October 18, 2019

Handsome Boy Modeling School "So...How's Your Girl" (Vibe, 1999)


Children dream away. Some kids want to be firemen. Some want to be astronauts. Others want to grow up to be models--beautiful like Tyra Banks, sculpted like Tyson Beckford. These rarefied humanoids look good even when they're taking out the trash. Modeling sounds pretty yummy, huh? With the runaway hopefuls of the world in mind, producers/DJs Prince Paul (of Stetsasonic, De La Soul, and Chris Rock fame) and Dan "The Automator" Nakamura (the beat-maker behind Dr. Octagon) concocted So...How's Your Girl? -- a melodic brochure that sings the praises of the twosome's new venture, the Handsome Boy Modeling School. So...How's Your Girl?'s narrative is sewn together by "Look At This Face" and "Modeling Sucks." Both skit-tunes feature the rantings of comedian Chris Elliot -- rantings extracted from an episode of the funnyman's canceled Fox sitcom, Get a Life, in which Elliot himself enrolls at an institution called Handsome Boy Modeling School. "Look at This Face" spins the commercial jingle that got him open ("Bring your beautiful face and a check for $60..."), while "Modeling Sucks" delivers a peeved Elliot declaring, "I'm a male model, not a male prostitute!" over the ever famous, always ominous string-section strains of Ludwig Van Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. Ooh, la la! Outside of said two joints, though, supermodel chatter is nil. Handsome Boy's motto seems to be "Express the gorgeous inner you-through music." So the institute's many musically inclined students collaborate with their instructions in between wardrobe changes. The results? Gorgeous... There's only one way to describe the songs of the HBMS: futuristic R&B for hip-hop fiending robots. Get with it. Tomorrow is today. Paranoid androids like designer jeans too. - Vibe Magazine (November, 1999). One of the most unique projects, from 2 creative geniuses! Dig in...



The full Vibe Magazine album review of So...How's Your Girl? below...