Attack of the Attacking Things

Brooklyn veteran artist Jean Grae likes to call herself a polymath, and in the twenty-plus years since she dropped her first solo album she’s explored every venture from a DIY web sitcom (“Life With Jeannie”) to a series of advice-column records (That’s Not How You Do That) to an actual secular religious organization (The Church of the Infinite You). If that feels like a lot of different angles for a hip-hop artist to take on, keep in mind that on her debut Attack of the Attacking Things, Jean was already covering pretty much every facet a hip-hop artist could embody, and absolutely killed it. The intentional comedic vagueness of the title is a deliberate feint; the vivid detail of Jean’s verses draws out the specificity in relatable familiarity until her punchlines pop and her stories haunt. And that gives her the ability to be equally compelling as both a comedic shit-talker cutting down doubters, and a vulnerable, heart-on-sleeve agonist in confessional mode. There are some real stunning moments in that latter territory, the kinds of deep stares into the void you didn’t often get from early ’00s MCs in either the underground or the mainstream — the blend of depressed anguish and determined resolve to make her parents proud on “Live 4 U,” “Lovesong” and its breathless relaying of a horribly draining doomed relationship, the incredible rawness of “God’s Gift” and its ruthless dissection of the misogynist ego from the perspective of a loathsome player. But “Get It” proves that she can hype up an upbeat cookout anthem, “Block Party” that she can agitate for liberation, and “Thank Ya” that she can roast anyone within a five-mile radius.