Princess Superstar
PerfectThis is an odd departure for the bad babysitter, Kool Keith collaborator and dirty-mouth darling of indie hip hop. Perfect is a breathless, lightweight bit of dancefloor fluff, fluttering down from the mirrorball somewhere between pop-house and old school hip hop. It's a bit De La Soul-ish, a bit like Blondie's Rapture (well, she does rhyme "bars" with "cars"), and sorry, but a bit like big Will Smith too. You know you love him really. Go on, do him a favour – write one verse without a curse. Princess doesn't go that far, but as my CD only has the clean edit on it, I'll never know what few naughty words she has slipped in. There are plenty of hip hop clichés, pretty facile lyricism, and a singalong chorus "1, 2, 3, 4, let me hear you scream if you want some more…" That's not a criticism, she does what it she's set out to do rather well, without taxing her talent very much at all. But if this is her wry, sidelong attempt at a "sellout" record, I can't imagine it's going to do super-well on the pap pop scene, or drive her existing fans far away. For my money, her best work remains that Paul Barman duet featuring his romantic rejoinder "Can I chime in? I'll still be rhymin' when I'm in your hymen." Delightful.
