More than two decades after he helped define Los Angeles' early electro-rap sound, Arabian Prince holds court inside Sawtelle's vinyl-jammed Turntable Lab. He's still filled with the restless creative spirit that drove him when he was an original member of N.W.A and that is captured on the newly released "Innovative Life: The Anthology -- 1984-1989."
"The title had to be 'Innovative Life' because that song expressed everything about me. I always try to create and forge new paths," Arabian Prince, 43, says.
Despite a catalog studded with hit 12-inch singles, no one had ever compiled Arabian Prince's work in a single volume. But Peanut Butter Wolf, owner and founder of local hip-hop label Stones Throw, which released the collection, is optimistic the anthology will introduce a new generation to an underrated artist and educate listeners about the ways in which he influenced hip-hop.
Everyone knows the 1988 Arabian Prince-produced J.J. Fad single "Supersonic," "but nobody realized that prior to 'Supersonic,' he'd made a whole album's worth of material that had that same vibe, only with his rhyming on it," Wolf says. "Thankfully, now I can spread the word to a bigger audience."
Of course, Arabian Prince's relative anonymity stems from his own volition as much as from the triumph of the gangsta rap sound over its techno-influenced forebears. A self-professed tech nerd, he boasts about taking one of the first laptops created, a Radio Shack Tandy model, on N.W.A's first tour, and in the '90s he ditched the music business for his own special-effects and 3-D animation company, Hypnotx FX.
Born K.R. Nazel, Arabian Prince grew up in Inglewood, where he got swept up in the then-nascent hip-hop scene. Hypnotized by anything on the Sugar Hill label, he began peddling mix tapes at school. The tapes led to DJ gigs, which he parlayed into his weekly club, the Cave, in Lennox.
The Cave epitomized the come-as-you-are attitude of the Los Angeles hip-hop scene.
"It was such a mix of different people . . . ," Prince says. "We drew influences from the Hispanic community, the black community and the white community. . . . You had to play something for everyone."
He began doing gigs with the Egyptian Lover, another DJ gaining currency on the scene. He also hooked up with Russ Parr, one of the most successful DJs on KDAY, which at the time was the only station in the country devoted exclusively to hip-hop. Under the alias Bobby Jimmy and the Critters, Prince and Parr managed to sell 50,000 copies of their first release, a parody called "We Like Ugly Women."
