Arguably, it would be correct to point out Jean Grae as Africa’s most accomplished export to the bastion of hip hop. Born in South Africa as Tsidi Ibrahim, her budding talent germinated and flourished in the rap mecca of\u00a0 New York city where she was raised. This daughter of South African jazz musician Abdullah Ibrahim (Dollar Brand) didn’t hone her skills in the elite\u00a0Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music and Performing Arts in Manhattan where she majored in vocal performance; her sublime lyrical skills have been cultivated by experience and talent that sought creative expression from 1996 until now.<\/p>\n
Jean Grae’s rapping ability is such that she is NOT your quintessential female emcee but a rhyming veteran that can spit rings around most of the contemporary male rappers today. If she is not the best femcee there is, she’s within spitting distance of that title. Watch Jean Grae here<\/a>.<\/p>\n The notion of the African femcee is inextricably linked to the equally important but totally separate concept of the African woman. The world has changed dramatically since the days of Queen Latifah and MC Lyte and the femcee is on rap’s endangered species list. However this dearth of capable female rappers or universally acknowledged femcees in the mold of Latifah et al was further impacted by the decline in the commercial viability of rap music in the United States in 2005. By 2006 no rap albums were among the top ten sellers in 2006.<\/p>\n This same period coincided with the rapid development of indigenous African hip hop since the same disaffection with the lyrical content and uber materialistic philosophy of hip hop spread through African suburbs and ghettos like it was a pathogen designed by the Umbrella Corp and codenamed\u00a0 the ‘souljahboykillmenow-X1’ . Forget\u00a0 Milla Jovovich, rap needed an intervention-a queen bee to beam down from the mother ship to the Motherland. If only…<\/p>\n ‘L’art pour l’art’ or Art for arts sake works pretty well if you are French or living in one of the so called socialist paradises of Europe. In reality, in Africa time is money, studio sessions\/money, beat makers\/money, producer\/money, even the power supply is a constant variables that has an effect on your ability to climb to the top of the food chain. So if the odds are that daunting for the guys, what about the ladies?\u00a0 This is where the concept of the African woman rears it’s pretty little head. Neal Postman<\/strong> wrote in his book ‘Amusing ourselves to death’<\/strong> his belief : that the attention span of humans is decreasing as modern technology, especially television, increases<\/em>.<\/p>\n The African woman is almost always historically ignored anyway and her dreams, hopes and aspirations are a mystery not only to her sons and fathers and lovers but also to the world itself. Her tale is spun by others as part of a universal tale of feminine dis-empowerment that only manages to capture the attention of a few while to the majority, it’s just so much ‘White noise<\/em>‘ (pun intended).<\/p>\n