FEATURE - The Gospel According To Prince Be
12/15/1997
By Amy Linden
Prince Be is explaining one of PM Dawn's latest excursions in the often convoluted world of sampleclearance. Capping off the group's new album Jesus Wept is a coollittle montage of covers: Prince's "1999," Talking Heads' "Once In ALifetime" and the late Harry Nilsson's "Coconut." OK. Now, since theseare cover songs, no lawyers can barge in and demand payment, and thelabel doesn't have to wait for sample clearance. But buried underneaththese cover versions are myriad samples of other people's music, andthose other people's lawyers tried to collect some cold cash for theirclients.
Problem, Be?
"I said, 'fine, but I don't own the publishing on "Once In A Lifetime"or "Coconut,"'" smiles his Princely self coyly. So? "So?" Be shrugs.It's a hip-hop Zen Koan. If a sample falls in a forest but there are nolawyers...
Reality and Be may be on much better terms than they were a few yearsago (he's married with a baby and is at ease with the press andhimself), but he's still nibbling on that cosmic cookie. He can launchinto an expletive-riddled explanation as to why he loves Christ, thennot see why his language and his spirituality might be at theoreticalodds. And you can't help but think that the potential legal nightmarethat sampling can evoke is just one more metaphysical good time for PMDawn. The exchange reminds me that Prince Be can take minutes to ponderwhether the expression "maybe, maybe not," in fact means one and thesame thing. In other words, reality and Be may be on better terms thanthey were a few years back, but there is still enough benevolentabsurdity surrounding camp PM Dawn. Sample clearance? We laugh at sampleclearance...or at least smile enigmatically.
Lawyers be damned, and while we're at it, the hell with radioprogrammers and those folks at video. PM Dawn are perhaps America'sfinest practitioners of pure pop. PM Dawn conjure up a luxurious,meticulously pristine sound that is, in the words of my pal MichaelShore, De La Soul meets Brian Wilson. The brothers Cordes, who hail fromand continue to dwell in Jersey City, New Jersey, weave a delectable,intricate fabric with threads of rap, jazz, rock, psychedelia, soul andanything else they can get their adventuresome mitts on, running throughit. "You know what scares me?" asks Prince Be. "I think that there'sgonna be another form of music that I ain't gonna be able to understand.You know what I mean?"
Jesus Wept, a title guaranteed to give Wal-Mart the hives, is yetanother sonic excursion into the land where there are no boundaries orrules. PM Dawn has not only leapt headfirst into the realm of the spirit(more on that later), but have advanced their search for a bettertechnology for a brighter tomorrow. "We pretty much indulge, a lot, intechnology," Be says. Ask Be if he finds technology dehumanizing and helaughs. "Now that doesn't say a lot about human beings, does it? Humansdon't wanna be humans anymore...Actually, who's to say?" he pauses."Yeah. You know technology does the work that people don't wanna do. Ormaybe do wanna do. Who's to say?"
Be smiles his soft half-smile. "Technology," he declares, "is gonna bethe monster that eats itself." A monster maybe, or maybe not. But amonster that PM Dawn needs. "There definitely was a technical aspect torecording Jesus Wept," offers the normally low-key Jarret. "To break itdown, we pretty much used all the advanced technology that there is."
There are live instruments on the CD, although I failed the "is it liveor Memorex?" quiz as to the (non-live) drums on the gorgeous"Apathy...Superstar." But like many other artists, PM Dawn have foundthat chips and bytes have given them a much greater range of expression.Of course, in the process, PM Dawn stumbled on to a veritable techieCatch-22: "To get that pretty much analog sound we had to do a lot ofshit!" Jarrett laughs.
No matter what they had to do or how they had to do it, it paid off.Jesus Wept is beautifully constructed pop--so pop that the old"are they rap or not" question seems silly. "This album pretty muchanswers a lot of questions for everybody. To me, it was nothing butpure, sheer emotions, you know what I mean?" Be asks.
Yeah, well I do, but PM Dawn's beef with the rap community is the stuffof legend. Although Be realizes he's never gonna be seated next toanyone named Ice at a party, he's still a hip-hop disciple. And he'smade peace with his arch nemesis, KRS-1. The two titans ran into eachother in NYC. "I said 'hi,' he said 'hi.' I said 'I like your shit.' Hesaid 'Well, I like yours, too.' That was it."
Although Jesus Wept is devoid of the harder beats that colored PMDawn's two previous albums, it is still carrying on the rap tradition.Because Be sees himself as a sampling artist, and that distinction keepsPM Dawn in rap's sonic sphere. "When we came out, we were very close totraditional hip-hop. What we were saying was, we wanted to be artists.We didn't want hip-hop to be just hip-hop. We didn't want R&B to be justR&B. We didn't want pop to be just pop. I was a singer, a rapper. I waseverything. To me hip-hop could have gotten the utmost respect."
Be stops for a second. "I'm a sampling artist," he continues. "And thereason why we sampled a lot of those songs is because that's what wewanted to promote."
What they promote this time are snatches of Deep Purple , old fave Joni Mitchell (never met her, but, more importantly, she always clears thesamples), and God. What was once metaphor is now straight-outtestimonial. Jesus Wept is a "gospel album." OOOOhhh boy. Hassomebody told Sandi Patti? "Anything spiritual, true, and honest isGospel and that's what gospel music is..." Be taps the top of his sodacan. He is thinking, sorting, shuffling, running all the possibilities."I thought it was something that was very spiritual, yet introspective,yet the connection to us all. This," Be spreads his hands in anembracing circle, "is what I'm trying to figure out. I'm just socurious, I'm so astounded by something as divine to me as spirituality."
