The Artist Formerly Known as a Gimmick

Can this polite, unassuming man really be the “mad genius” of hip-hop, as Spin magazine dubbed him?

Eating dinner at a Manhattan restaurant, record producer Prince Paul repeatedly says “thank you” and “excuse me,” even when it’s unnecessary. He’s wearing a blue sweatshirt and jeans in the semi-upscale establishment, but appearance has never meant much to him. For Paul, it’s more about substance than hype--though the pop media’s recent fascination with this studio wizard could be easily mistaken for hype.

Prince Paul was responsible for two of the most wildly imaginative and acclaimed albums of 1999--”Prince Among Thieves,” a hip-hop opera about two friends’ struggle to get started in the music industry, and, under the name Handsome Boy Modeling School, “So . . . How’s Your Girl?,” a sly collaboration with DJ and producer Dan the Automator that mocked hip-hop’s fixation on materialism.

Both are among the most distinctive hip-hop albums ever released. The former unfolds like a detailed stage play, with expertly executed cameo performances from a multitude of distinguished rappers.

On “Prince Among Thieves,” Paul weaves the antics of his highly exaggerated characters into a seamless, cohesive story of betrayal. Paul and the Automator gather an eclectic mix of rock and rap performers, creating a mix that’s far more legitimate than that of the genre-blending rock-rap groups that have emerged in the last couple of years.

“For those looking for hip-hop’s new frontier, this is definitely it,” the Source magazine said of “Thieves.” A Blaze magazine review concurred: “The culmination of 17 years of constant innovation. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry--you’ll listen to it again and again.”

According to Spin, the Handsome Boy Modeling School project “bolsters the pair’s current standing . . . as hip-hop’s best producers.” Both collections are likely to be named among of the year’s Top 20 albums in the Village Voice’s annual poll of U.S. pop critics.

This success has suddenly brought a mainstream profile to a man whose work has been hailed in the hip-hop world for more than a decade.

As De La Soul’s producer in the late ‘80s, Paul helped the Long Island trio create a zany, out-of-nowhere slice of imaginative hip-hop that still resonates in the field. The group’s 1989 debut, “3 Feet High and Rising,” is considered a classic. It introduced skits to hip-hop records and featured the quirky humor that marks Prince Paul’s works.

He also produced comedian Chris Rock’s Grammy-winning 1997 album, “Roll With the New,” and was a member of Stetsasonic, the first major hip-hop band that played its own instruments.

It’s a sign of the respect he enjoys in the wider pop community that both rapper-singer Everlast and experimental-minded popster Sean Lennon appeared as guests on Paul’s recordings last year.

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No one is more surprised by his breakthrough than Paul himself. In fact, just five years ago he was ready to walk away from the music business.

Despite his reputation, he was disillusioned with the “gimmick” label people applied to his work with the “horror-core” group Gravediggaz, and he was upset by the cold shoulders he’d gotten from artists he’d collaborated with in the past.

But a friend, S.H. Fernando, asked Paul to make an album for his independent label, and Paul decided to take a last shot at the music business. The result was “Psychoanalysis: What Is It,” an album based on a self-help record that was lying around his house.

Paul hoped to use some of the rappers he’d worked with in the past, but none of them returned his calls. So in defiant Prince Paul fashion, he turned to some of his non-music friends to join him on the album, which came out in 1996 on the Wordsound label.

“It was a record that I expected to get hated on totally,” Paul says. “It was like a middle finger to everybody. It was totally unconventional and had every worst thing that you could think of in there. Sonically, it was horrible. But it got all of these great reviews and I’m like, ‘You’ve got to be kidding. This is weird.’ ”

“Weird” is a word that you might apply a lot to his work. So is “daring.”

“He’s more willing to experiment in areas of nontraditional hip-hop fare that producers of hip-hop are not willing to go into,” David Bry, senior editor of Vibe, says of Prince Paul.

Adds Everlast, who appeared on “Prince Among Thieves”: “Besides being talented, he isn’t scared of anything. That makes him a lot more open and free than a lot of cats that are out there right now. He’ll go and break the ground that someone else will exploit five years later. He’s like a mad scientist, and he’s always been ahead of the game.”

Paul, 32, is obviously a studious worker, but he also gives off a happy-go-lucky vibe. That’s why it should come as no surprise that “So . . . How’s Your Girl?,” like “Psychoanalysis,” started out as little more than a whim.

While talking casually about other projects with Dan the Automator, a.k.a. Dan Nakamura (see story above), the two discovered they were both fans of Chris Elliott’s offbeat sitcom “Get a Life,” which aired on the Fox network in the early ‘90s. They remembered an episode called “Handsome Boy Modeling School,” and the more they laughed, the more they became intrigued with the idea of doing an album together.

When Monica Lynch, then-president of Tommy Boy Records, encouraged the duo to follow through on their concept, they went into the studio together.

“We really didn’t discuss it thoroughly,” Paul says. “It was just like a joke, so then we had to build something around it.”

Like most of Paul’s efforts, “So . . . How’s Your Girl?” provided an unexpected sonic jolt to hip-hop. The presence of Miho Hatori (from the avant-pop outfit Cibo Matto) and the Beastie Boys’ Mike D alongside underground rappers Sadat X and Del represents a staggering stylistic range.

The glowing reviews of the Handsome Boy Modeling School album reinvigorated Paul.

“What made me keep going is that, amazingly enough throughout the years, I’ve always had fans,” Paul says.

“I’ve always had work, but it was always mainstream. I got all this attention from De La Soul, so I would call people for favors and they would never do them after the success had dwindled. That bugged me out for a second. From that point, what I did was try to get my thoughts together.

“There have been projects that I’ve done for next to no money, but I took them for the learning factor. It’s almost like going to college for free. People don’t look at it like that. They look at, ‘Oh, how much are you paying me? Oh, forget that.’ If I feel that it’s a unique opportunity where it’s something that I’ve never done before or that it’s something that I could learn to incorporate later in something I’d do, then I’ll do it.”

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Prince Paul, born Paul Huston, grew up with music. If his older brothers weren’t playing records around the family home in Long Island, his parents were. His mother loved Marvin Gaye, while his father enjoyed Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane.

“Anything that went on in my house, whether it be happy or sad, . . . music would set the tone,” Paul says, sipping some water after polishing off his dinner at the restaurant. “My brother got a good grade on his test and we’d party. When there was something sad, my dad would play a slow, sad jazz record.”

One day in 1977 Paul was riding his bicycle when he heard music blaring from mammoth speakers in a local park. Checking it out, he was caught up in the magnetism that the DJ exercised over the crowd.

Paul set to work and eventually crafted a makeshift DJ set out of some old equipment lying around his house. Its makeshift nature helped nurture the inventiveness and curiosity that would serve him well later. “Not having all of those things, it made me use my ingenuity,” he says. “It made me kind of figure things out.”

In 1983 he joined the New York hip-hop band Stetsasonic as DJ and co-producer. Their hit single “Talkin’ All That Jazz” was an articulate and catchy defense of rap music that helped them became one of the genre’s most respected groups.

Paul, as one of Stetsasonic’s producers, began developing his beat-making proficiency.

“My production went in cycles,” he says. “When I was in Stetsasonic, it was just like when I was collecting records: It was all amazement. I didn’t even really know about making records, nor did I intend to make a career making records. It just kind of happened. I approached things haphazardly. It was just to have fun.”

But eventually Paul became trapped by his own ingenuity.

“I think my success was from being naive and experimenting,” he says. “I think what happened once I got success from De La Soul is that I started paying attention to those things that made me successful. I wasn’t copying them necessarily, but kind of being aware of certain things, and I think that messed me up. I started thinking about radio, clubs, certain marketing things that I wouldn’t even consider when making a record before.”

His enthusiasm and prospects were at low ebb, though the response to the “Psychoanalysis” album did buoy him slightly. That’s when veteran rap label Tommy Boy, which had released Paul’s work dating back to Stetsasonic and De La Soul, reentered the picture.

Tommy Boy’s Lynch came across “Psychoanalysis” by accident in a record store and was “blown away” by it. “That record made me think about all the things that I really missed in hip-hop,” she recalls. “I felt like the business was reaching a part when it really wasn’t fun anymore. I thought Paul was just a breath of fresh air, . . . a completely unique perspective.”

Now that Paul has returned to his musical roots, he’s planning to release several projects in 2000, including a collaboration with the Automator and Mike Simpson from the Dust Brothers as the Good, the Bad and the Ugly. DreamWorks Records, where Simpson is an artists and repertoire executive, will release that album, another concept record in the vein of Handsome Boy.

Paul is also working on developing a cartoon show with the Nickelodeon cable channel and is preparing to start his next album, tentatively titled “Politics of the Business,” which he calls “smart but friendly.”

Once on the brink of an early retirement, Prince Paul now says he has plenty of creative ideas he needs to explore.

“I’m still making records and I’m still excited and it still feels new,” he says. “I’ve always had 1,001 concepts and ideas, but I’ve never had a chance to put them out. It just amazes me.”