Grae flaunts her array of verbal weaponry on 17 tracks, often outshining the males accompanying her. And as usual, she maneuvers her way through metaphors and sophisticated wordplay as slickly as a Jay-Z or a Nas.

In “Black Girl Pain,” which is also featured on Talib Kweli’s Beautiful Struggle, Jean shouts out some women in her life who merit praise, including her cousins back home in Capetown, Africa and “the strength of mommy’s backbone.” She meanwhile showcases her customary wittiness and poetic panache on songs like “2nd Chance” and “So Smooth,” though Grae sometimes suffers from an emotionless delivery—what some critics declare is her one weak spot.

Nevertheless, Jean proudly presents her new rap crew, The Generals, comprised of five other MCs from across the nation, including McGuyver aka Private E-1, a 12-year-old girl with a penchant for carrying “supersoakers in my backpack filled up with acid.” Imitating Eminem’s inflected syllables and gory metaphors on this track, Grae spits, “White chick, three shades paler than most of my people/Wipe my own shit/you can’t say that either, bitch/I’m not Feminem/You’ll find an emblem/over your tombstone of my face if you mention him.”

Grae throws in two songs off her most recent album, This Week—“Style Wars” and “The Wall”—and performs a stellar freestyle over Nas’ “Shoot Em Up” beat on “getting fuck’d up.”

Summing it up for us on “Nuttin’s Real” with Block McCloud, Jean eschews ever abandoning her art for the sake of fame: “I hate this music/I hate that I’m related to it/I scrape to do it/My brake fluids embrace movement/I wanna quit it but I’m still addicted/rehab twitchin’ like I just kicked it/when I’m not spittin’, I itch/Is it non-inspired?/Should I become a 9-to-5er?/down to the wire/At 26 should I retire?/Of course not.”

Whatever happened to the compilation? It seems as if no one does a compilation unless it’s a greatest songs album or one of those “Only Sold on TV” multi-CD sets. Now we are just butchered with thousands of mix tapes with no-talent-16-track using DJs, wack writtens portrayed as freestyles, and hosted by folks who have no business putting sentences together. There are a few mix tapes that are worth their weight in gold, but most are just useful for living room coasters. Sleeping Giant Music, a label that has recently celebrated its one year anniversary, has placed a good portion of their roster on their first release.

A wonderful thing about compilations is that it allows the listener an opportunity to test several flavors. Sleeping Giant does just that by presenting Miki Vale, Move.meant, Self Sounds, Aygee Cannibal, Brown Suga Poet, oneson, Jon Phenom, and Quayludes to the world. There is no gangsta posturing here or tales of incredible one night stands with exotic women of foreign locales we cannot pronounce. Almost each artist brings their own unique form of hip-hop music.

Miki Vale, an MC who happens to be a female, brings a much needed talent to the mic. Her rhymes are hard without being male and her writing is as complex as any. Her clever rhyme flow stood out amongst her Sleeping Giant Music peers. Self Sounds continues the tradition of pouring knowledge into our consciousness in the form of edutainment. Oneson brings that sing-songy form of MCing that only few get right. Instead of trying to get in your draws, Oneson discusses the ills of society. Move.meant brings a nice flavor to the overall picture but unfortunately are featured on only one track.

Of course, every album has their flaws. On “The Awakening,” the spoken word artist Brown Suga Poet seems very out of place. I will admit, what her writing is way over my head particularly when I am just looking for dope lyrics and head nodding beats. Throwing her into the mix was just enough to interrupt the album’s flow.

Sleeping Giant Music does a fine job of finding artists that represent the cutting edge of several genres. Hopefully, with enough push and clever marketing we will all hear more from these artists. Until then, this compilation is enough to keep us searching.

www.giantsarise.com

Author: Adam Mansbach
Publisher: Crown/Three Rivers Press

Employing the conceptual and satirical prose created by Paul Beatty in White Boy Shuffle, Adam Mansbach has penned a dynamite novel that explores race from the perspective of a hip-hop generation white male.

Macon is a white kid from Boston who has immersed himself knee-deep in “golden age” socio-political rap music. He becomes a cab driver spurned into robbing white fares in a narcissistic sense of racial revolutionary enlightenment. After purposely getting arrested for the crimes, Macon suddenly finds himself a media darling and newly appointed “black leader,” leading to a bizarre chain of events that culminate in a disastrous “Day of Apology.”

“I hope to jump start a discussion on race that has been dormant, largely due to a lack of investment on the part of white people.” A discussion that “when whites do participate”, Adam observes, they set the “parameters” for the discussion, or simply leave when it becomes “uncomfortable.” For the character Macon, it his refusal to accept responsibility for his rhetoric that serves to illustrate the existing myopia far too many white kids bring in their miscegenation into hip-hop culture.

The most important aspect of white experience in black culture (as Adam articulates) is whites’ false sense of absolution. “The white desire to be accepted in hip-hop is largely a desire for absolution, a desire to shed our institutional and economic privilege symbolically. Not abandon it. Just no longer be held accountable for it, to trade action for identification.” By wearing phat gear and empathizing with the struggles of black youth, many white kids are fooled into thinking they have been pardoned. However, when called to task about the continued institutional effects of white privilege, most whites are willing to retreat, continuing what Adam describes as an “individualistic experience” that ignores community responsibility in deconstructing issues of race and white privilege.

Angry White Boy is not a panacea for white self-criticism. Mansbach tackles a myriad of issues including the commercialization of hip-hop and pseudo Black nationalism. He utilizes fiction to highlight the “absurdity of the fact we are forced into these rigid identities that ultimately cannot sustain themselves, and when they bump into each other, they tend to shatter and expose their own brittleness and subjectivity, revealing the humanity inside.”

In this age of shifting racial, ethnic, and even cultural identities, what better time then now to examine what whiteness means, both “individualistically” and rhetorically? Angry White Boy is an excellent vehicle to open that discussion.

There are several people who run about and use the term “eclectic” very loosely. There are also quite a few so called artists who will tell you that they are taking things to the next level. Quite a few will make some bold comparisons like “she is the next Jill Scott,” “his sound is reminiscent of Al Green” or “this album is the truth!” Some argue that this is a form of marketing and that it’s just the nature of the business. While others actually believe that he or she is pushing the boundaries of whichever genre they represent. Yet the listener is still misled or foolishly convinced like a Jedi mind trick. Jennifer Johns, however, does have the skills to back any claim she or her peoples may make.

The title of the album is overwhelming even to a bookworm such as I but there is no other way to describe the album. Each track stands out on its own. When you think Johns is going to hit you with one thing, she sneaks an uppercut in there to throw you off. With a production squad consisting of Spontaneous, Josh Evans, and Ryan Smith, Johns hits all the genres squashed together in the title. The overall chemistry flows throughout the album. heavyelectromagneticsoularpoeticjunglehop arrangement is clever and can satisfy any listener.

The highlights of the album are “Truth,” “Do You Believe in Love,” “Beautiful,” and “Fallen.” What is amazing is that each track is totally different from one another. They demonstrate John’s unique talent in creating a dish of exotic flavors. The hidden track also throws the listener off but in a good way.

Surprisingly, the only flaw is her rendition of Sade’s “Cherish the Day.” One would assume that if any artist could tackle Sade’s catalog, it would be Johns, but she does the track no justice. Johns however represents lovely on each cut. We can safely say that Johns has set a new musical standard that everyone should check for.

heavyelectromagneticsoularpoeticjunglehop is available on Nayo Movement Music.

Intro’s, in this case “Gintro” featuring The Poetess, usually set the tone for the album. Ginger Jackson, a seemingly well rounded vocalist, explains to the listener how she will present them with various flavors. Unfortunately, Jackson fails in almost all of her attempts. Her voice sounds almost childlike and sweet when you hear her speak. One is left expecting it to hide a full singing range as many R&B stars before Jackson have proven. In many of the tracks on the album, Jackson tries to switch up and demonstrate a mastery of vocal range. Again, she fails at each try.

In today’s R&B, there is a lack of writing genius. On Ghetto Bourgeois, there is a tremendous lack thereof. Jackson shares the writing with D’Anthony Robertson, and Anthony Branch. Despite the back up efforts of these collaborators, no writer saves the day. The production is too simple. One can tell that all the producers are really trying hard to find that bridge between that laid back lounge style and a little of that so-called hip-hop street edge. The production sounds forced and the arrangement on many of the tracks seem rushed. There is no chemistry between the singer and composer. Even though the Gintro tells us that there is some hip-hop on the album, there isn’t any. Honestly, there is nothing ‘ghetto’ or ‘boureois’ about the album at all.

There are a few gems however. “Searching” and “Another Side of Heaven” have above average writing and flowing arrangements. Both are songs that are radio friendly and can keep a crowd’s attention in any setting. These are the songs one expects after hearing the Gintro. Overall the album is less than mediocre and yet there is much growth in Jackson’s future. She can sing better than most. With some coaching, better production, and a solid writer, her next contribution should be very successful. Some of us would rather hear Ms. Ginger Jackson over a Nivea anyway.

Ghetto Bourgeois is available on Cool Out Records.

Words play an important role when orchestrating an exact point. How often have you listened to 72 minutes worth of incomplete thoughts or boring rhyme schemes? A nice portion of today’s hip-hop has become less creative and inspiring. However…..

Out of the womb comes forth a talent whom I’d call, “the definition of an M.C.”.

Jean Grae, formally known as What? What?, with the release of her second full length album, This Week, makes me question, “Are heads really ready?”

Through out the CD, Jean’s verbally hypnotizing delivery always seems to stand out as the truth in darkness. I found myself in a serious head nod-think session while listening to Style Wars, Supa Luv, and Whatever.

Jean emits a storyteller’s presence on such tracks as Give It Up and P.S. If lyrics are what you’re after then I’d definitely suggest studying the cadence on both tracks. I found myself laughing hysterically to Before the Spot, one of the skits on the album, which takes us on an evening out with Jean and a friend.

Over the years, Jean has been admired for more than her writing skills, but, also for her self-production, voiceovers and vocal skills. Those who didn’t know Jean Grae before the release of This Week, will unquestionably want to know more after their first listen. She’s definitely one of the best in hip-hop and deserves her respect due. Not cause she’s a woman but because she’s good. Jean’s redefines what hip-hop is, has been and will be in the future.

Hope you’re ready because Jean has blessed the world with an awe-inspiring album that will hopefully gain her more than an underground following.

In Joey Garfield’s 2002 documentary film “Breath Control: The History of the Human Beat-Box,” one voice of reason rose from the ranks of keeping-it-real dudes, showing intelligence and insight at the historical significance of making rhythmic music with just your mouth and throat. It’s no surprise that the voice belonged to Marie Daulne, the artist at the core of Zap Mama, a Belgian outing whose early explorations of the human voice drew lines between Zulu chants, jazz scats, and (courtesy of brother Jean-Louis Daulne) beat-boxing. Whilst Daulne’s Congolese heritage and her French singing have always had Zap Mama consigned to the World Music ghetto, the truth is there’s always been a tangible hip-hop-ist spirit at play in her music, even if it was only recently that Daulne was confronted with the full rap-game culture of “mouth music,” and, in wishing to explore her own music and a sense of shared heritage with this, she thus threw herself into the heart of Philadelphia’s Soulquarian scene.

The result is Ancestry in Progress, an album that finds the 40-year-old Daulne being introduced to an American “urban” market that may not be able to make sense of all her eccentricities. It’s sure a long way from the soft vocal rounds of the amazing Zap Mama debut (initially self-titled, reissued in the U.S.A. as Adventures in Afropea 1), yet it’s not too different to the sound Daulne was trying to capture on A Ma Zone, the album that preceded this five years back. Whilst there are the big-name down-with-the-scene guests here to help ease her into her new surrounds — like Erykah Badu, Common, Talib Kweli (following from his Les Nubians guest-spot of earlier this year), and The Roots’ ?uestlove and Scratch — the “progress” in the title describes not just the concept of an ongoing African musical evolution, but it gives an in-progress status-report report card to Daulne’s assimilation into American culture/recording-studios. There is that one crystal-clear moment, where it all — her history, her current desires, her conception for this disc, her embrace of the city of brotherly love, her relations within it — comes together beautifully; “Whadidyusay?” makes a Björkian point of pointing out it was composed entirely from the human voice as Daulne coos in French, spits in syncopated rhythms, and cozies down with a chorus as Scratch busts out beautiful bass hum and simple beats behind it. Elsewhere, things can seem less like the metaphorical melting pot and a bit more like a lost-in-a-muddle melange, but it’s hardly made Daulne seem any less a fearless artist.

When the seminal hip-hop group Public Enemy released their ground-breaking recording It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back in June of 1988, it marked a critical moment when the political verve of the 1960s had finally been synthesized with the street rhythms of the 1980s. That the recording had little impact on the seamless transition of power from Ronald Reagan to George H. Bush or Reverend Jesse Jackson’s attempt to become the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party, spoke volumes about the context in which the recording was produced. Public Enemy lead Chuck D legitimately believed the music of Public Enemy, and hip-hop in general, would be the vehicle by which a political movement cultivated around the core issues of Black urban life could be realized. On the contrary, the music of so-called “conscious” rappers and those rappers themselves was easily isolated in the absence of an actual political movement. Since that first era of the conscious rapper, many have invested in the idea of hip-hop as the likely incubator for a cross-racial progressive political movement. And though the willingness of young Whites to embrace the music of contemporary “conscious” rappers such as Mos Def, Rha Goddess, Talib Kweli, Mr. Lif and others represents an important component of such a movement, very little of that exchange has ever translated into concrete political action.

Yvonne Bynoe is all too aware of this phenomenon and in her new book Stand and Deliver: Political Activism, Leadership, and Hip Hop Culture (Soft Skull Press) she lays down a blueprint for hip-hop to begin to fully realize its revolutionary potential. One of the most sought after political commentators of the hip-hop generation, Bynoe, a Howard University and Fordham University Law school graduate, is intent upon demystifying the idea of “political” rap or what is sometimes referred to as raptivism. As she writes in the book’s preface, “Only in discussions related to political action and young Black people has the celebrity of a few rap artist and rap moguls become conflated with the political leadership”, noting how absurd the notions of “Rock activism” and “Folk activism” sound. Bynoe puts some of the blame on mainstream media for not doing the research to identify the emerging leadership of the post-Civil Rights generation, instead “deem[ing] rap artists, the most visible young Blacks in society, the new political spokesmen.” One example of this is the activist career of Lisa Williamson, whose work went virtually ignored until she transformed herself into hip-hop artist Sister Souljah and became a pawn in Bill Clinton’s move to undermine the influence of the Democratic Party’s liberal wing in 1992.

Like her contemporary Bakari Kitwana, whose Hip-Hop Generation (2002) is the perfect companion book for Stand and Deliver, Bynoe might be of the hip-hop generation, but is not defined the fetishes of the culture. As Bynoe reminds readers throughout the book “all of this is about more than Hip-Hop. Hip-Hop is simply the metaphor for our lives.” She cautions that, “If our elders give up on Hip-Hop then they’ve given up on us. If we give up on Hip Hop, then we’ve given up on ourselves.” Bynoe takes seriously the symbolic point Todd Boyd argues in his provocative The New H.N.I.C: The Death of Civil Rights and Reign of Hip Hop (2003)-the influence of Civil Rights old guard is being surpassed by the big balling sensibilities of the Hip-hop generation. Bill O’Reilly didn’t come after Al Sharpton or Julian Bond-he came after Ludacris.

Bynoe points to the inconsistent moral standards of the old guard, observing that the “civil rights generation, in order to survive, sublimated its internal differences and put forth a united front to fight racial discrimination”. A product of such logic has been the proclivity of that generation to “overlook Reverend Jesse Jackson’s baby mama drama; Marion Barry’s crack use; and Henry Lyons embezzlement as well as the “Big Pimpin’” flamboyance of the mega pastors.” Despite this fact, Bynoe notes how quickly the civil rights generation has “castigated the Hip Hop generation for the content of its cultural products-its actual and alleged immoral or illegal conduct.” Bynoe also suggests that the Civil Rights old guard might be out of touch with contemporary crises: “while racial discrimination still exists as a rallying issue, it is not the only focus of the Hip Hop generation. They must also confront other equally pressing concerns: AIDS/HIV; the prison industrial complex; discrimination based on sexual orientation; gender equity; and economic advancement.”

While Bynoe is dead-on with her analysis, there is really no significant evidence that the hip-hop generation has truly wrapped their heads around those tensions either, particularly in the case of gender and sexuality. Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick’s recent criticism of same-sex marriages, while appearing on Real Time with Bill Maher is such an example. In some instances, Bynoe is quick to reinforce the value of previous social and political movements that focused on the lives of disenfranchised Blacks. For example Bynoe sees any serious post-civil rights era movement as needing the synthesized elements of the Black Power movement and the Black Arts movement-”a viable political apparatus that incorporates the cultural expression.” (153). While so many of the granola and Mau Mau sects within hip-hop audiences seem drawn to hip-hop’s conscious soothsayers, Bynoe finds the ideal models for hip-hop generation leaders in Ella J. Baker and her mentee Lisa Sullivan.

Baker was a long time political organizer whose work spanned more than five decades and seminal civil rights organizations like the NAACP and SCLC (see Barbara Ransby’s Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Vision). Baker is perhaps best known as the spiritual and intellectual force behind the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)-the organization that was largely responsible for bringing Black youth into the movement. Identifying her as the “political grandmother” of the hip-hop generation, Bynoe writes that Baker’s legacy is the “concept of people making decisions about issues that affect their lives rather than being led by a national organization” or conscious rappers for that matter. Of Lisa Sullivan, who died in 2001 at age 40, Bynoe writes, “Like her mentor, activist Ella Baker, Sullivan shunned the limelight and did the hard and often thankless work of helping young people to realize their leadership capabilities, so that they could meet the needs of their communities.”

Notably, Bynoe’s comment about Baker and Sullivan resist placing any added significance on the fact that they were women-a likely product of Bynoe’s desire to challenge notions that women exist as political operatives solely in the name of gender issues. Stand and Deliver is admittedly “descriptive” of the failure of the hip-hop generation to mount a significant and sustained political movement, but Bynoe does offer concrete advice for those of the hip-hop generation choosing electoral politics as an option. Bynoe cites Newark, NJ city councilman Cory Booker among a generation of young Black politicians, including congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. and the aforementioned Kwame Kilpatrick, that are poised to provide real hip-hop leadership within the realm of electoral politics. Specifically, Bynoe sees Booker’s recent challenge to Newark’s Black incumbent mayor Sharpe James (Booker lost the 2002 mayoral election by a small majority) as the litmus for others of the hip-hop generation to challenge well-supported old guard Black incumbents.

Using Booker’s loss as an example, Bynoe urges his peers to possess clear qualifications for political office, build constituencies with older Black voters, be clear about their relationship with the electorate, to fully “understand the impact of race, class and age” on the opinions of potential voters. Throughout the book, Bynoe eschews the vernacular and theoretical calisthenics that might be found in the books of noted hip-hop commentators like Michael Eric Dyson or the aforementioned Todd Boyd. There’s nothing “sexy” about Bynoe’s prose and indeed that’s the point as there is nothing glamorous about the hands-on political work that needs to be done to help organize the potential of the hip-hop generation. With thousands of hip-hop generation activists recently coming together in Newark, NY for the first National Hip-Hop Political Convention, Stand and Deliver is indeed a timely book.

Mark Anthony Neal is the author of four books including the forthcoming NewBlackMan (February 2005). He is the co-editor (with Murray Forman) of That’s the Joint!: The Hip-Hop Studies Reader (2004). Neal is Associate Professor of Black Popular Culture in the Program in African and African-American Studies at Duke University.

Nonfiction
Author: Patrick Neate
Published: August 2004
Pages: 274
Publisher: Riverhead

What does a 30-something, British white guy have to say about the current state of affairs in hip-hop? More than you might think. Patrick Neate has been a self-described hip-hop head since his fascination with the music began in the ’80s, and his curiosity and love for the genre and culture led him on a journey around the world to see what was up.

Neate begins his cultural pilgrimage with a visit to New York, birthplace of hip-hop, where he finds an industry that keeps the genre under such tight control that smaller labels there are targeting primarily overseas markets. His journey to Tokyo leaves him questioning the legitimacy of hip-hop fandom there, as he witnesses the outrageously hip Japanese youth hungrily consuming African American culture as they strive for redefinition in a post-industrialized world. As he travels, the author subtly reworks his own understanding (and the reader’s) of what it means to be “real.” Perhaps that’s why he isn’t surprised anymore when a “Tokyo teenager greets him with ‘Word up, dog’” or when he meets a “white Afrikaaner rapping in a suit and tie.” Neate globe-trots and muses over the cultural communication that hip-hop is fostering, all the while taking copious notes on how that communication is being utilized. From its left-wing political role in France and Italy to its use in South Africa and Brazil as a postcolonial tool for reshaping notions of race and identity, hip-hop is changing the world.

By the end, Neate’s work coalesces into something far more important than a snapshot documentary of hip-hop today. Linking globalization, political struggle, race, identity, and alienation, the author constructs an entire worldview through the distinct lens of hip-hop. He offers us hip-hop as an international, cultural medium of the people; something a rapidly globalizing planet is in sore need of.

www.patrickneate.com

At
a time when simple, easy music sells, it is refreshing and imperative to hear
a challenge to the formulaic, mediocre and mass produced culture that is an
increasingly overwhelming aspect of our times. Ursula Rucker’s latest album
Silver or Lead moves us beyond the easy. With an eclectic blend of
beats, Rucker transports the listener from a neatly composed ensemble, to
a pulsating Latin rhythm, to the heartbeat of a drum reminiscent of a long
forgotten place. Dealing with heavy issues such as slavery, the rape of women,
living up to your potential and valuing our children, this Illadelph native
has hit us again with powerful words to contemplate as we rock to masterful
tracks.

Rucker’s career began with her debut at Philly’s Zanibar Blue in 1994. Collaborating
with numerous artists and producers, her first album Supa Sista has
received acclaim for its socially conscious themes and imaginative production.
A graduate of Temple University’s school of journalism, one cannot help but
hear Rucker’s training in her vivid tales of urban life. Rucker has been called
a hip-hop poetess and is widely known for her work with The Roots. If you
do not remember who she is, go back to Things Fall Apart and listen
to Rucker’s "Return to Innocence Lost". Her gripping lyrics will
show you why this woman is one of the hottest and most important artists of
our time.

Silver or Lead represents Rucker’s ingenuity and growth since Supa
Sista. It also demonstrates an uncompromising stance, and a critical
awareness of important social issues. If nothing else, it will inspire you
to think beyond the ordinary and rise above the difficulties that we face
every day.

www.ursula-rucker.com

Buy Silver or Lead from iTunes