For 2003's Politics Of The Business, producer Prince Paul scaled back his ambitions to distressingly modest proportions. Paul generally dreams big, but conceptually and musically, Business felt stripped-down and spare, albeit still engaging and blessed by its creator's humor and offbeat sensibility. It's a relief, then, that White People, the new release from Paul and his co-conspirator Dan The Automator (collectively known as Handsome Boy Modeling School), is a big album full of grand ideas, unexpected guests, and surreal pop-art juxtapositions.
An oddball audio vaudeville collection of skits, stunts, and mash-ups, White People showcases a perversely eclectic roster of new enrollees in Paul & Dan's School Of Advanced Musical Fusion. Who else but the Handsome Boys could (or would) pair ubiquitous Neptunes member Pharrell Williams with ethereal David Lynch chanteuse Julee Cruise? Who else is going to combine indie-rock players (Cat Power, The Mars Volta's Omar Rodriguez, Franz Ferdinand's Alex Kapranos), superstar DJs (Rob Swift, QBert, Kid Koala), mildly popular Saturday Night Live recurring characters (played by Tim Meadows and Don Novello), and, perhaps most impressively, John Oates but not Daryl Hall?
Yes, White People has something for everyone, as well as something guaranteed to irritate or turn off everyone, whether it's undistinguished rap-metal or tiresome comedy skits that'll have less indulgent listeners reaching repeatedly for the track-skip button. (The protagonist of Tim Meadows' The Ladies Man is back! Seriously. Why?)
As on Handsome Boy Modeling School's debut, hip-hoppers come off the best on White People—especially Casual (whose irreverent humor and snidely belligerent delivery recall Bay Area peer Boots of The Coup) and veterans De La Soul, A.G., Lord Finesse, Del Tha Funky Homosapien, and RZA, who bonds with The Mars Volta over a shared affinity for infectious sleaze on "A Day In The Life." Pharrell and Cruise's "Class System," meanwhile, provides a witty slice of social satire in which Cruise captures the martini-addled ennui of a society wife discoursing bitchily about the ingratitude and promiscuity of the rabble.
White People lets its tone of detachment slide a little at the start of the epic suite "Rock And Roll (Could Never Hip Hop Like This) Part 2," when Grand Wizard Theodore and Jazzy Jay discuss hip-hop's mongrel roots. It's fitting, in that when White People is firing on all cylinders, which is about half the time, it feels like the fulfillment of Afrika Bambaataa's vision of a musical utopia where the chains of genre dissipate under the heat of the groove. There, all genres circle reverently around hip-hop—and two distinguished hip-hop producers in particular—like planets orbiting a mammoth sun.