Princess Superstar puts the bootleg in

By REBECCA BARRY

If there was such a thing as surgically enhanced music, Princess Superstar would be the naughty nurse wielding the knife.

She claims to have invented a music genre that chops, samples and mashes together rock, electro and hip-hop in a hodge-podge touring as DJs Are Not Rock Stars.

But while "flip-flop" seems no more than an ode to bootlegging - the Ghost Busters theme might be mixed into the Chemical Brothers, or Notorious B. I. G into Madonna - she and her scratch DJ, Alexander Technique, do it over four turntables.

"We take other people's music and we totally change it," she drawls in a misleadingly vacuous valley girl accent.

"Nobody's doing what we're doing. You'll be listening to a song that you've known for years, like say, Public Enemy Fight the Power and we'll totally trick it out, like, we'll totally change it."

Change is nothing new to the artist born Concetta Kirschner who says she's equal parts Fugazi, Missy Elliott, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and DJ Shadow.

Before she became hooked on dance music and started her own radio show and club night (complete with go-go transvestites), she was raising eyebrows and hemlines in the New York underground for her hormone-fuelled hip-hop.

Princess Superstar's rhymes were either "kinkier than pubic hair" or tinged with an anti-corporate punk ethic.

"If you think my lyrics are incendiary I'll go back to being an insipid secretary, won't inspire no one, then the world will be safe, I'll just use words to talk about how Microsoft Word is so great."

Scores of record labels keen to cash in on her prurient white-trash chic, and the fact she produced her own beats and rhymes, were swiftly spurned - they had a tendency to tell her to stick to one genre "and that really pissed me off".

Instead she demonstrated her desire to "own everything like I was an apostrophe" and started her own company, A Big Rich Major Label which she later renamed the Corrupt Conglomerate.

Over four albums, the latter featuring collaborations with indie big-wigs Tricky, Peaches, Beth Orton, Kool Keith and the Herbaliser, Princess Superstar began living up to her royal title - and another declaring her the female Eminem.

"Let's try on ya mom's minks, think she'll miss these Chanel links? In high heels you look like Jar Jar Binks - go play under the sink," she rapped on Bad Babysitter, the track that made her one of the few white female hip-hop artists to break into the Top 40. "I'm a bad babysitter, got my boyfriend in the shower. Woo! I'm making six bucks an hour."

The single was one of many gems on her brilliant fourth album, Princess Superstar Is, released here in 2001, complete with an interactive game.

Shove the album in the computer and a digital version of Princess Superstar pops up on the screen to introduce her virtual "Tamahoochie" self.

Give her a spank and a gift or two from Gucci and she coos "bling bling, baby" before changing animated outfits. Offer her threads from Kmart and she snarls, "Don't you know who I am?"

Unfortunately not, as it turned out. Besides the mainstream exposure of Bad Babysitter and the occasional spin her ruder tracks would get on alternative radio, Princess Superstar and her virtual self virtually disappeared.

"People will get excited, but unless you have money and connections behind it they'll forget about it. And that's the sad truth. It's really pathetic," she sighs.

"I'm going to start selling out pretty soon. I've done everything that I can do on an independent level and I need to take it further.

"Now, what I hated about major labels, they can't do to me. They can't really change me or tell me what to do because I've already created myself over four albums. If I do sell out and go on a major, it's gonna be in my hands."

She admits that what she does could easily turn into something cheesy.

"Everyone is like, 'You're doing that because sex sells' and I'm like, okay, so how many records have I exactly sold? See, I'm not sexy enough.

"Once in a while I'll get some angry feminist, like, 'Oh, she's just like, showing her tits', and I'm like, 'Okay, well, for every one of those there's 50 others that are like, 'Wow, she's a genius feminist'."

You agree you're a feminist?

"Oh yeah, sure. Except not with Birkenstocks."

Performance

* Who: Princess Superstar, rapper

* What: Deep, Hard N Funky, at the St James

* When: Tonight