Prince Paul

The thing that makes the mighty Prince Paul still slick after all these years is his production is still as fresh and exciting as his work with De La Soul. Sure, what makes this instrumental effort work so well might have something to do with the fact that some of it was made with leftover beats from back in the day, but Paul brings life into them for the new generation and makes them hotter than a lot of the modern sound. Supposedly constructed during a state of depression, Paul pulls out another humorous script for intermissions in the form of a Law & Order script and surrounds it with straight-up boom bap such as "It’s a Stick Up!” and chilling piano breaks like "And the Winner Is?” "The Night My Girlfriend Left Me” is simply a beautifully bittersweet love song and his work on J-Live’s "Wax Paper” makes this record sound like a greatest hits. Listening to this top-notch venture into sans-rapper musicianship, you start to understand how important Prince Paul has been in hip-hop over the past 20 years.