The Originator

I read an article the other day concerning Puff Daddy’s latest project, a concept album called Last Train to Paris which will tell a love story with an accompanying film dropping later this year. No word yet on if Kanye West is planning on biting the general aesthetic to make a far superior album, but one thing we can know ahead of time is it will in no way shape or form be able to fuck with what is arguably Hip Hop’s greatest concept record, (unless we’re counting 6 Feet Deep) former Stetasonic member “Prince” Paul Huston’s A Prince Among Thieves. The album is a Greek tragedy, a spoof of the tired hood film genre, a satire of the industry circa 1999, a great record that could only have come from Rap’s smartest weirdo. Paul brought together an all star roster of Golden Age legends including Chubb Rock, De La Soul, Big Daddy Kane, Biz Markie, Sadat X and Kool Keith for his movie on wax. The album came two years after his forgotten mind fuck of an instrumental LP Psychoanalysis. Here, perhaps because of the already experimental format and need for the songs to convey information conforming to the narrative Paul’s beats are as straightforward and uncluttered as his production gets. And it works. The ensemble cast is consistently great, De La Soul’s turn as crackheads with a gift for extended metaphor, Everlast as a crooked cop and Chubb Rock playing mob boss over a Biz Markie beat box are standouts but just barely as literally everyone brings it. The story is about an aspiring rapper named Tariq (The Juggaknots' Breezly Brewin) who needs to hustle up 1,000$ in a week to cut a demo he wants to pass on to the Rza. Paul brings the eternal chip on his shoulder to the project, the album is filled referential nostalgia in the production and subtle barbs at the gangster posturing he’s railed against throughout his career. Only here, with his critique framed as passing shots in the course of a story I find them more palatable then outright crying as we’ve seen on other projects like his mad, dense opus Buhloone Mindstate. The record ends on a dark note with the well intentioned protagonist getting his deal and life taken by his supposed friend “True”. Paul described Prince Among Thieves as a depression record and you can tell his stance on music, and perhaps life in general wasn’t particularly rosy. Paul was questioning his relevance at the time and asking himself whether his career had really made an impact on the music he had loved and you can sense these issues of dissatisfaction, this disappoint and disdain in the general tone of the album. Chris Rock, who revisited his crackhead Pookie on the album and worked with Paul before on his brilliant Roll With the New owns the film rights to A Prince Among Thieves. I hope before remaking another French New Wave movie as a glorified Tyler Perry sex comedy he takes a shot at this Hip Hopera that can’t even be called ahead of its time, because ten years later there’s still no one who’s attempted anything like it.

*Here's a bonus jam, the first single off Paul's new project with Souls of Mischief. Paul will be producing the entire album using nothing but late 80s technology. (SP-12, ASR, MPC, DAT) If this song is an indication of what's in store we may have another classic on our hands.

Things Come Alive- A Personification Playlist

Personification is a technique that has given hip hop some of its most inventive, intelligent songs. (Wikipedia: “a figure of speech that gives an inanimate object or abstract idea human traits and qualities, such as emotions, desires, sensations, physical gestures and speech.”) You could damn near make an entire outstanding mixtape out of songs that took aspects of the urban experience and literally gave them a voice, so that is precisely what I have put together for you, the customer. Enjoy.

1. Common Sense- I Used to Love H.E.R.: From what I could find and recall, Personification Rap was introduced in 1994 through a trio of brilliant, classic songs. Common’s “I Used to love H.E.R.” (The strained acronym stands for Hip Hop in its Essence and Real) off Resurrection was the most famous, imagining Hip Hop as a woman gone astray. The song was a hit single that introduced Common into the collective national consciousness and started a beef with West Coast gangsta rapper Ice Cube. This song has inspired several shitty retreads of the conceit that aren’t worth posting here, not to mention the film Brown Sugar, the worst thing ever made in relation to Hip Hop.

2. Jeru The Damaja- Can’t Stop the Prophet: East New York’s own superhero the Prophet chronicles his battles with former Oh Word interviewee Ignorance, as he runs around New York spreading mayhem. The Sun Rises in the East highlight ends on a dark note, with a climactic showdown at the Brooklyn Public Library. The Prophet walks into a trap, and we fade out to the sound of Ignorance’s gleeful, nihilistic laughter. Some men just want to watch the world burn.

3. Organized Konfusion- Stray Bullet: This song off Prince Po and Pharoah Monch’s 94 classic Stress: The Extinction Agenda is “I Used to Love H.E.R.”s gangster, less famous cousin. But as far as Personification Rap is concerned, “Stray Bullet” was more influential. The beat sounds familiar because it samples Donald Byrd’s “Wind Parade”, (with glimpses of “Nautilus”) which was also used by Black Moon to make “Buck ‘em Down”, a pretty good song you may have heard before. Told from the point of view of a bullet, the song would go on to inspire two better known hip hop gunplay classics.

4. Nas- I Gave You Power: Call me a tasteless 80s baby raised on Scorsese and Rap City, but while acknowledging the fact that this song wouldn’t exist without “Stray Bullet”, I prefer it over the original. Nas brings a big cinematic vision to this big cinematic beat on this big cinematic album. It’s melodramatic and self serious, but what can I say, I will always have a soft spot for all things It Was Written.