MVRemix: On a lighter note, what's the weirdest thing you've experienced in the studio because we've heard a lot of rumours about
various recording experiences from both Prince Paul and De La Soul back in the day...
Prince Paul: Our sessions were pretty tame for the most part. At least from my part. Maybe I was a little naive, maybe things were going on
in the bathroom that I ain't know about. The only bizarre thing I kind of remember was we were recording one time, and some guy just walked
in, some random dude. He's just standing there and I'm thinking like it's maybe one of their friends so we don't say anything. Then I'm
asking, 'cause the music's playing real loud (this is during "De La Soul is Dead"), "Yo, Pos is that your friend?" "Nah." "Yo Dave, is that
your friend?" "Nah." Back to Mase, "Nah." Eventually I had to stop the music and say "Excuse me, um... who are you?" and he said "I... I... I
just wanna say, I look like Mase!" We were like [pause] "Uh... okay?" "People say I look like him. I heard y'all were up here so I came up
and I look like him." "Alright man, you've gotta go!" [cracking up] It was just like "What was that?" It didn't make any sense, and he didn't
look like him! That just made it worse. They (De La) have such a weird following, I could never really get it. A lot of weirdos would just
come out of nowhere. There was never really anything insane. I know we had a lot of fun making "3 Feet High and Rising" because a lot of
people would come through to the studio. For example we was making "De La Orgee," Red Alert was there, my friend the Pop Master, you had
Q-Tip, Jungle Brothers was in there. Every once in a while was Juju hanging out with the Jungle Brothers. You had a little bit of everybody
comin' back and forth... [MC] Lyte... Whereas nowadays people are "Am I getting paid? My manager made an arrangement with you, can you sign these papers?" Back then people would just get on the mic and have fun, that's what I remember back then - a freedom of recording, where the common goal was to make a great record. Now the common goal is just all about money, unfortunately.
MVRemix: Speaking of the studio, "Prince Among Thieves," was that all recorded at one studio? How did you assemble everybody for
that?
Prince Paul: That was all done in pieces. Nobody was recorded against each other. I did that all over the place. I took a little digital
recorder, DAT machine and I had lines written out. I'd have people read the lines over and over again. Some parts were studio, some parts
were in people's houses. It was done all over the place. But one thing I did do was I tried to record with the same microphone and same
microphone pre-amp so their vocals would sound similar. So I wouldn't have one vocal all squeaky and the other one's low and not do a lot of
EQ'ing and stuff. I pieced it together in my house and I pieced it together on an ASR. I didn't even have Pro-Tools then. I did it all with
sequencing programming and a sampler. I still have all the samples and vocals in a hard drive for the ASR. I pieced it line for line, for
line, for line, for line. Did the sound effects piece by piece, by piece, by piece. It was all done by hand and it took a long time.
[chuckles] If I had Pro-Tools I would have probably knocked it off in no time and it probably would have sounded better too, but... it is
what it is.
MVRemix: Have you had any strange celebrity encounters with people coming up to you and saying "You know what, I'm a big fan..."
Prince Paul: Dave Chapelle! The comedians more or less blew me away. Like Chris Rock, for them to say "Ah, I love your record "such and
such," that record influenced me to do "this"." The fact that those guys, and you know you'd get Tracy Morgan and all the people comin' into
the studio when Tracy was doing the Chris Rock record. For comedians to think that you're funny, to me is incredible 'cause I'm not a
comedian. So I'm like "Wow, really? You thought that was funny?" "Man, that's hilarious!" Not enough where I'd get up and do stand up, but
wow, that's pretty entertaining, I like that. I mean probably the first time when I was seventeen and I was with Stetsasonic at The Roxies,
I remember Doug E. Fresh came up to me - this is me not being Prince Paul, this is me being "whatever"... the DJ for Stetsasonic at the time.
He was like "Yo man, I heard about your scratches and stuff. I been lookin' out for you. I heard you really, really dope... blah blah blah
blah blah." He was the first person to me, a celebrity that actually acknowledged me as being anything. So that stuck with me. I never told
him that though, even though I worked with him and seen him a bunch of times. But that meant a lot to me.
MVRemix: Many years on from Stetsasonic, what's your favourite memory?
Prince Paul: I think one of the main things was when we were performing at The Disco Fever when it was still open. This was '84 before we
made records, and I remember we entered a contest. Daddy O, I don't know who made 'em but he had us wear these weird outfits. It was
horrible, shiny crap. [chuckling] They tried to get me some outfit that looked like something Prince would wear. It was horrible. But we
performed, and I remember at the end when they were judging the whole contest, they were like "The emcee's alright. But, the DJ gets a
10!" Haha... It was all like Starsky and a few name celeb people. I was shocked. To me that was a big deal. I really worked hard at my
DJ'ing and scratching back then - I thought I was that good. So for them acknowledging me, and these are pioneers I looked up to growing up
as a kid... to think that I was really that hot, really impressed me. It definitely wasn't a team effort on my part at that point. I was
like, "Ah man, they like me!"
MVRemix: Whenever you listen to a Prince Paul record, you think that this man has either watched a lot of movies or listened to a lot
of really good entertaining radio - which movies, radio, snippets of audio have influenced you greatly?
Prince Paul: I don't necessarily think it's movies or anything. It's just watching people on TV. Just in general. It's always those quirky
sitcoms. It can be any sitcom. It could be "Three's Company," or even drama shows like "Matlock" or whatever that came on back in the days.
What's corny to me, and what I make fun of in these records is the way people react to things. There's always the same reaction to
everything. There's always the struggle in the movie where somebody's rustling with the gun, and you see this in a billion movies over and
over again - the shot goes off and nobody knows who got shot. Then somebody eventually falls to the ground. It's that corniness that
motivates me to do half the things I do, which I think is so funny. If I re-enact stupid things I see on TV or stupid things I see people do
in real life... I put it on wax in some weird way. You see that on a lot of records like "Psycho-Analysis" or "Itstrumental." People
who really listen to it or dig deeper into it will see me poking fun at a lot of those things. There's a lot of redundant things you see
where you're like "Not that again." The black police captain or police chief in every cop story. You know in the real police stations,
there's no black captain [chuckles]. The people who get shot in the end. There's always some weird thing that goes on that you see all over
and over again. I think people get tired of it, but they seem to be entertained so I just poke fun at it.
MVRemix: Reverting back to that, even though you were talking about T.V. People like RZA have been doing lots of movie scores and such,
are there any plans for you to score films?
Prince Paul: I've done some small films. I scored this movie called "The Best Thief In The World" and that was a Showtime movie. I'd love to,
and I think I'd be really good at it. I'm just not in that circle and I need to aggressively put my foot or get into that whole world of
scoring and people to meet. I think the best thing about me and business is I'm not really a socialite like that. I'm not into goin' out and
bein' at every event and everything else. That kind of holds me back as well, being stubborn in a lot of ways, I like doing what I wanna do
how I wanna do it. A lot of scoring takes a lot of compromising and stuff. It's hard being an artist and working in a commercial environment
- they don't go well together. True artistry and commercialism is like oil and water. Sometimes the people who kind of put both together are
the people who, I guess are artistically commercial. It's great for them, but for a guy like me - I'm a rebel. Hopefully at some point in my
life I can get to a point where I can actively get into that social world of getting out and promoting myself.
>> continued...
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