Prince Paul

Prince Paul initiated his musical path serving as disc jockey for Stetsasonic before extending his production and performance abilities across releases by Boogie Down Productions, Gravediggaz, MC Lyte, Big Daddy Kane, and 3rd Bass, plus additional artists. His defining opportunity arrived via production duties on De La Soul’s 3 Feet High and Rising. Defying established hip-hop production conventions, he drew samples from funk alongside numerous other genres, yielding inventive and distinctive instrumental beds. Adding comedy sketches into the mix, Prince Paul and De La Soul jointly launched an entirely new phase of hip-hop. In 1994 Paul resumed rapping, linking with RZA and Stetsasonic member Frukwan inside the Gravediggaz side project whose first album appeared as 6 Feet Deep. He simultaneously aligned himself with the rising vanguard of underground rap by gathering the Automator, New Kingdom’s Scott Harding, and Spectre to shape his initial solo album, 1997’s Psychoanalysis: What Is It? A Prince Among Thieves arrived in 1999; later that year Paul joined the Automator to create Handsome Boy Modeling School and issue So...How’s Your Girl? His next concept album, Politics of the Business, emerged in 2003—one year after a second Handsome Boy Modeling School record—and carried a tone more bitter than biting, with Itstrumental and the archival compilation Hip Hop Gold Dust appearing in 2005.