History
Handsome Boy Modeling School was a conceptual hip hop duo that parodied and acted as a commentary on vain, consumerist, materialistic, and self-absorbed members of upper class society, such as supermodels and people from old money. The pair often satirized upper class snobbery and perceived beauty.
In 1999, they released the concept album So... How's Your Girl?, which was loosely based on an episode of the Chris Elliott sitcom Get a Life entitled "The Prettiest Week of My Life." The episode also contains the origin of the name Handsome Boy Modeling School, where Chris Elliott's character enrolls to become a male model. In the album, Dan and Paul assume the characters of Nathaniel Merriweather and Chest Rockwell, respectively. The Rockwell name in reference to a pseudonym used by a porn star in 1997 film Boogie Nights; The Merriweather name is likely an homage to the character "Nathanial Mayweather" also played by Chris Elliott in the 1994 cult comedy Cabin Boy. A number of guest musicians appear, including Róisín Murphy (one half of the duo Moloko at the time of the album's release), Del tha Funkee Homosapien, J-Live, Sean Lennon, Miho Hatori (of Cibo Matto), Mike D (of the Beastie Boys) and Don Novello (as comic character Father Guido Sarducci).
Their 1999 single "The Projects" in collaboration with Trugoy, De La Soul and Del tha Funkee Homosapien was featured in the 2001 film Ocean's Eleven.
Their second album, White People was released in November 2004. Some collaborators from the first album returned, and new collaborators included RZA, Cat Power, Casual, Alex Kapranos, Chester Bennington, Mike Shinoda, Jack Johnson, Cedric Bixler-Zavala, Mike Patton, El-P, Pharrell, John Oates, Chino Moreno, Lord Finesse, Black Sheep, and comedy actor Tim Meadows.
In 2006, Prince Paul announced his retirement from Handsome Boy Modeling School due to business conflicts with Dan the Automator.
Read more about this topic: Handsome Boy Modeling School
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning of things, which natural history might with reason assume to do; but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,—when did burdock and plantain sprout first?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“... that there is no other way,
That the history of creation proceeds according to
Stringent laws, and that things
Do get done in this way, but never the things
We set out to accomplish and wanted so desperately
To see come into being.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)