Legendary Amityville producer – and father of a 4-year-old daughter – Prince Paul is currently working on “Baby Loves Hip-Hop,” his contribution to the well-known series of CDs that includes “Baby Loves Reggae,” “Baby Loves Rock” and “Baby Loves Disco.”

“My goal is to make a hip-hop record for kids that’s not corny,” Paul said last week by phone. “I listen to some of this children’s stuff and I think, ‘Oh, my god.’”

It’s easy to chuckle at the idea of family-friendly hip-hop. After all, rap music isn’t normally the first place you’d go to teach a child basic skills such as spelling (“Ludacris?”), let alone social skills like, say, conflict resolution. But Paul is determined to change that.

“It’s for kids, and young kids, like your 3-year-olds,” he said. “And those are intensive learning stages for children. What we’re trying to do is teach them things, like counting and colors, and at the same time make the whole thing cool.” For more information, visit babylovesmusic.com.

(The whole project raises an interesting side-question: Might children reared on such hip-hop eventually be more amenable to non-gangsta rappers like Common?)

For his “Baby” disc, Paul is recruiting several artists, many from the world of so-called conscious hip-hop. Among the guests so far are Charli 2na of Jurassic 5, Mecca Ladybug of Digable Planets, Wordsworth and the spoken-word poet Ursula Rucker. There’s also a chance that De La Soul may make an appearance – after all, one of their best songs sampled Schoolhouse Rock’s “Three is a Magic Number.”

So far, Paul’s daughter is serving as his one-person focus group. “If she says, ‘Play it again!’ I know I’m on the right track. Kids are honest. They just go, ‘No, it’s boring.’”

Source:
Newsday