JenRO

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On stage, JenRO looks like your average, aspiring hiphop star, with mic in hand, hat cocked to the side, baggy jeans and a hip hop attitude that is both cool and confident. A quick scratch below the surface reveals, however, that JenRO is anything but average. JenRo, from the Bay Area, CA is one of the smartest and most creative hip-hop artists to emerge in recent years. Far from a gimmick, JenRO has the skills and beats to blow away the typical stale male rappers. With lyrics about sexual identity, self-acceptance and hanging out with her home girls, JenRO might be one of the most honest MCs rapping today. JenRO has been quickly discovered by local media including her recent appearance on VH1’s show “My Coolest Years” and MTV’s LOGO.

What’s striking about JenRO, though, is her inclination to mix the different sides of her personality, making the seemingly disparate worlds she inhabits-queer, Latina, gangsta- all of a piece. She spits lyrics about everything from street hustles to hooking up with fly girls. Watching her take the stage in settings as far removed from each other as San Francisco Pride and San Quentin prison, you wonder how easy it is for a queer female artist to embrace the contradictions of her sexuality and her gangsta consciousness, and express them in a genre whose penchant for misogynistic and homophobic lyrics seems like a prohibition against women in general and queer women in particular. But JenRo enjoys pushing the limits of the medium, and she looks at the labels that others might use to describe her with a blend of ambivalence and disregard. Ultimately, she insists “I choose to say who I really am” and if her honesty means she can’t front like a mack daddy, she’s not worried- she’s got plenty more to say.

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