And if I were Babygrande, IвЂ™d be running for my life.Born in Cape Town, South Africa on November 26, 1976, the daughter of South African jazz musicians (her father and mother are the celebrated musicians Sathima Bea Benjamin and Abdullah Ibrahim), Jean Grae studied Vocal Performance at the LaGuardia School of Music & Art before majoring in Music Business at New York University. She proves the words she raps using the template of an iconic and arguably untouchable male rap artist, actualizing her prophecy in the vehicle of the song itself. вЂњThreatsвЂќ is GraeвЂ™s proof that she belongs in the industry as an artist, as a woman, and as a legitimate and searing threat, transcending a predestined and archetypal role of a sexual object in a song cover that is more daunting than its original form.

She somehow echoes the rage behind JayвЂ™s song while elevating the intelligence of its form, primarily by drawing attention to a menacing and unquestioned prevalence of sexualization and objectification of women within the gangster rap world. She utilizes JayвЂ™s blueprint of вЂњThreatвЂќ itself, hitting his key rhymes on the dot and paralleling his verse structure, redefining his lyrics and pointing them at him-and other kings of the rap world-to assert her presence as a black woman in the male-dominated industry while appropriating the testosterone-heavy lyrics of violence, territorialism and, well, threats, and re-writing them with a female savviness. Grae uses Jay as a symbol of the hyper-masculine, testosterone-driven gangster rap world, really directing her threats at the ambiguous, jocky figure that possesses dominance and disproportionate levels of artistic capital in the music industry. This is an unusual musical, reconstructed You thought Nas hated Jay-Z (have you heard вЂњ EtherвЂќ?), but Grae addresses the Black Album mastermind with spitting candor, turning his own words onto himself and lacing them with a fire and self-aggrandizement that is both abrasive and eloquent, a fierce form of poetry only capable of by an angry and betrayed woman.

Then the 1:14 mark hits, the claps and stomping morph into a cleaner and more ruthless drum track and the song kicks into the next gear, taking GraeвЂ™s liberal cover of Jay-ZвЂ™s вЂњ ThreatвЂќ into the stratosphere and elevating its impact in raging feminist discourse.

GraeвЂ™s verses in Threats bathe in the gospel morality of a spliced, strobed, overdubbed and embattled remix of the deepest and roughest moments of Etta JamesвЂ™ вЂњSomethingвЂ™s Got A Hold On Me.вЂќ The result is a composed and impassioned conversation between empowered women in soul and poetry and hip hop that is so intense, it is impossible to distinguish whether pleasure or pain is being conveyed. The use of her verses was unauthorized, making her lyrics-particularly those in вЂњThreats,вЂќ which attack the music industry and its patriarchal backbone-even more seething and relevant when paired with the context of their distribution. The Cape Town-born, New York City-bred, underground MC sensation is named and depicted in the controversial album, Jean Grae: The Evil Jeanius (2008) that was produced by San Francisco production duo Blue Sky Black Death and released by Babygrande without her consent.

Jean grae albums