An in-depth study of EPMD’s Jane saga

I like to think that Jane somehow snuck in to the photoshoot for the ‘Golddigger’ single.

The Jane saga is the longest running series in rap, and also the most confusing. It’s almost as if Erick and Parrish have completely forgotten what happened in each previous episode, as there is very little continuity between each story. Perhaps there’s a deeper subtext that I’m simply incapable of fully grasping? Could the Jane series be a comment on the interchangability of modern relationships, gender fluidity and self-identity? Or is it just a mildly amusing idea that overstayed it’s welcome after the third installment?

‘Jane’

PMD is introduced to this Jane character in 1986, as a favour to E Double who needed to keep his date’s friend occupied so he can do his thing (more precisely – ‘duke her’). After knocking boots with Parrish less than a minute after meeting him, Jane leaves a note which demandeds that P be ‘better, bigger, stronger and much faster’ the next time they hook-up. The second request may be physically impossible without some kind of operation, but at least she was considerate enought to call Mr. Smith ‘the master.’ What’s unclear is why Erick is so insistant on dissing her at the start of the song when it was Parrish who let her ride him like a cowboy. Ayyyyooooo.

‘Jane II’

This time around Erick Sermon plays the role of the chick. Nullus. Turns out Parrish isn’t a fan of run-down pubs, preferring high-profile clubs to floss at during his time off (but only because he couln’t watch TV). He meets a fly shorty named Kris, who he doesn’t recognize as being the same girl from that faithful evening in 1986 because she now had longer hair, updated to a Whitney Houston style ‘do. The good news is that the Microphone Doctor was able to meet all of her earlier demands in terms of improving his moves between the sheets. The bad news, apparently, is that he suspects it might be Jane (no shit, Sherlock) and frantically calls E Double in the middle of the night while she’s asleep on his sofa and asks for him to rush over. Take this as a warning, ladies – if you go home with Parrish you will not be sharing the bed with him after he’s gotten his proverbial rocks off.

‘Jane 3’

Despite a promise that the events of ‘Jane II’ were to be continued in this next episode, the beginning of ‘Jane 3’ drops the other plot entirely in favor of a whole new story, which is pretty shitty for those of us who had been waiting for twelve months to have closure on what happened when Erick Sermon arrived at PMD’s apartment in the middle of the night. What was Parrish hoping to achieve with that frantic phone call, anyway? And why did he need E Double to confirm the identity of a woman whom he’d only briefly met one night before dumping her on P’s doorstep? Surely Parrish, the guy who apprently rocked her world pretty well but still had room for improvement, would be more qualified to figure out if Kris was in fact just Jane with a wig on?

Moving on, this installment focuses on a kid named Jay, who moves into the neighborhood and is immediately welcomed into the Hit Squad due to his impressive arsenal of gold chains and gats. While Jay had clearly spent a lot of time on his personal appearance and looking suitably ‘rough, rugged and raw’ to get Parrish’s approval, he made the mistake of inviting P over to his house. At this point, the whole charade quickly falls apart, as the interior is painted in hot pink and there are…’gasp!’… ‘feminine hygeine’ products all over the bathroom (the sight of which leave PMD totally disgusted for some reason) as well as bras and leotards draped over the curtains. Once P confronts Jay with these poorly hidden secrets, Jay attempts to stab P with a knife. After a brief scuffle, Jay’s wig falls off, ‘titties pop-out and there was ass everywhere.’

This time around, Parrish instantly recognizes Jane (who still has a fake mustache on), but in ‘Jane II’ all it took was a new haircut to fool him? P is carefully to remove the old fake soup strainer from Jane’s face before he makes sweet, sweet love to her, because otherwise it might have been weird, right? The question here is – what was Jane’s plan anyway? To lure Parrish into a house so that she could stab him to death? Or was her evil scheme to force PMD to give her another hot beef injection at knife point? If it was the latter, it all worked out pretty well for the ol’ girl, didn’t it?

‘Who Killed Jane’

So Jane has been found dead and PMD is the prime suspect. It’s unclear why the police would connect the two of them, since Jane has previously created two new secret identities for herself and the only person who could connect Parrish to Jane in any way is Erick Sermon. So this song would have us believe that the Green Eyed Bandit ratted out his best buddy? Considering how real life turned out for the guys with the whole failed robbery thing, which resulted in the group breaking up, maybe it wasn’t so far-fetched. The song itself is pretty shitty, as it’s just a back-and-forth between P and a Cracker-Ass Cracker cop, who he managed to shoot during his escape following a bathroom break.

‘Jane 5’

Despite having escaped from jail and shooting a crooked cop, PMD is released from jail when the body that was thought to be Jane is revealed to be the corpse of Valerie, a working girl from downtown who was found naked (and dead) with an EPMD record beside her. It’s unclear if the authorities are planning on opening a new investigation over the slaying of Valerie, but if they do I’d like to suggest that they might find Jane to be a person of interest in regards to this matter.

While Parrish is riding a Greyhound back home from the pokey, the bus gets hijacked by a couple of armed chicks who have decided that bus passangers are always flush with cash and jewels and are therefore the best targets for a robbery – as opposed to, say, a bank. Things go pear-shaped and Parrish is taken hostage after the bus crashes and led to the drop point, where a shiny new Range Rover is hidden under some leaves. The number-plate reveals that it’s Jane, who hands Parrish some of the stolen wallets before they drive off together.

So I guess Jane didn’t frame PMD for her murder after all and it was all an eloborate plan to rob some people who can only afford to ride the bus? Looking forward to seeing the motion picture adaption of this in theatres next summer.

‘Jane 6’

I’m not even going to attempt to make sense of this mess. It begins with the lads riding around in a car with two girls named Sammy and Lynn, ‘five dogging’ (do they mean ‘dogging’ as in public sex?) and smoking weed before the cops try to spoil the fun. A shoot-out ensures and one of the girls in the car hits PMD in the head with her gun for some reason, takes the wheel and drives somewhere to get at someone named Tommy Two-time. She grabs him and yells ‘Remember Jay from the schoolyard?!’ before she pulls out a gun. Jay – who the crew have suddenly noticed ‘sounds like a dude’ – then proceeds to bend the hostage over before lifting her dress and ‘pulls out a dick’ which shes uses to ‘lace him the ass.’ Jay/Jane accuses dude of raping him/her in the park, and then says ‘Peep the Crying Game!’ before shooting him dead.

There are so many unanswered questions about the events described here that it begger’s belief. When PMD first got into the car, one of the girls lifted her skirt so he could feel ‘the familio.’ Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that isn’t slang for the bozack, so at least one of the chicks in question was born a woman. The other one, Jane (who was calling therself Sammy or Lynn) has either had a sex change and now has fully functioning junk or is equipt with a strap-on phallus of some description. How neither PMD nor Erick noticed this while fooling around with the gals in the backseat is odd to say the least. It’s also unclear whether or not Tommy Two-time sexually assaulted Jay/Jane while he/she were a man or a woman, although I guess that hardly matters. Or was Jane the new identity of this Jay kid who decided to become a woman? If that’s the case, PMD’s character has been had sex with a man at least three times over the course of these adventures.

‘Jane’ aka ‘Jane 7’

I guess this is a reboot of some kind since there we’re back to just ‘Jane’ again? Here the fellas meet Jane again and they both take her to the bathroom for a blowski (so is Jane back to being a woman again or are EPMD just ignoring the fact that they saw her rape a dude with her dong before murdering him in the street in ‘Jane 6’?), before warning everybody about the dangers of skanless gold diggers. ‘No games, no dames – P learnt his lesson from Jane.’ This is confusing, since not once in the Jane series did Jane ever actually ask for any cash or gifts.

Quite the opposite, in ‘Jane II’ she has a sweet ride that her ex-husband gave her; while in ‘Jane 3’ the young lady has a mansion decked-out in hot pink, complete with a hot tub, basketball court and guard dogs; and in ‘Jane 5’ she hands Parrish a bunch of stolen wallets and gives him a lift in her Range Rover. Hardly a money-grabbing hussey based on these past events, is she? In fact, One could argue that Jane is actually a real go-getter and completely self-sufficient. If only some enterprising female rapper could have adopted the Jane persona for herself and made a Roxanne style answer record…