Until those industry suckas get it right, Jean Grae is gonna keep pushing LPs and pushing the limits of what exactly classifies a “female MC.” The underground rap prodigy has been gradually leading up to her next album by releasing numerous mixtapes—her latest, Hurricane Jean: The Jeanius Strikes Again, a compilation featuring a horde of guest MCs cosigning Grae’s lyrical capabilities.

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.”

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.

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