Plug 4

Prince Paul: Mother's Day
from It Takes A Nation Of Suckers To Let Us In (1991)

Prince Paul: Mood For Love
from A Prince Among Thieves (Tommy Boy 1999)

Prince Paul: Beautifully Absurd (Featuring Ellington Felton And K'Alyn On Guitar).mp3
from Politics Of The Business (Razor & Tie 2003)

Prince Paul: Here Come The Dix
from The Art Of Picking Up Women (Smacks 2005)


Other, much better and more frequently updated, blogs have touched on the genius of Prince Paul (like Can I Bring My Gat, Cocaine Blunts and The Rap Nerd just to name a few) and since he just released a new album I thought I would throw my proverbial hat in the ring and run down a couple of my favorite tracks from some of his albums.

The first track is from Prince Pauls Resident Alien album that never saw the light of day because of label politickin. However if you ever listen to the album you can understand why it was never released. Initially given an imprint label and a distribution deal with Def Jam with the notion that Paul would craft his beats for Def Jam artists, he created the album It Takes A Nation Of Suckers To Let Us In and in true Prince Paul fashion the album was devoid of any material suitable for singles. Although one 12" was released the album on the whole sounds more like a couple of guys fucking around in a basement (for any other artist, this would mean an undigestable album but for Prince Paul the album carries a unique irreverance). Take for example the song Mothers Day. Essentially a five minute Yo Mama joke, territory that's been treaded by a lot of rappers before, the conceit of this song is just how bad the jokes are and the token white guy misunderstanding the whole situation makes the song even more hilarious.

The second track is from his critically acclaimed concept album A Prince Among Thieves. Prince Paul takes the James Moody classic, Moody's Mood For Love, and showers it with a really bad moog organ and a syruppy thick bassline and turns the song into an ultra-cheese lounge fest that actually fits the mood of the song just as well as, if not better than, most jazz interpretations. The best part of the song, besides Don Newkirks vocoder voice, is the Breezely Brewin line "Your love is real good honey, it even feels better cause I didn't pay money."

Beautifully Absurd is from an album that was unjustifiably overlooked. Politics of the Business was released four years after his last abum and a lot of critics at the time were either looking for more of the same or they wanted Prince Paul to make a quantum leap beyond what was a classic album neither of which happened on this album. The production on this song is classic Prince Paul, take a melodic sample, sparsely layer it, in this case with just drums, bass and a bit of scratching, and let the artist go. While not indicative of the album as a whole, Beautifully Absurd is a definite banger.

The last track of the post is from his new album The Art Of Picking Up Women and in it Prince Paul goes back to the irreverence of the Resident Alien days. Taking the premise that while beat digging in a Parisian flea market Prince Paul discovered the rarest of rares for beat diggers, a forgotten 60's group that has evaded collecters, namely The Dix (and yes the less than subtle double entendre of the album title and group name play heavily into the song). Sounding less like a 60's doo wop group and more like a mash up of Pauls Stetsasonic beats and some ridiculous garage funk band, the song is just the tip of the iceberg on this album. One of the funnier moments of the album is a spot on impression of The Dix doing a Wu-Tang style interview. Packed with a documentary DVD titled "The Rise and Fall of The Dix" this has to be one of the highlights in the 2005 year of Hip-Hop.

Before I end this post I have to give a big thanks to one of the better audioblogs out there Honey, Where You Been So Long for their kind shout-out and assesment. Not only have they been holding it down with some of the best blues artists you may never have heard of, they compile some of the most thorough discographies of a song that you will ever have the pleasure to peruse. You do yourself a great disservice if you don't visit their site and/or bookmark it immediately, especially since they're doing a Nina Simone tribute this week.