Jeanius

Talent has never been Jean Grae’s problem. When she first emerged as What? What? in the mid ’90s, she starred on a pair of Natural Resource singles and became one of the names you search out on 12-inch singles. Her albums course with frustration and pride, outsized confidence and late-night doubts, the result of a decade in which every break seemed to go the wrong way. Jeanius was ready in 2004 but, mysteriously, didn’t get a proper release until 2008. Hip-hop has seen few songs as wrenching as “My Story,” Grae’s recollection of getting an abortion as a teenager. “Age is a motherfucker,” she snarls coolly on “Don’t Rush Me.” “Find myself staring at the little kids thinking I could beat ‘em like a stepmother.”