''This Week'' is the second studio album by American rapper

Jean Grae Tsidi Ibrahim (born November 26, 1976), known professionally as Jean Grae, is a multidisciplinary artist and writer. She emerged in New York City's underground hip-hop scene and developed an international following. Throughout her music career, ...

. It was released on September 21, 2004, via

Babygrande Records Babygrande Records is an American independent record label based in New York City, founded by Chuck Wilson. Babygrande is distributed by The Orchard and represented by the Creative Artists Agency in Hollywood. History Babygrande Records wa ...

. Recording sessions took place at The Cutting Room Studios in New York, at The Bar Upstairs, at The Brooklyn Academy, at Dojo, at The BK Firehouse and at The Fyre Dept.

Production Production may refer to: Economics and business * Production (economics) * Production, the act of manufacturing goods * Production, in the outline of industrial organization, the act of making products (goods and services) * Production as a stat ...

was handled by

9th Wonder Patrick Denard Douthit (born January 15, 1975),
better known as 9th Wonder, is an American record producer, record ...

, Belief, J. Cardim, LT Moe,

Midi Mafia The MIDI Mafia is a music production duo consisting of American Bruce Waynne (born Waynne Nugent) from Brooklyn, New York and Canadian Dirty Swift (born Kevin Risto) from Ottawa, Ontario. Together as Midi Mafia since 2003, they are most notable ...

, Shan Boogs, Sid Roams, Will Tell and Adam Deitch, with Chuck Wilson and Ruddy Rock serving as executive producers. It features

guest appearance The term guest appearance generally denotes the appearance of a guest in an artistic or pop-culture setting. The guests themselves (referred to as guest artists, featured artists, guest stars, or guest fighters, depending on context), are disting ...

s from Block McCloud, Destruction, Ruddy Rock, Sinclair, The Genies and Tracey Moore.

Critical reception

''This Week'' was met with generally favourable reviews from

music critics Music journalism (or music criticism) is media criticism and reporting about music topics, including popular music, classical music, and traditional music. Journalists began writing about music in the eighteenth century, providing commentary on ...

. At

Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...

, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received an

average In colloquial, ordinary language, an average is a single number or value that best represents a set of data. The type of average taken as most typically representative of a list of numbers is the arithmetic mean the sum of the numbers divided by ...

score of 79, based on thirteen reviews. Julianne Shepherd of ''

Spin Spin or spinning most often refers to: * Spin (physics) or particle spin, a fundamental property of elementary particles * Spin quantum number, a number which defines the value of a particle's spin * Spinning (textiles), the creation of yarn or thr ...

'' noted the rapper's vocal abilities, saying: "she finally showcases a flow as strong as her vitriol".

Robert Christgau Robert Thomas Christgau ( ; born April 18, 1942) is an American music journalist and essayist. Among the most influential music critics, he began his career in the late 1960s as one of the earliest professional rock critics and later became a ...

of ''

The Village Voice ''The Village Voice'' is an American news and culture publication based in Greenwich Village, New York City, known for being the country's first Alternative newspaper, alternative newsweekly. Founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf (publisher), Dan Wolf, ...

'' wrote: "Grae can rhyme, and if she had a male larynx and a production budget, her hype men, chipmunk soul, minor-key piano hooks, and "I wanna rock a fella so bad" might stand underground on its head". Nin Chan of RapReviews wrote: "while I don't feel this to be anywhere near the seminal work that I feel she is utterly capable of, this is still essential listening from a highly relevant emcee".

Jamin Warren Jamin Warren (born 1983) is co-founder and chief executive of Kill Screen, a video game arts and culture company that ''The New Yorker'' called "the McSweeney's of interactive media". He was formerly the host of the PBS webseries Game/Show (2013 ...

of ''

Pitchfork A pitchfork or hay fork is an agricultural tool used to pitch loose material, such as hay, straw, manure, or leaves. It has a long handle and usually two to five thin tines designed to efficiently move such materials. The term is also applie ...

'' resumed: "while no track dips below the quality line, the album lacks thematic fluidity and spark". Peter Hepburn of

Cokemachineglow ''Cokemachineglow'' was a Canadian webzine dedicated mainly to music criticism, though it also featured articles about local music scenes. It was founded in 2002 and closed down permanently at the end of 2015. In 2006, it was described as one of ...

concluded: "in the end, ''This Week'' suffers largely from the hype---there's no way this album could be as good as it was supposed to be".

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All-Music Guide and AMG) is an American online database, online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on Musical artist, musicians and Mus ...

's Andy Kellman stated: "Jean Grae continues to improve in every respect, but the negative aspect is that too many of the beats bleed into one another".

Track listing

Charts

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:This Week (Album) 2004 albums Jean Grae albums Albums produced by LT Moe Babygrande Records albums Albums produced by 9th Wonder Albums produced by Midi Mafia