New York University drop-out-rapper Jean Grae, and now writer, director, producer and star of the sitcom Life With Jeannie mise well have bloody scalps dangling around her neck. The show is surprisingly pretty funny, something you’d expect on Adult Swim. It’s exactly what the title suggests, except it’s a rare take on young black adults (Jeannie and friends) talking shit and getting all existential. You can sorta tell she might not act that different if the camera wasn’t pointed at her and her homies. Company Flow member DJ Mr. Len makes a cameo in the part two of episode one. Check Jean’s contributions to Len’s 2001 Pity the Fool: Experiments in therapy behind the mask of music while handing out dummy smacks. She’s got two jams on there, but “Taco Day” is stupid.
In the last decade, she’s worked her ass off, leaped over a plague of career setbacks in a single bound, and recently lost her mother (legendary Jazz singer Bea Benjamin) last August. Besides her witty tweets, here and here, last year she released Gotham Down, a trilogy album, on her Bandcamp website. The way she did it was a fresh approach to putting out music at a time when the music industry is murky and record labels are either predatory (majors) or respectable tastemakers (indies) .
In one month she let go cycle 1:Love In Infinity (Lo-Fi), cycle II: LEVIATHAN and cycle 3: The Artemis Epoch. The three EP’s were later combined and rereleased as Gotham Down. The album series is the continuation of a story she started on her 2003 The Bootleg of the Bootleg EP, a personal favorite.
Peep the first episode of her sitcom below.
