Resident Alien

Resident Alien were a New York hip-hop group consisting of Prince Paul and three of his close friends. It was 1990, Paul was 20 years old and, as a member of Stetsasonic, he had already signed with Rush Management, Def Jam's in-house management team which handled most of the big name rappers of the era. He had just produced De La Soul's debut album, 3 Feet High and Rising, among other things, and Russell Simmons and Lyor Cohen thought he was the next big thing. They offered him his own Def Jam associated label, but Paul turned down the offer on several occasions. It took a $50,000 offer from Cohen to finally make Paul sign on the line. As part of the deal, Paul – overseeing his own Dew Doo Man records imprint – would record demos for potential acts and present them to Russell and Lyor for their approval. The first such act, and the only one that went anywhere, was Resident Alien, who went on to record their debut album, It Takes A Nation Of Suckas To Let Us In (1991). Shortly thereafter, several positive album reviews emerged. All in all, everything looked like Resident Alien was going to blow up quite nicely, but that was where it all stopped and nothing else by the group was ever heard again. Paul, commenting on the time he spent working on the project, explained the reason behind its eventual demise: "The Resident Alien was like my pet project. I was like deep into that one. But back then, and especially then, I was all about just having fun. I was like: 'yo, this is crazy, this'll freak people out - listen to this.' That record, and during that time, was very bizarre. Definitely too bizarre for Russell Simmons. That was around 1990. It was supposed to be out by 1990, but it kept getting pushed back. And then finally Russell said: 'you know, I think this deal isn't working well.' So it kinda ended at that." Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.