Move over Rev. Run. Hip-Hop has another minister – Jean Grae. (Story continues under video interview)
The beloved rap mistress is now an ordained minister and is in the process of starting a church in her hometown of Brooklyn.
On starting a church, the veteran entertainer revealed everything to AllHipHop.com.
“Sunday Services – I’ll beginning my church. Its a non-denominational church. Just motivational. We kinda f##kin’ need that s##t right now,” she says quite frankly. “I am an ordained minister so its ok. Sunday Services is every other Sunday at Union Hall. Its gonna be pretty good.”
Jeanie explained exactly how this happened. An ordained minister that also marries folks? She does that, but sort of by accident.
“I became ordained like five years ago. Just being drunk and online. And being like ‘Oh you can do that?” she says while enjoying New York’s Comic Con. “And a good friend of mine asked if I could marry them and I said ‘I’m an ordained minister.’ And then I found out that New York has a bunch of laws that you have to be ordained by specific churches so I re-ordained myself with another church. And then had to go through the steps of becoming a wedding officiant. One you do that, you can do everything completely legally. I’ve been wanting to do that for a very long time, but I wanted to do it the right way.”
Jean Grae – in addition to marrying friends – remains a force in Hip-Hop so much that Marvel Entertainment called her, to her sheer delight.
“I did a song for Marvel (The Black Panther comic book). Has not expanded into all the things it can be, but it was a really nice invitations. Its one of my favorite invitations I’ve ever gotten.” she jokes. “If there was a way for me to reply to the email half way through him sending the email, I would have done that. Like ‘Hey, we’re from Marvel, we’re wondering if…’ and I’m like “YEAH.” And they’re like ‘Kill your family..’ And I’m like ‘Still yeah.’”
She says people need to dress up like super heroes for often, not just for big time comic conventions.
“I wish adults would do this more often. You don’t have to wait for a special event – its clothes. You can where whatever the f**k you want, she quips. We don’t have to wait for this (Comic Con). If you want to dress like The Riddler all the time, that’s cool.”
Lastly, she tells us that she will drop more rap projects!
“I’m sure I’ll put out a couple almost before the year is out. I’m doing a lot of writing but I’m focusing on bringing my talk show back to (Brooklyn’s) Union Hall – The Show Show.”
Even though Jean Grey is the name of a popular X-Men, Jean the rapper says people still don’t get it. “Please stop writing checks to Jean Grae. Its really hard at the bank,” she quipped. “Please stop.”
The annual Comic Con convention attracts hundreds of thousands of fans of all races, colors, creeds and all sorts of other weirdness. Go. Make it into Freaknic one day. And if you don’t know this reference, you should watch the video above. 🙂