TWO Wellington gigs in less than a year? New York’s Jean Grae must be damn fond of our city. Or long plane trips.
RAPPER Jean Grae really wants to be a ninja.
“My ninja training’s going pretty good,” she says, before two loud beeps sound out from accidentally pushed phone buttons.
“Oh shit, clearly it’s not going as well as I thought,” she laughs. “Being an overweight ninja’s a bit useless; you don’t see a lot of them. I’m getting back into shape though.”
Grae is what we term a “classic”. She’s funny, sharp, and she doesn’t care what people think of her.
Her blog makes for laugh-out-loud funny reading, and the stories which will be included in her first book, due for release in late 2011, are “pretty much all are true”. Including the ninja story, prefaced with admissions of wearing Shurikens (the blade-like weapons Westerners often refer to as “ninja stars”) as necklaces that Grae says, “could have accidentally punctured my throat with a sudden death dance move” when she was younger.
It’s one of many outrageous tales, including the one about “Sexytron McSexface” who was so hot women covered him with invisible panties everywhere he went, and the one where she came home to break up with a boyfriend who had blocked the toilet with a smelly, unflushable mess and taken off on his own accord, leaving her to explain to the landlord.
Jean Grae is respected in the hip-hop world for her talent as much as her honesty.
“It’s about learning how to be unapologetic. If you’re not learning to really accept yourself as you get older, you should find another occupation because you’re not really progressing in life. It’s really important to accept your flaws and what you need to change, as well as your abilities and talents.”
What are the flaws Grae has had to face?
“I’m amazingly stubborn. I’ll go to the edge of the earth to prove I’m right. And I’m very competitive in everything, even when people don’t know they’re competing with me. I race people in the street sometimes, staring at them as I’m passing them. I’ll find a way to win in everything. I have to.”
What about things she’s good at?
“I like to be crafty, like MacGyver you know? ‘Hand me a battery, a walnut and some glue’,” she laughs, before telling of rescuing her keys from the deck of a hotel by wrapping a microphone cord around open handcuffs (don’t ask how she had them) and lowering it from the roof top.
Grae’s looking forward to returning to Wellington, which was her favourite stop on her last tour, for the food as well as the people. She’s even promised to perform a new song live for the first time ever, just for us.

Jean Grae with Pharoahe Monch, San Francisco Bathhouse, November 18.