More than two decades after he helped define Los Angeles' early electro-rap sound, Arabian Prince holds court inside Sawtelle's vinyl-jammed Turntable Lab. He's still filled with the restless creative spirit that drove him when he was an original member of N.W.A and that is captured on the new released "Innovative Life: The Anthology -- 1984-1989."
"The title had to be 'Innovative Life' because that song expressed everything about me. I perpetually try to create and forge unexampled paths," Arabian Prince, 43, says.
Despite a catalog studded with pip 12-inch singles, no one had of all time compiled Arabian Prince's work out in a single volume. But Peanut Butter Wolf, owner and founder of local hip-hop label Stones Throw, which released the collection, is optimistic the anthology will introduce a new multiplication to an underrated artist and educate listeners around the slipway in which he influenced hip-hop.
Everyone knows the 1988 Arabian Prince-produced J.J. Fad individual "Supersonic," "merely nobody accomplished that prior to 'Supersonic,' he'd made a whole album's worth of material that had that same vibe, simply with his rhyming on it," Wolf says. "Thankfully, now I can spread head the tidings to a bigger audience."
Of course, Arabian Prince's relative anonymity stems from his own will as often as from the jubilate of the gangsta rap sound over its techno-influenced forebears. A self-professed technical school nerd, he boasts about taking one of the first laptops created, a Radio Shack Tandy model, on N.W.A's first turn, and in the '90s he ditched the music business for his possess special-effects and 3-D vivification company, Hypnotx FX.
Born K.R. Nazel, Arabian Prince grew up in Inglewood, where he got swept up in the then-nascent rap music scene. Hypnotized by anything on the Sugar Hill label, he began vending mix tapes at shoal. The tapes led to DJ gigs, which he parlayed into his weekly club, the Cave, in Lennox.
The Cave epitomized the come-as-you-are attitude of the Los Angeles hip-hop scene.
"It was such a immix of different people . . . ," Prince says. "We drew influences from the Hispanic community, the blackened community and the patrick White community. . . . You had to play something for everyone."
He began doing gigs with the Egyptian Lover, another DJ gaining up-to-dateness on the scene. He also aquiline up with Russ Parr, one of the about successful DJs on KDAY, which at the time was the only station in the country devoted exclusively to hip-hop. Under the false name Bobby Jimmy and the Critters, Prince and Parr managed to sell 50,000 copies of their first going, a put-on called "We Like Ugly Women."
From there, Arabian Prince began to establish a solo life history with the Middle Eastern-flavored tune "Strange Life." As West Coast hip-hop started its meteoric rise, his star followed. But an epiphany on a railcar ride with then World Class Wrecking Crew member Dr. Dre sparked a desire for change.
"We were driving in Dre's old RX7 with no back window to see J.J. Fad in front they became J.J. Fad," he says, laughing. "They lived out in Rialto, and the entire way there we were listening to the radio and hearing our songs. We looked at each other and were like, how is it that our songs ar getting played on the radio and we ain't got whatsoever money?"
A subsequent encounter with a rosiness Eazy-E paved the way for both Dre and Arabian Prince to join up with him to form N.W.A, with the idea that their already name-brand stars would help pave the way for the largely unknown repose of the group.
"Arabian had a name for himself," Egyptian Lover says. "The thinking was that he and Dre could make some good records and in the process serve get N.W.A's foot in the door. No one called it 'electro hip-hop' back then, it was just 'hip-hop.' "
The group's first base single featured the Prince-produced "Panic Zone" on its A side, along with other tunes such as "Dopeman" and "8-Ball." But by the time N.W.A prepared to record �Straight Outta Compton� in 1988, Arabian Prince was on the outs with his bandmates and manager Jerry Heller.
"I'd ask when we were sledding to arrest paid, and they'd tell me to talk to Jerry," Arabian Prince says. "He'd give us $500 or $1,000 at that place, but we never got royalties, nor any statements or checks. People still ask me, 'What about the fame?' But I was never about that. Besides, all the fame in the macrocosm doesn't matter if you can't get paid."
Arabian Prince recorded more solo albums before decision making to follow up on a new career, although he continues to record and do DJ remixes. He's finishing an record album under his Professor X alias and has plans for some other Arabian Prince record. He takes keen satisfaction in the electric current generation's incorporation of old school electro-funk heavy in its work.
"Flo Rida and will.i.am. use the old-school electro-funk. Will even turned 'Stetasonic' into 'Fergalicious.' Even Akon's new poppycock is all up-tempo. It seems like the music has really come full circle."
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