Happy 25th Anniversary to Prince Paul’s second studio album A Prince Among Thieves, originally released February 23, 1999.
There are few creators as visionary as “Prince” Paul Huston. Of the many outstanding producers that populated hip-hop’s golden age, few worked as diligently to stretch the boundaries of what the genre could be as he did. Prince Paul made his first immortal contributions to rap music as a member of the “hip-hop band” Stetsasonic and the primary sonic architect of De La Soul. He later contributed to such left-of-center collectives as Gravediggaz and recorded aggressively peculiar solo albums. But even with a musical resume that includes cornerstones like 3 Feet High and Rising (1989) and 6 Feet Deep (1994), it says something that one of the Long Island producer’s towering achievements is A Prince Among Thieves, released 25 years ago.
A Prince Among Thieves is one of the best “concept” albums ever. It tells a cohesive story, where both the songs and interstitial skits are intrinsic to the project’s success. It was an arduous labor of love for Paul, who painstakingly assembled the project through $20/hour studio sessions and countless days in his own lab piecing together dialogue and musical material. That said, it’s an artistic triumph and one of the best complete projects in Paul’s extensive discography.
A Prince Among Thieves may not have happened if an independent record by Paul hadn’t caught on unexpectedly. During an episode of the What Had Happened Was podcast, Paul explained to host Open Mike Eagle that he was coming off the release of Psychoanalysis: What Is It? (1996), a deeply weird project that was distributed through the Wordsound label. Though Paul fully expected Psychoanalysis to be the last album he ever recorded, the album quickly earned a cult following. Some of its fans included Chris Rock, who Paul would later team with to record GRAMMY-winning comedy albums, and the staff at Tommy Boy Records, where Paul had initially found success with Stetsasonic and De La Soul.
Tommy Boy agreed to reissue a slightly altered version of Psychoanalysis and asked him what else he was working on. Paul pitched the label A Prince Among Thieves, which he had written out a rough story outline for. The label agreed to distribute the project, viewing it as something that the staff could have “fun” with, in terms of art and promotion, rather than as part of the foundation of the imprint’s 1999 release schedule.
Paul conceived A Prince Among Thieves as a battle between good and evil, telling the story of friends Tariq and True. Tariq is a young, fairly naïve young man and aspiring rapper who works a day job as shift manager at Boston Chicken. He tries to scrape together $1,000 to finish his demo so he can get a record deal from the Wu-Tang Clan. He approaches True, his long-time friend, mentor, and co-worker, to front him the money. True convinces him to sell drugs for a week in order to earn the cash and he becomes a member of the all-encompassing crime family “The Organization,” led by Mr. Large. Things go disastrously wrong, with Tariq losing everything, including his life.
Under it all, A Prince Among Thieves is a break-up album. Paul said on What Had Happened… that he wrote the album’s script while in the midst of a contentious divorce, where he was fighting over the custody of his children. Paul realized after the fact that he was channeling his anger and frustration about the whole process into the project.
Paul worked hard to select rappers who would appear on A Prince Among Thieves. Breeze Brewin, frontman for The Juggaknots, plays Tariq, the album’s narrator and main character. Brewin was very much one of the most talented rappers around during the late 1990s. He was receiving acclaim for the group’s self-titled release, which had dropped on Fondle ‘Em Records back in 1996 and was a member of the independent collective The Indelibles. Possessing a smoky vocal tone, he’s an extremely gifted emcee, capable of delivering complex story rhymes and rugged battle raps with equal skill. Paul had known and wanted to work with Breeze since The Juggaknots’ brief stint with Elektra/East West Records.
Listen to the Album:
For the role of the ultimately unscrupulous True, Prince Paul first hoped to enlist Chino XL, as well as Biggie Smalls, before eventually arriving at Big Sha. Paul had produced tracks for the Long Island emcee as both a solo artist and as a member of Horror City. His gravelly voice fit the character and his icy demeanor fits the ultimately treacherous character.
For the rest of the cast that populated A Prince Among Thieves, Paul used either “third string” rappers or other emcees on the rise. The album features songs or verses from the likes of Big Daddy Kane, Kool Keith, Everlast, Xzibit, Chubb Rock, Sadat X, Biz Markie, Don NewKirk, and Queen Herawin (Breeze’s sister and co-Juggaknot). Special Ed, Buckshot, RZA, and the aforementioned Chris Rock contribute to the album’s connective skits.
Paul revealed on What Had Happened Was… that Breeze and Sha were the only people who had the album’s complete “script.” Since Paul was admittedly paranoid about someone stealing his ideas for the album, he parsed out info for the story very judiciously. Most of those involved only received their respective dialogue, without having any context as to what was going on.
While recording A Prince Among Thieves, Paul would book time in the cheapest studios available, so as to save money on the album’s limited budget. He would invite in the contributors to record their lines, doing as many takes as feasible. He then went through the takes, found the best ones, sampled them, and pieced the story together.
When it came to recording the songs that would help convey the story, Paul never wrote anything for the respective emcees, only giving them ideas of what to rap about. Rarely he would have to ask one of the rappers to rewrite a verse if what they provided wasn’t what he was looking for. As a result of the process, the album’s narrative is carried by Breeze and Sha through their tracks and the skits in between, while the guest emcees provide broader character sketches with their songs.
As a narrative, A Prince Among Thieves works well. There’s some relatively complex character development with Tariq and True. In terms of story flow, things don’t drag. It takes a little long for the album to transition from its first to second acts, mostly due to the sheer number of character introductions during the project’s first third. But the story has a clear beginning, middle, and end, and definitely expresses the nuances of trying to come up as a rapper while dealing with all the outside bullshit.
The story starts near the chronological conclusion with “Pain,” showing both Tariq and True lying in pools of blood, each rapping what may be their final words. The story then flashes back to the beginning, with Brewin/Tariq explaining how they got there. Things start off with “Steady Slobbin’,” Prince Paul and Brewin’s re-imagining of Ice Cube’s “Steady Mobbin’,” complete with the sample of Average White Band’s “Reach Out.” Breeze details Tariq’s life as a young, goofy slacker, where sleeping until 2 p.m. and engaging in awkward sexual encounters are regular occurrences.
Breeze and Sha work well together to provide a good contrast of styles whenever they rap together on tracks. These include “What You Got,” which serves as a rough version of Tariq’s demo, to “Put the Next Man On,” where both make their pitches to imposing Mr. Large for Tariq’s entry into The Organization. They channel the necessary bile and bloodthirst on “You Got Shot,” the prelude to their eventual bloody confrontation.
With the tracks that feature other guest artists, Paul shows that he still has the skills to create great music with both past collaborators and talented contributors. “The Other Line,” featuring Queen Herawin as Tariq’s girlfriend, digs into the protagonist’s relationship dynamics. The siblings display solid interplay over a sample of Portishead’s “Mysterions,” communicating both frustration and well-placed humor.
A Prince Among Thieves also helped rejuvenate emcees who had been MIA for a bit. Chubb Rock makes his reappearance on “Mr. Large,” kicking exaggerated mafioso-themed rhymes while Biz Markie beat-boxes. The most notable return is that of Big Daddy Kane, who holds court as Count Macula on “Macula’s Theory.” He flows smoothly over a sample of Syl Johnson’s “Wind, Blow Her My Way,” rapping, “My tongue commits the felony, here’s how I gotcha / To do the things your momma told you not ta, I shot ya.” The song is equal in quality to many of the Brooklyn emcee’s previous collaborations with Paul, and had me hype for a future Kane project.
Kool Keith gives a suitably unhinged performance as Crazy Lou, “an ex-Marine Captain who got discharged for sexual misconduct with a deadly weapon.” He lists the inventory of his bizarre arsenal on “Weapon World,” including “space tech banana clips” and “brown pearls pistols with FBI whistles.” It’s a shame that aside from this track and a remix for “Blue Flowers” from the Dr. Octagon project, the bugged-out pair didn’t collaborate any further.
And occasionally Paul uses A Prince Among Thieves to show that he can go home again. He “return(s) to the classics” with “More Than U Know,” his reunion with De La Soul. The disco-infused song is the cousin of “Say No Go,” with Pos and Dave portraying a pair of crack addicts, looking to “book a flight tonight.” Chris Rock, essentially reprising his role as Pookie in New Jack City, makes a hilarious appearance in the song’s extended intro.
Befitting a Prince Paul project, A Prince Among Thieves also features singer (and Paul’s childhood friend) Don Newkirk covering “Moody’s Mood For Love,” which serves as the soundtrack for the album’s sex scene. Prince Paul had hoped to enlist Lou Rawls for the role, but was foiled when the crooner’s manager turned out not to be a Chris Rock fan. Newkirk proves an apt alternative, as he belts out his own excellent rendition of the standard.
Some of the rappers who appear on A Prince Among Thieves found some of their greatest artistic and commercial successes after the album’s release. Before Everlast’s rebirth as a hip-hop influenced blues/folk singer, he breathed repugnant life into Officer O’Maley Bitchkowski, a crooked cop who raises havoc throughout “The Men In Blue.” Both Xzibit and Sadat X appear as wily convicts on “Handle Your Time,” describing life hustling while incarcerated. Paul hoped to get Vanilla Ice to appear as a third convict for the song, but was unable to secure the deal. Instead, Kidd Creole, former member of the Furious Five, provides some entertaining ad-libs.
A Prince Among Thieves ends with the title track, which is framed as True’s subsequent radio hit after Tariq’s death. It’s a darkly humorous piece of character assassination, with Sha/True giving a self-serving re-telling of the album’s events. He completely shits all over the life and legacy of the album’s “hero” in the most passive-aggressive way possible. It reflects Paul’s belief that in the end, evil always triumphs over good.
On What Had Happened Was…, Paul explained that the brass at Tommy Boy didn’t really understand A Prince Among Thieves after he played it for them, releasing it without much fanfare. “More Than U Know” served as the album’s sole single, and the only video was a 10-minute “preview”/medley featuring portions of selected tracks. Paul said it took the entire year for it to really catch on and build an audience. At that point, the label heads asked Paul to do a follow-up, which he said wasn’t realistically feasible. Instead, he recorded and released Politics of the Business (2003), an album inspired by his contentious experiences working with major labels.
There have certainly been no shortage of narrative concept albums released in the past quarter century, but A Prince Among Thieves stands among the best of them. In terms of balancing both good storytelling and excellent music, few albums of its kind can compare. The passion that went into its creation makes it resonate all the more to this day. Even though it was born out of Paul’s cynicism and belief that evil will win out, A Prince Among Thieves is an absolute musical good.
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