Jean Grae has been taking her time with her upcoming album Cake or Death, but she promises it’ll be worth the wait. Speaking with Morburn Music’s Shane Scully, the Blacksmith rapper explained why she decided to slow it down with her pending release in an effort to make it more musical.
“Sometimes, good things take time, and doing projects like Jeanius in four days, normally, really just banging shit out very quickly, I wanted to take time with this project,” she said. “Although it’s an album that’s gone through a lot of changes along the way, I’m happy I saved it and didn’t have to rush anything. And sometimes, you just have to go live life so you can have more shit to write about.”
On the production end, Jean arranged much of the music herself, incorporating live instruments such as horns and strings.
“Production for this album was very interesting because there’s so much music on it. Everybody hates me because there are 245 tracks on a song – I’m not exaggerating – and there are strings and horns and fucking tympanis,” she said. “So yeah, there’s a lot of original music that’s straight live musicians and musically arranged by me. In that sense, this is the first album that I can say I musically produced.”
Aside from Cake or Death, Grae will also self-publish a book next month, as well as film a show in a “mockumentary” style.
“The book is actually going to be self-published and first released for all of the Kindles and eBook readers. That should be next month, and then we’re starting to film it as a show, because my life is absolutely ridiculous,” she explained. “You can’t make that shit up. It’s sort of going to integrate Curb Your Enthusiasm, Louie kind of way. In a mockumentary sort of way, and recreating all of these moments.”
Hmmm… Nobody gives a shit about Jean’s rapping but it’s nice to hear her getting more musically ambitious. Her parents, by the way, were BRILLIANT musicians…
Prodigy– Budd Johnson’s grandson– still has best hip-hop jazz pedigree but Jean is second.
And while sexism sucks, it’s NOT the reason Jean is boring and/or annoying on the mic. Her patron, Talib, is even fucking worse! It’s ilke she dumbs shit down for rap but since nobody cares anyway, why not the REAL Jean Grae?
Wiggle wiggle wiggle.
DUMBS IT DOWN? do you even listen to her music? her rap skills are top notch, go bump “uh oh” with talib kweli.. she sounds far from boring.. besides nicki minaj is who you go to if you want meaningless rap but doesn “sound boring”
I won’t say nobody gives a crap about her. I do agree with the boring/annoying statment only to a small degree. I think it’s the production that fails her. I thought Jeanius was cool…but it’s like she needs more energy with her production. Not some pop ass energy but the Alchemist would be tailor made for her. Alchemist, Havoc, Statik Seletah, Preem… Pete Rock even. It’s all her production. Lyrically…she can bring the house down.
Hopefully this new musical involvement and stance really escalates her to where she should belong. She’s dope, cool, and cute as ever.
she aint trying to make ill fuck you rap she dope
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greatest female mc of all time, hands down. Dope album after dope album. I’m sure this new joint will be very much worth the wait.