Prince Paul, originally a dj for Stetsasonic, produced De La Soul's 3 Feet High and Rising
and the equally psychedelic My Field Trip To Planet 9 (1993) by Justin Warfield.
In 1994, he founded Gravediggaz with Wu-Tang Clan's
Robert "RZA" Diggs,
Stetsasonic's Bobby "Frukwan" Simmons
and solo artist Anthony "Too Poetic" Berkeley. They released the gorey
6 Feet Deep/ Niggamortis (1994), The Pick, The Sickle, and The Shovel (1997)
and Nightmare In A Minor (2001), the most celebrated
creations of the "horror-core" movement. The third one came out when
Anthony "Too Poetic" Berkeley had already died of cancer.
Prince Paul's ambitions surfaced on the solo albums
Psychoanalysis: What Is It? (1997), an eccentric collage of nonsensical
sounds, a veritable ransacking of the artist's subconscious, and especially on the hip-hopera A Prince Among Thieves (1999), performed by a star-studded cast.
Handsome Boy Modeling School's So How's Your Girl (Tommy Boy, 1999)
was a collaboration with Dan Nakamura.
Prince Paul's
Politics of Business (2003) was another concept album, but a lot less
intriguing.
More incoherent than electric
(echoing everything from vintage reggae to old tv sountracks),
Handsome Boy Modeling School's second album
White People (Elektra, 2004) sounds overlong and not as carefully
crafted as the first one. Guests include
Mike Patton, RZA, Cat Power, Julee Cruise, and
members of De La Soul, Mars Volta, Black Sheep, Franz Ferdinand, but
they seem to be the object, not the subject, of the songs.
Prince Paul also formed Baby Elephant with Newkirk and Bernie Worrell, documented on Turn My Teeth Up! (2007), and
the Dino-5
with MC T-Rex, Tracy Triceratops, Teo Pterodactyl and Billy Brontosaurus,
documented on
The Dino-5 (2008).
Prince Paul also released:
Negroes on Ice
(2012), a collaboration with DJ Pforreal,
and
The Redux
(2017).
White Privilege
(2016) was credited to
SuperBlack, a trio with
rapper/drummer J-Zone and bassist Sacha Jenkins.
Prince Paul and Newkirk reunited as the Lord Brothers to score the television
soundtrack By Every Means Necessary (2020).
