Champagne, beautiful women, limos, expensive Italian suits -- hip-hop is filled with the proverbial signs of wealth, so to see another album celebrating this glamorous lifestyle is not only unsurprising, it's a little played-out. Except of course, if the celebrants are famed producers Prince Paul (De La Soul, Stetsasonic) and Dan "the Automator" Nakamura (Dr. Octagon, Cornershop), and their tongues are planted firmly in their cheeks. Such is the case with their new collaboration, the Handsome Boy Modeling School, and the album that's sprung from it, So...How's Your Girl?.

The album finds the two taking on the identities of Nathaniel Merriweather (Nakamura) and Chest Rockwell (Prince Paul), recruiting some friends, and delivering an eclectic mix of experimental hip-hop disguised as a self-help manual on how to become handsome. Nakamura had grown up listening to Paul's work on seminal hip-hop albums like Stetsasonic's In Full Gear and De La Soul's Three Feet High and Rising, and as his own profile began to rise, he found himself running in the same circles as the rap pioneer. They met and soon after the idea for the Handsome Boy Modeling School -- whose name was inspired by an episode of the Chris Elliott sitcom, Get A Life -- was born.

"We would often travel the world and see all these people and be like, 'That person would be really handsome, except...,' and it would bum us out," Nakamura explains, stifling a laugh. "We'd be feeling bad because they were only one step removed from being really handsome. So we decided we should open up the Handsome Boy Modeling School to help these people. We figured we would take the knowledge we acquired through our years of international travel and playboyism and make it into a course that would teach people how to be handsome.

"When we started putting the idea together," he continues, "CEOs of companiesand all these people wanted to hire us to be motivational speakers. They wanted to pay us tons of money, but that priced it out of the market of the everyday person. That wasn't fair. We wanted to bring handsomeness to the masses."

Hence, the album. After programming some preliminary tracks at Nakamura'sGlue Factory studio in San Francisco and Paul's Coffee Shop studio in New York, they began thinking about which of their handsome friends they should invite to join them in their noble task and tailored the tracks accordingly. Then, the guests were brought in to polish the tracks and lay down their parts.

The result is a diverse and vibrant album that remains cohesive in spite of its multitude of cameos. The Beastie Boys' Mike D and Cibo Matto's Miho Hatori duet on "Metaphysical," a haunting organ-drenched quasi-science lesson that wouldn't have sounded out of place on Nakamura's Dr. Octagon project with rapper Kool Keith. Brand Nubian's Grand Puba and Sadat X trade rhymes on the equally spooky soul cut-up, "Once Again," while Moloko's Roisin Murphy lends her velvety pipes to the sultry trip-hop turn, "The Truth," and DJ Shadow and DJ Quest Scratch up "Holy Calamity," an ecstatic turntable workout. Other guests include Del tha Funkee Homosapien, Sean Lennon, Biz Markie and former Saturday Night Live staple Father Guido Sarducci. According to Nakamura, the only guests they wanted but couldn't wrangle were Radiohead, who'd agreed in principle, but got tied up building their own studio and were unable to complete their track.

"We call the record 'the soundtrack to better living' because it's essentially the background music to being handsome," Nakamura says. "Y'know the opening scene of Saturday Night Fever? John Travolta's just a clerk in a paint store -- but you see him walking down the street and he's not just walking, he's strutting. You know he's cool, he's confident and he's handsome. In the background, 'Stayin' Alive' by the Bee Gees is playing. That's his theme music. We created 'the soundtrack for better living' to give other people theme music to go through their lives with."

The multi-faceted nature of the project makes touring behind it a logistical impossibility, but Nakamura's already concocting other ideas for getting the word out to the masses.

"We're working on making our course into a video program, kind of like 'Buns of Steel.' That way we can reach people anywhere," he says. "It's not about exclusivity to be handsome; it's about reaching everyone to make the world a more handsome place."

DAVID PEISNER
(October 14, 1999)