Prince Paul Hip-Hops to His Own Drummer - the career of music producer Paul Huston

American Visions, Oct, 1999 by V. R. Peterson

A black BMW sits in the driveway of the house where Paul Huston lives. The basement--crowded with compact discs, turntables, keykboards and a Macintosh computer--has long been transformed into a recording studio dominated by a 32-track mixing board. Otherwise, there is nothing to suggest that this relatively small, one-family home in Long Island is the castle of the most unassuming member of hip-hop's royal family.

This low profile is exactly what 32-year-old Grammy-winning producer Prince Paul--as Huston is known in the hip-hop nation--prefers. "I don't expect much," he says, downplaying a career that grew from a love of deejaying into a reputation as the Black Einstein of hip-hop. "My take has always been nonchalant. Things just happened because I was in the right place at the right time."

The place, of course, was behind a turntable. The time was the mid-1980s. Prince Paul was studying audio engineering and business management at Long Island's Five Towns College by day (an experience he calls "a waste of time") and mixing beats by night. A fateful block party in Brooklyn, N.Y., changed everything: Members of the rap group Stetsasonic were at the party, and they were so impressed by Prince Paul's irreverent mix of rhythmic textures and quirky musical references that they introduced themselves and started making plans to collaborate.

The result was 1988's "In Full Gear," the title track on Stetsasonic's second CD. More than a decade later, Prince Paul says he is "still overwhelmed" by his luck and longevity. For a brief time, he had his own record label. His credits include gigs with acts as diverse as Big Daddy Kane, white rappers 3rd Bass, pop's Fine Young Cannibals, and comedian Chris Rock (whose recording of July's HBO special, Bigger and Blacker, lists Prince Paul as one of its producers).

Curiously, Prince Paul's most creative project this year is one that has attracted more ink than airplay. On A Prince Among Thieves (Tommy Boy), the musician offers what he refers to as "a movie on wax." It is an old idea made new. Thieves follows a hybrid musical odyssey by plotting the hip-hop skit (a generally comic, seemingly illogical interlude that Prince Paul made popular on De La Soul's CD 3 Feet High and Rising) and tells a story scene-by-scene against an ever-shifting tapestry of sampled sounds, songs, filters and rhythms.

Think of Ellington's thematic tonal portraits and suites, such as Black, Brown and Beige, or such concept albums as Marvin Gaye's politically astute What's Going On?--or, more on target here, Parliament/ Funkadelic's antic excursions on the Mothership. "The artwork and the records told a story," says Prince Paul, a definite celebrant of George Clinton's P-funk energy.

Musically, Thieves offers a pastiche of surprises. A line from a familiar sea shanty, bits of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, jazz riffs (don't miss the slice of "Moody's Mood for Love") and snippets from earlier De La Soul tracks all smoothly come together with rap's more typical, booming beats. It is this deliberate eclecticism that characterizes Prince Paul's signature sound--a style to make you smile. "A lot of what I do is by feel," he says. "I know what I want to hear. I have a short attention span, so if I'm not amused, if something in the song doesn't make me screwface, the track's not ready."

Textually, Thieves spins a familiar narrative of innocence betrayed, performed by a roster of rappers both established and new. Tariq--the fiction's talented wannabe rapper--hungers for a record deal but needs $1,000 to finish a demo tape. No problem, says his thuggish best friend, True, who hooks Tariq up with some action on the street and then proceeds to set him up and rip him off, leading both protagonist and listeners to the tale's predetermined tragic ending. As told in the track called "Pain": "Never prayed before but I'm praying now/Seen a flash of light and I'm going down/The last thing I see/The crowd was gathering ..."

Call it a neoblaxploitation soundtrack with a moral. The music journal The Source dubs it "a hip-hopera." "Funny, funky and bombastic," says Interview. And according to Spin magazine, Thieves marks "the renaissance of hip-hop's psychedelic edge." It's significant praise for a CD not found on any of Billboard's charts or heard much on radio--for a CD bearing the Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics warning label. In fact, given the thriving commercial success of the rap industry (in 1998 the genre sold more than 81 million CDs, tapes and albums), Thieves represents something of an artsy gamble. Indeed, as cultural critic Nelson George wrote a decade ago: "The question is no longer `Will rap last?' but `Who will control it?'"

The crass answer, of course, is the market. A more culturally astute approach, however, might question whether Thieves can begin to shift public concern away from a morally narrow focus on rap's language and use of positive and negative black images (think Will Smith vs. Ice Cube) and redirect scrutiny to issues of artistic integrity and stylistic complexity as well as social awareness.