Jade Scorpion

As getting-discovered stories go, Ms. Jade’s is among the least probable. Granted, her methods weren’t quite as wild as Wes Scantlin’s (use fake backstage pass to meet Fred Durst, slip Puddle of Mudd demo to big Bizkit). Nor did she have to endure experiences that average people would find distasteful (attending a Limp Bizkit concert, ditching the rest of your band to front a squad of Durst’s hired honchos). Rather, Jade’s ascent stems from a simple business meeting, arranged by her management, with Elektra’s Jay Brown. After Jade showcased a few freestyle flows, Brown unexpectedly invited the hip-hop hopeful upstairs to meet Missy Elliott. Jade delivered a repeat performance, and Elliott requested yet another encore — this time into a speaker phone, for superproducer Timbaland. Little wonder that on “Dream,” a track from her forthcoming album Girl Interrupted, Jade admits she Linked up with Timbaland/But it was pure luck.

That’s not to say that Jade (22-year-old Chevon Young) is a mere lucky star, an overnight success who parlayed a chance meeting into a position that her skills don’t merit. Growing up in Nicetown, a misleadingly titled section of Philadelphia, Jade battled fierce MCs and hostile crowds. The Philly faithful pillories everyone from Santa Claus to Kobe Bryant, and entertainers don’t have it any easier. “You have to do something really extraordinary to get them to like you,” Jade says. “They don’t just go for anything.”

Jade prepared for her stiff competition and the maddened crowds by jotting rhymes constantly in her notebooks and reciting them without accompaniment. Hairstyling by day and freestyling by night, she made up faces at Gordon Phillips Beauty School in downtown Philly, then made up rhymes that dressed down rival MCs. I hate a fake-brag bitch/A switch-tag bitch, Jade spat during “The Bitch Rap,” a bring-the-house-down disfest. She evolved into a lyrically gifted version of fellow Philly native Eve, a self-proclaimed wolf in a dress compared with that pit bull in a skirt.

After graduating from Gordon Phillips, Jade was free to travel, entering battles far from her established territory. “Whenever there was something popping, in any city, I would go there,” she recalls. “It was just silly.”

Just as Eminem used to roast any contender who fell into the trap of making an issue out of my facial tissue, Jade smoked anyone who doubted ladies could finish first. “I used it to my advantage,” she says of her status as a female MC at these mostly male fight clubs. “I’d get really cocky with them.”

At this point, Jade started rapping to backing tracks for the first time, mostly the instrumentals found on hip-hop singles. After getting comfortable rhyming over beats, she laid down a few tracks with Philly-based producer Staxx, burning the demo that she’d take with her to that fateful meeting with Elektra’s Brown.

A week after meeting Elliott and Timbaland, Jade dropped a cameo on “Slap! Slap! Slap!,” a tune that would appear on Elliott’s 2001 release Miss E … So Addictive. Later, she appeared on Timbaland & Magoo’s album cut “In Time” and the remixes of Bubba Sparxxx’s smash “Ugly” and Nelly Furtado’s radio jam “Turn off the Light.” After years of hearing her voice silhouetted over dead air, Jade suddenly had to adapt to Timbaland’s polyrhythmic world-beatdowns.

Working with Timbaland and Girl Interrupted‘s other producers, the Beat Brokerz, flipped Jade’s creative process — now, she receives the beats first and writes rhymes to fit the musical mood. “The beats tell you what type of song it is,” she says.

The backdrops apparently dictated an eclectic album. “Feel the Girl,” the album’s first single and already a club crasher on the East Coast, pairs a typically intricate, multihued Timbaland track with Jade’s laid-back, mellow delivery. This Philly chick ain’t with the silly shit, she rhymes, clarifying that her easygoing vibe doesn’t mean she’s soft. At other times, Jade gets dramatic, rugged and raw, such as on the streetwise “She’s a Gangsta” and the murderous “Dream,” which packs a surprise ending telegraphed by its title. Even at her roughest, though, Jade isn’t cartoonishly thuggish or profoundly profane.

“None of my people ever gave me any pressure or told me I should be sexier,” Jade says. “I’m so strong with my beliefs. This is me, take it or leave it.” She is to sexually explicit hip-hop what tourmate Nelly Furtado is to midriff-pop — a more modest but equally enjoyable alternative. And though she doesn’t kick bedroom rhymes, lust-struck fans still have high hopes. During her first tour experience (with Ludacris, earlier this year), Jade was more amazed by the reception backstage than by the cheers she inspired while onstage. “So many groupies,” she says with a laugh.

After-show adoration is an issue with which male performers have been dealing for decades, though many of them likely handle it much differently from how Jade did. Still, her impromptu fan club offers further proof that rappers of both sexes confront the same situations and reap the same rewards. “It’s still an issue,” Jade says of being a female MC. “But I’m gonna change that.”