Handsome Boy Modeling School - The Truth (ft. Roisin Murphy from Moloko & J-Live)
During my first year of college I spent a lot of time tossing around ideas for majors. Art? I lacked the technical skills required plus my body wouldn’t have been able to handle the amount of intoxicants it took to get a work of art out of me. English? I grew up hanging out in parks and the majority of my vocabulary consists of made up words. Another idea was music production. I bought Reason and Fruity Loops and like any person with no musical talent or knowledge of music attempting to produce music, I gave up. Procrastinator? Maybe. But a quitter? Not I. So I ordered a bunch of books on the subject. One of them was Making Beats: The Art of Sample-Based Hip-Hop by Joseph G. Schloss which I thought was a how-to-book. Instead, it was an investigation into the culture of sample-based producers. The author discusses the musical appreciation and knowledge of history that most of these producers have and share. He brings up a scholarly article that critiques De La Soul’s “Say No Go” which is produced by Prince Paul and samples Hall and Oates’ “I Can’t Go For That” In that article Prince Paul is credited as recognizing the corniness of Hall and Oates’ song and sampling it to make it hip. When Schloss brings the article to Prince Paul’s attention, Paul exclaims “Nah, that was a hot song!”
Fast forward six years and we’ve seen the collapse of Handsome Boy Modeling School, Prince Paul’s collaboration with Dan the Automator. Pick up a HBMS CD and your left scratching your head at the collaborations they’ve put together. J-Live with Moloko? RZA and AG with Mars Volta? Linkin Park with Jazzy Jay, Grand Wizard Theodore, and Lord Finesse? Really? Prince Paul and his counterpart find a way to make them work.
Even though their second album gets a lot of unwarranted haterade spilled on them from behind, it’s a solid listen. Paul and Dan demonstrate their ability to recognize and pinpoint the qualities they enjoy in an artist and utilize them alongside those qualities they’ve pinpointed in another artist. So yeah, Hall and Oates may be corny but Paul knows exactly what he enjoys about them to share their work with the average listener without turning them away. The song above takes Roisin Murphy from Irish pop group Moloko and pairs her with everybody’s favorite NYC Public School teacher turned underground rapper, J-Live, over a beat heavily sampling Galt Macdermot’s “Coffee Cold”. It was hard to choose which HBMS song to post but I think you’ll be pleased with my selection.
Honorable Mentions: I’ve Been Thinking ft. Cat Power, Greatest Mistake ft. John Oates (from Hall & Oates) & Jamie Cullom, If It Wasn’t For You ft. De La Soul & Starchild Excalibur, and Jack Johnson - Breakdown Remix,
Lyrics:
[Roisin Murphy:]
Go
Go to the mountain if you must
Go to the burning bush
Happy would ease your troubled mind
How do the fade, just stay behind?
I know you better than you think I do
Don’t worry
This is why i fell in love with you
The man in the looking glass
Is looking back at you at last
You can’t hide from the truth
Because the truth is all there is
You can’t hide from the truth
Because the truth is all there is
You can’t hide from the truth
Because the truth is all there is
You can’t hide
If happy times are too few and far between
It’s a pity, dear
We can’t erase the things we’ve seen
So disappear, vanish if you wish
Just go before you’re swallowed up by bitterness
And the truth is you can’t hide from the truth
And the truth hurts because the truth is all there is
I realized some time ago
That I would have to let you go
May not be true to see that you would return one day
But in your present state
You may as well not be here at all
You wear a thin disguise, it’s from yourself you hide
Just take a look at us, we are heading for a fall
[J-Live:]
Now presiding in this court of hip-hop
Justice, my rap forte
is Judge, jury, bailiff or prosecuting D.A.
Et ceteras, paraphas
My modus operende
It’s carpe diem whether de facto or de jure
Comprende?
The people versus, you and your Sensi
Teaching that style of word-play
Weaker than Wednesday
Regardless of what your friends say
They’re all dissable
Stricken from the record and deemed inadmissable
And this long arm of the law grabs the mic to
Shoot dope lines first and ask questions later
The death sentences of this live litigator
Close the case tighter than the jaws of a ‘gator
Stenographers are steady loggin, the jargon
That your counselors are barking, in hopes of a plea bargain
But when you read back verbatim
What they’re saying to pursuade them
They realize exactly how i played them
I come with the truth, whole truth and nothing but
‘Cause the truth hurts just as much as fuckin’ with ‘Live will
I brew skill with refills from now until
Plagiarizing MC’s get their flows to steal
[Roisin Murphy:]
Baby, I don’t die without you by my side
As long as you return into these arms that burn
Baby, I won’t die, just take a look inside
Into these eyes that burn
Come to these arms that yearn
I won’t die if you leave me high
I won’t die if you’re not by my side
And the truth hurts
Because the truth is all there is
You can’t hide from the truth
Cause the truth is all there is
You can’t hide from the truth
‘Cause the truth is all there is
You can’t hide from the truth
Because the truth is all there is
You can’t hide from the truth…
-Opparaics
