BOOK REVIEW | JEAN GRAE ‘IN MY REMAINING YEARS’ REDEFINES WHAT A MEMOIR CAN BE

By Micky Roots • On Reviews ,

Pho­to­graphy by Mindy Tucker

‘In My Remain­ing Years’ Is the Gift We Didn’t Know We Were Still Allowed to Receive. Jean Grae left rap, but she nev­er left us. And now she’s writ­ten a book that reminds us why we needed her so badly in the first place.

Before I dive in, let me tell you some­thing. The first thing I ever wrote — or at least the first thing I ever grandly declared to the uni­verse with the trem­bling auda­city of a new “writer” — was a review of Jean Grae’s Gotham Down — Cycle 1. And yes, call­ing myself “a writer” at the time was laugh­able. Pre­ten­tious. Prob­ably typed in Cour­i­er New while sip­ping green tea and listen­ing to ambi­ent rain sounds on You­Tube. But hey, we’ve all got to start some­where — and if you’re going to start any­where, let it be the work of one of the most bril­liant, under-cel­eb­rated, bar-dis­mant­ling, genre-tran­scend­ing minds hip hop has ever known. Even if doing so is like try­ing to sketch the Sis­tine Chapel with a crayon.

So, yes. Jean Grae will always have a spe­cial place in my heart. And when she stepped away from rap’s front­lines, it felt like the kind of cul­tur­al loss you don’t real­ise has happened until you wake up and noth­ing sounds quite as sharp anymore.
But here’s the thing: she nev­er stopped cre­at­ing. While we were busy griev­ing the emcee, Jean Grae was out here mak­ing entire worlds. Writ­ing, dir­ect­ing, per­form­ing theatre, build­ing mul­ti­me­dia events, and cas­u­ally being fun­ni­er than most comedi­ans alive. Always three cre­at­ive life­times ahead, quietly reject­ing every box we tried to place her in.

And now comes In My Remain­ing Years. A book. A mir­acle. A multi-dimen­sion­al stream of con­scious­ness dressed as a mem­oir, dipped in sci-fi, and rolled in heart­break, humour, and exist­en­tial funk. For someone with ADHD (hi, yes), actu­ally read­ing a book is a small mir­acle in itself. But thank the cre­at­ive gods for the audiobook, which isn’t just a read­ing — it’s a per­form­ance. A jour­ney. A son­ic con­stel­la­tion of words, sighs, whis­pers, punches, and per­fectly placed silence. If this doesn’t get nom­in­ated for a Spoken Word Grammy, we march at dawn. (Though, let’s be hon­est — Jean prob­ably wouldn’t care about a Grammy. Would she? Maybe? I don’t know)

The book itself? Sear­ing. Sur­real. Stu­pidly smart. There are Mar­vel ref­er­ences dropped with zero fan­fare, like they’re less pop cul­ture namechecks and more spir­itu­al sign­posts. Jean doesn’t just nod to the mul­ti­verse — she lives in it. She’s Dead­pool with a degree in meta­phys­ics. Doc­tor Strange with sharp­er syn­tax. The way she writes about iden­tity, love, grief, sur­viv­al, rage — it’s not just hon­est, it’s agon­isingly human. It’s raw but nev­er self-indul­gent, con­fes­sion­al without ever ask­ing for pity.
She describes her­self as “gender tran­scend­ent­al” — the most Jean thing ima­gin­able — a phrase that sounds like it was coined by both Kierkegaard and your weirdly pro­found group chat. But bey­ond the term is a deep­er truth: Jean has always exis­ted out­side of bin­ar­ies. Not just in gender or genre, but in tone. In emo­tion. In time. She’ll give you an entire para­graph about spir­itu­al anni­hil­a­tion, then under­cut it with a joke so bone-dry it should be served with a whis­key chaser.

And here’s the kick­er: you don’t need to “relate” to any of it to feel seen by all of it. There were moments in this book where I had no cul­tur­al or per­son­al frame of ref­er­ence for what Jean was talk­ing about — and still, I was abso­lutely wrecked. That’s what hap­pens when someone tells their truth, not just a truth. There is no algorithm for that kind of writ­ing. No carou­sel post. No quote-tweet aes­thet­ic. Just real, unfiltered, ter­ri­fy­ing hon­esty — the kind that’s prac­tic­ally extinct in the influ­en­cer eco­nomy of “relat­able content.”

Read­ing — or more accur­ately, exper­i­en­cing — this book feels like Jean’s most power­ful act yet. She’s not just telling us who she is. She’s show­ing us what it means to be unapo­lo­get­ic­ally com­plex in a cul­ture that wants every­one easy to mar­ket and even easi­er to for­get. The vul­ner­ab­il­ity is sur­gic­al. The humour is gal­lows-level. The fantasy ele­ments — weird, wild, time-travel-adja­cent — some­how don’t detach you from the emo­tion; they height­en it. It’s like Octavia But­ler got drunk with Han­nah Gadsby and made a scrap­book about the apo­ca­lypse, except make it tender.

And while we’re here: give Jean Grae her long over­due flowers, imme­di­ately. For the music. For the words. For the entire can­on of being Jean Grae. There has nev­er been — and likely nev­er will be — anoth­er artist who can dance between worlds with this much grace, rage, eleg­ance and bloody-minded wit.

So yes, I once “became a writer” by review­ing Jean’s music. But it feels laugh­able now, writ­ing about one of the greatest writers of a gen­er­a­tion — someone whose pen bleeds truth in iambic foot­notes, who could anni­hil­ate a soul in four syl­lables and heal it again in five.

In My Remain­ing Years is a gift— artist­ic, son­ic, spir­itu­al — we’ll look back at this book as a time cap­sule of what it meant to be truly awake, alive, and unmar­ket­ably authen­t­ic in the age of algorithmic rot.

So if you’re listen­ing, read­ing, feeling:
Pro­tect Mx. Jean Grae. AT ALL COSTS.

In My Remain­ing Years is Out Now.

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Micky Roots

Micky roots is one of the edit­ors of I am hip hop magazine, a pure hip hop head and visu­al artist he brings his strong know­ledge of hip hop, social con­scious­ness & polit­ic­al con­cern to No Bounds.

About Micky Roots

Micky roots is one of the editors of I am hip hop magazine, a pure hip hop head and visual artist he brings his strong knowledge of hip hop, social consciousness & political concern to No Bounds.