Alex Henderson

Poor Righteous Teachers
Holy Intellect [Expanded Edition]

When the New York City-based Profile Records released Poor Righteous Teachers’ debut album, Holy Intellect, in March 1990, hip-hop was moving in many different directions. The gangsta school was booming on the West Coast thanks to Ice-T, N.W.A, Eazy-E and Ice Cube, while De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest and the Jungle Brothers epitomized the quirky, jazz-influenced approach of alternative rap. Luther Campbell & the Miami-based 2 Live Crew exemplified the raunchy, decadent, sexually explicit side of Miami bass (also known as “booty rap”). And then there was the Afrocentric school of East Coast hip-hop, which included not only Poor Righteous Teachers, but also, Public Enemy, KRS-One & Boogie Down Productions, 2 Black 2 Strong, Queen Latifah, Brand Nubian, X-Clan, Professor X, Isis, and Queen Mother Rage.

There were a variety of Afrocentric rappers back then: some were orthodox Sunni Muslims, some were active in the Nation of Islam and considered themselves followers of Minister Louis Farrakhan, some were Five Percenters (including Poor Righteous Teachers), some were Rastafarians. But Afrocentric rappers had certain things in common: their lyrics were overtly sociopolitical, they were likely to rap about black history or sample Malcolm X on their recordings, and many of them lived around the United States’ Northeastern Corridor. PRT were from Trenton, New Jersey (the state capital) and lived in a tough housing project called the Donnelly Homes.

PRT began recording in 1989, when rappers Timothy Grimes, a.k.a. Wise Intelligent, and Culture Freedom joined forces with the late DJ Scott Phillips, a.k.a. Father Shaheed. One of PRT’s strongest supporters was producer and Trenton resident Eric “IQ” Gray, who was running Northside Production$ (a small, independent label) with his colleagues Rohan Davis and James Lee. In 1989, Northside released PRT’s single “Time to Say Peace” b/w “Butt Naked Booty Bless”—and it was also in 1989 that PRT started recording Holy Intellect. Most of Holy Intellect was produced by the late Anthony Depula, a.k.a. Tony D, including “Time to Say Peace,” “Butt Naked Booty Bless,” “Strictly Ghetto,” “Can I Start This?,” “Shakiyla,” “So Many Teachers,” “Style Dropped/Lessons Taught,” the single “Rock Dis Funky Joint” (a #4 hit on Billboard’s rap singles chart in the U.S.) and the title track. However, Gray produced “Speaking Upon a Blackman” and “Word from the Wise” and served as the album’s executive producer.

By 1989, hip-hop had many different regional flavors. But there is never any doubt that Holy Intellect is straight-up East Coast, from Tony and Gray’s beats and production to the complex rhyming of Wise Intelligent and Culture Freedom. Interviewed on September 8, 2014, Gray stressed that Wise and Culture appreciated the classic East Coast b-boy aesthetic that Tony and Shaheed brought to the table. “Wise and Culture were very, very particular about their beats,” Gray asserts. “If your beats were wack, it wasn’t going to happen. Period. But Tony had the beats, I had the beats, and Shaheed had the beats. Tony was a master, and he really knew how to spin records. You could tell Tony’s sound anywhere: it was a raw, punchy sound.”

Things really heated up for PRT when, in 1989, Kool DJ Red Alert started playing “Time to Say Peace” on the popular show he had on 98.7 KISS-FM (one of New York City’s top urban music stations in the 1980s). Gray explains: “Imagine, you’re in Trenton—you’re in between New York and Philly, and nothing in hip-hop had really come out of Trenton. We were living on a prayer, and it was like, ‘OK, how can we really get this stuff out there?’ So I went to KISS-FM in New York. There were a few records on my label that Red Alert never played, but I gave him ‘Time to Say Peace’—and two weeks later, it was on the radio. That right there was the breaking point for PRT. There’s no words to describe it. Here we were, living in the ghetto in Trenton. We were getting played on a local college radio station, but to get on a big station like KISS-FM—that was fulfilling. And getting on KISS got the attention of the guys at Profile Records.”

Gray noted that at first, he had reservations about Profile’s offer. Profile was one of the top independent labels of the 1980s and had enjoyed tremendous success with Run-D.M.C., Dana Dane and others, but given the Afrocentric nature of PRT’s lyrics, Gray wondered if they would be better off remaining on a small, black-owned label. “Honestly, I wasn’t really in favor of them signing with Profile at first,” Gray recalls. “I was like, ‘OK, we’re an independent, black-owned label, and we’re speaking about black culture. Let’s stay independent.’ But I understood Wise and Culture’s position. They were in the ghetto, they were in the projects, they needed a break. So I told them, ‘Alright, I’ll talk to Profile and see what the deal is.’ We went up to New York, talked to Profile, and made a deal with them for some albums—which opened PRT up to Profile’s distribution.”

By the time Profile released Holy Intellect in March 1990, Gray had left Trenton and was living in Europe. The album fared well, reaching #17 on Billboard’s R&B albums chart in the U.S.—and PRT went on to record some more albums that included Pure Poverty in 1991, Black Business in 1993 and The New World Order in 1996. Wise eventually launched a solo career, and Gray—after many years in Europe—is now back in the U.S. and presently working as a producer in Los Angeles. Tony D, sadly, was only 42 when he died from injuries sustained in an auto accident near Hamilton, NJ in 2009—and Shaheed was killed in a motorcycle crash in May 2014.

Twenty-five years have passed since Gray first joined forces with PRT, and he still considers Holy Intellect a milestone in Afrocentric hip-hop. “In 1989, you didn’t just show up in the hood in Trenton saying you wanted to rap—you had to have skills,” Gray emphasizes.  “And Poor Righteous Teachers were the real thing. Wise was all about black men trying to do positive things, and if you listen to Holy Intellect, the music is so deep. PRT put some serious knowledge out there.”

—Alex Henderson, September 2014

Alex Henderson’s work has appeared in Billboard, Spin, Salon.com, Creem, The L.A. Weekly, AlterNet, JazzTimes, Jazziz, Cash Box, HITS, CD Review, Skin Two, Black Beat, The Pasadena Weekly, Black Radio Exclusive (BRE), Music Connection, Latin Style, The New York City Jazz Record, Jazz Inside Magazine and many other well-known publications. Henderson (alexvhenderson.com) also contributed several thousand CD reviews to the popular Allmusic.com website and The All Music Guide’s series of music reference books.