Wanna be a superstar? Well, sweetie, in this day and age, it’s all about
making your own myth. ‘Princess Superstar Is’ is the true-life fantasy of a
bikini-clad Jewish madam, the daughter of a Sicilian-American mother and a
Russian-Polish father that grew up on a farm in Pennsylvania, but moved back
to her birthplace in the Big Apple to stake her claim as Manhattan’s premier
rap mistress.
This excellent record’s most recent precedent was Gonzales’ ‘The
Entertainist’ – the work of another Jewish rapper, fighting his way out of
the artistic ghetto with a riot of tongue-in-cheek wisecracks and
megalomaniacal myth-building. Where that record fizzled with deft underground
talent, however, the self-produced ‘Princess Superstar…’ is far more of a
grandiose pop statement, unfurling the red carpet for a gang of guest stars –
Kool Keith, Company Flow’s Mr Len, Beth Orton, and a whole host of New York
City rap gents – all here to toast this Princess’s sharp-tongued reign over
vapid record company puppetry.
While corporate cock-sucking is far from the agenda (Princess once ran her
own indie imprint, the splendidly dubbed A Big Rich Major Label) pretty much
anything else is on this girl’s lewd itinerary: ‘Keith’n Me’ finds her
dueting with a guesting Kool Keith in full-falsetto porno-rap mode, while, on
‘Bad Babysitter’, she plays a 15-year-old child-carer that masturbates
on the sofa, pops Valium from the bathroom, and threatens her terrified
charge with the cookie-cutter. Check the battle-of-the-sexes rap-down of ‘I
Love You (Or At Least I Like You)’ for the essence of Princess’ lipstick
feminism, however, where she goes up against indie rhymer J-Zone – and
naturally, gets all the best lines.
A young woman whipping the world into submission, ‘Princess
Superstar Is’ flips the macho bluster of the rap community on its head, and
kicks it square in the balls. Eminem must be shaking in his sneakers.
Louis Pattison