nwa 5 minutes with arabian prince

He shared a group with Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, Eazy-E; he cut classics like Something 2 Dance 2, Panic Zone and Dope Man; goes by an alter ego Professor X and has just launched his new animated group Funky Lil Anime. Crumpet caught up with none other than the godfather of electro and N.W.A. dropout Arabian Prince. But you can call him Rab.

What have you been up to in the past year or so? I have been touring all over the world rocking crowds with my DJ and live sets, me and Egyptian Lover do a lot of shows together so we get to bang the electro funk beats to the masses.

Tell us about your new album? I am working on my alter ego the Professor X album called 2012 The Electro Funk Xperiment and a new animated group I created called Funky Lil Anime due out next year.

Funky Lil Anime? Yeah my new animated group. It has three members, me and two girl singers animated, we are trying to push the envelope when it comes to music so I think it will be really hype and fun. We plan on doing a cartoon show, toys and a video game as well.

What was N.W.A. like when you left? The reason I left N.W.A. was because we were not getting paid the money we should have been getting for the albums that we put out, it was bad enough that we had to split the money so many ways but to not get paid too made me have to get out, I made more loot before we did N.W.A.

Do you still talk to your N.W.A. homies? Yeah I still talk to everyone, everybody is so busy we don’t hang like we did back in the day.

What was the music scene like back then? Not as crowded as it is now, there were not many rap groups back then, and everything was so much more creative, everybody had an identity, now there are so many groups that sound too much alike.

And how has it changed? I think one of the main changes is that anyone and everyone is doing music, good or bad, technology has made it possible for this to happen, even people who can’t sing grab auto tune and now are singers, back in the day you had to have some talent.

You helped invent electro? I was one of the first besides my buddy Egyptian Lover to mold and bring the electro funk sound to LA, Dr Dre from the Wreckin Kru and a few others were rocking electro funk as well on the west coast in the ‘80s.

What do you think of the electro today? There is a big return to our old school sound. Will.i.Am used my song Supersonic to make the song Fergalicious, and there are a lot of new songs popping up every day that are sampling or redoing ‘80s electro.

Music you dig? I was really into Prince, Kraftwerk and Parliament Funkadelic back in the day and all this contributed to my music style.

Tell us about Professor X? Professor X is an alter ego of mine that I created in the ‘80s when I made this song Professor X (Saga), I could not release it under Arabian Prince because I already had a record out at the time, so I created the name Professor X.

Catch the Prince at the Arc Factory, Sydney this Saturday.

myspace.com/arabianprince