P.M. Dawn MC/producer Prince Be (aka Attrell Cordes) passed away June 17 of renal disease at age 46. Cordes had been afflicted for several years with diabetes; a stroke in 2005 left him partially paralyzed and he subsequently had one leg amputated below his knee. At a time—the early ’90s—when hiphop was dominated by violent posturing and hardness über alles, Prince Be dared to be introspective, sensitive, and unabashedly romantic: His New Age-inflected cosmic worldview and whispery delivery foreshadowed cloud rap by about 15 years. In 1991, P.M. Dawn dropped their classic debut album, Of the Heart, of the Soul and of the Cross: The Utopian Experience, which even outstripped the output of the Native Tongues clique for hippie-esque sonic and lyrical leanings. Twenty years after that LP was released, Stranger writers Charles Mudede, David Schmader, Michaelangelo Matos, and I made a case for Of the Heart being at least as important as Nirvana’s Nevermind. P.M. Dawn‘s 1993 follow-up, The Bliss Album… ?, refined the lush, glistening, panoramic funk of the debut and contained several gems, too, including “I’d Die Without You,” “So On and So On,” and a dazzling cover of the Beatles’ “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)” (which other hiphop act would have the nerve and ingenuity to remake a canonical rock song?). Prince Be was a bold creative presence who made being “soft” and keeping it unreal seem like the most ballsy stance a rapper could take. Rest in power, Attrell Cordes, a true original.
