Handsome Boy Modeling School: So...How's Your Girl? : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Everybody from Noreaga to Garth Brooks is hatching an alter ego these days, so leave it to wacky hip-hop producers Prince Paul and Dan "The Automator" to turn the multiple-persona craze on its head. On this collaboration, Paul and the Automator recast themselves as modeling-school instructors Chest Rockwell and Nathaniel Merriweather; hilarious male-modeling-themed snippets are sprinkled throughout. But So . . . How's Your Girl? also boasts lush tracks full of esoteric samples, intricate flourishes and merciless funk. Genre conventions are dismissed with soothing ballads ("The Truth," featuring Moloko's Roisin Murphy and J-Live), heated turntable workouts ("Holy Calamity," featuring DJ Shadow and DJ Quest) and inventive hip-hop ditties ("Magnetizing," starring Del) that flow back-to-back. The tried-and-true boom-bap hip-hop beat is the only element that pops up consistently, bringing out the soulful side of everyone from Sean Lennon to Brand Nubian's Sadat X. Rockwell and Merriweather may never sashay down Paris runways, but their How's Your Girl? has a hot style all its own. (RS 825)

KATHRYN FARR