With a talent level that's often compared to Lauryn Hill's, you'd expect to see or hear more about this razor tongued lyricist, unfortunately that's not the case, at least not yet. Jean Grae who's real name is Tsidi Ibrahim was born in South Africa but moved to New York City soon after. Raised by parents that were jazz musicians, (her mom a singer and dad a pianist) Jean was exposed to and grew fond of music at a very early age. she also loved the English language and was taught to read at the age of three by her mother who was also a school teacher. Performing arts were also a part of Jean's childhood as she became at the age of thirteen the youngest person in Alvin Ailey's Second Company.

After Attending the High School of performing Arts as a vocal major and NYU as a Music Business Major Jean quickly became disenchanted and left two months after enrolling. Hanging out with the west village collection of poets, producers and emcees that produced Mos Def and Talib Kweli. Jean attended many cyphers and shows choosing to pass along tapes of beats she produced instead of revealing that she could rhyme. Eventually she came out of her shell and formed a group named Ground Zero, the group didn't last long and Jean soon joined Natural Resources in the mid 90's. That pairing didn't last long either and after producing several 12's, including the underground hip-hop classic Negro League Baseball citing creative differences the group split. Jean decided to continue on solo after being asked to appear on a number of songs with various artist.

In the summer of 2002, Jean released her debut album Attack Of The Attacking Things on Third Earth Music an underground classic, that quickly got the attention Babygrande Records where she released two follow up albums, The Bootleg Of The Bootleg EP and more recently the 2004 release This Week.

Where is Jean now? She recently left Babygrande after having her contract bought by Talib Kweli and Corey Smyth's Blacksmith Label.
With a new project in the works and a bigger promotion budget, it shouldn't be long before everybody knows who Jean Grae is.