like a scythe. But when the hip-hop cognoscenti have anointed you as the anti-Lil' Kim, an underground successor to Lauryn Hill, and independent hip-hop's righteous femme savior, being merely good is not enough. Grae's expected to be a superheroine, a burden no artist should have to shoulder. No wonder she raps about being crazy.

Since the breakup of her mid-'90s crew Natural Resource, Grae's spent her solo career brashly blindsiding haters. She's picked fights on the mike with record labels, critics, hypocrites who "turned they back on spitters with clits," anyone foolish enough to look at her sideways, and--last but not least--her own demons, from a lust for liquor to nagging self-doubt. (The infamous chorus from "Hater's Anthem" intoned, simply, "Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you...")

But on This Week--a loose concept album about struggle, frustration, and personal growth--she finally showcases a flow as strong as her vitriol. Though she asserts, on "Never Know," that some of her music is "talk therapy / Some of it's sketch parodies / With lyrical dexterity," it's not exactly Chappelle's Show up in here. Naked confessionals like "P.S." and the swooning, sincere love letter "Break" cut straight to the guts. (An even deeper song, the 9th Wonder-produced "Forgive Me," didn't make the final cut of the album, but should've--it's a brick-heavy first-person narrative about teenage abortion, miscarriage, suicide attempts, and regret-by-the-truckload, and somebody needs to MP3-blog it right quick.)

But, as ever, the Jeanius is "like Bill's wife / Packin' a sword." Maybe it's all the practice, but she sounds best when she's in the bullring, ready to rumble. One gleefully savage offer: "Verbally hang thee with these third-degree burns / Upon your fannies / And your balls ripped off / Course it's all talk / I'll lick off the potshots and cut your dick off." It sounds less like a threat than a promise. Watch ya crotch!

Grade: B+