LABEL SHOWCASE: DEW DOO MAN RECORDS
- Secret Sauces
- Jul 20
- 9 min read
Updated: Sep 14
The story of the short-lived Prince Paul imprint from 1991...
Prince Paul, the Stetsasonic DJ and legendary producer with De La Soul, was at his commercial peak in the early ‘90s. Coming off the huge success of 3 Feet High And Rising, he was highly in-demand as a producer and remixer for other big artists such as Big Daddy Kane, 3rd Bass and MC Lyte, and even turning down work with acts like The B-52's and Prince due to his insane workload at the time. His management, Rush (Russell Simmons and Lyor Cohen, who also ran Def Jam at the time) noticed, and wanted Paul in on their new scheme: Rush Associated Labels...
In 1990, Simmons and Cohen started RAL, essentially an umbrella of various artist-led imprints which would be distributed by Columbia. There would only be 4 ‘Rush Associated Labels’ in total. ‘JMJ’, ran by RUN-D.M.C.’s Jam Master Jay would be the crown jewel, having been founded long before in 1985 and existing until Jay’s murder in 2002. JMJ would find success with artists such as Onyx, Jayo Felony and early recordings by 50 Cent. ‘P.R.O. Division’ was Terminator X of Public Enemy’s label, running from 1990 to 1994 and mainly served to release Terminator X’s solo recordings. Another label, ‘No Face’ was run by the hip hop duo of the same name, which released their records along with another short-lived trio BWP (aka Bytches With Problems), between 1990 and 1993.
But the most short-lived label of them all, with the fewest releases, and one that had the potential to be genuinely great was Prince Paul’s ‘Dew Doo Man Records’. With just one proper release as a 12" single in 1991, Mr Boops by Resident Alien. There was a completed Resident Alien LP which never saw release (now bootlegged), and recording sessions underway for another artist, Mic Teluxe. Why? Well…
Simmons and Cohen spent weeks calling a resistant Paul, trying to persuade him into having his own RAL imprint. Initially he wasn’t too keen, being much more music-oriented than business-oriented, but the ever-loyal Prince Paul soon realised that it was a good opportunity to sign his friends from Amityville in Long Island, NY. There was one caveat, though - it had to be called Dew Doo Man Records. Simmons pushed back somewhat, suggesting more marketable, generic names such as 'Prince Paul Records', but Paul insisted: it was Dew Doo Man or nothing. The Dew Doo Man name and logo comes from a recurring doodle Paul sketched in his school days on his textbooks, a superhero pile of poo with eyes and a cape - not too dissimilar to what would become the poo emoji (minus the cape).
The neighbourhood friends he signed were a reggae-infused hip-hop group called Resident Alien, formed from a group of his Caribbean friends (Double B, Dragon & Mister Bug) with the name taken from a green card. The other signing was childhood friend Mike Teelucksingh, aka Mic Teluxe. Mike had been a part of Paul’s early-’80s crew ‘Soul Brothers’, with Don ‘Kid Wonder’ Newkirk (RIP). He was also a recording engineer too, and you will find him credited as an engineer on most Prince Paul productions from 1989-1991.
Before the artists were signed to Dew Doo Man, Rush required demos for pre-approval and Paul produced demos for Resident Alien and Mic Teluxe. It soon transpired that Mike had secretly shopped around his demo to other labels behind Paul’s back, which made Simmons and Cohen uneasy, but Paul had overlooked this treacherous act due to his own loyalty to his friends. Now, both Mike and Resident Alien were signed to Dew Doo Man and work commenced on their respective records. At the same time, a new A&R man (who may or may not be called Jeff…) was assigned to Dew Doo Man and Paul would regularly give good feedback to his superiors Simmons and Cohen, presuming the A&R would do similar about Dew Doo Man. The two signings weren’t greeted with much enthusiasm from Rush, with their expectations being more along the lines of the recent successes of 3 Feet High And Rising and Me Myself and I. With the Resident Alien album completed and turned in, Simmons and Cohen were not too keen on the different sound, and negative comments from the backstabbing new A&R guy influenced their opinion.
Nonetheless, the label was launched with the Resident Alien track Ooh The Dew Doo Man which featured Mic Teluxe, and a music video was shot both to promote the label and its two signings. The video opens up with Prince Paul behind his desk, saying that he has his new label but he doesn’t have any rap acts... “I need rap acts now!”.
Cut to: a long line of people at the desk, and Resident Alien bursting into rhymes from the queue, jumping on the desk and so forth. Then, in a delightfully surreal scene, Resident Alien leaves the label offices and hop into a cab which runs over Mic Teluxe, who flies up into the air and into the office to deliver his verse. At the end of the video, viewers would be left with text scrolling up the screen akin to Star Wars introductions:
“Hear yee, hear yee... Prince Paul proudly announces the signing of Resident Alien and Mic Teluxe to Dew Doo Man Records. Long live the Prince!”
Another nifty bit of promotion for Dew Doo Man was on the second De La Soul album, De La Soul Is Dead which was released in May 1991. Throughout the album are various skits of a fictional radio station WRMS. Prince Paul is a presenter as ‘The Dew Doo Man’, and the track Rap De Rap Show is a 2 minute 20 second track featuring everyone from Q-Tip to Prince Paul himself shouting out The Dew Doo Man. While the label and artists are not mentioned, there was clearly an effort to promote the character of the Dew Doo Man which could only be beneficial to the burgeoning label.
A promo 12" single of Ooh The Dew Doo Man was released to coincide with the video, featuring an instrumental and a cappella version of the track (both of which have not been released elsewhere), which led up to the release of the only properly released Dew Doo Man Record: Resident Alien’s Mr. Boops single. Released as a 12" single and a promotional CD single, the release featured Mr. Boops, Ooh The Dew Doo Man, Shakey Grounds and Mr. Boops (It’struemental), an instrumental mix of the song which is exclusive to this release. The other three tracks were taken from the forthcoming album. Prince Paul would later recycle the 'It'struemental' idea by titling his 2005 solo LP Itstrumental, which is a beats-driven record interspersed with bugg-out pieces (skits) of a ‘Mental Victims Unit’ hunting down and arresting the mentally unwell Paul.
Mr. Boops had a video shot too, and like the Ooh The Dew Doo Man video, it exists online only in very poor quality (I do not have information on who directed those videos, either). The Mr. Boops single’s sleeve says it is ‘from the forthcoming Dew Doo Man Records/RAL/Columbia release It Takes A Nation Of Suckers To Let Us In - 48503'.
At this point, the Resident Alien LP was still planned to come out and even had a catalogue number. An promotional cassette exists of the LP, duplicated by AKY in New York, likely for internal RAL usage. The cassette inserts list the album title as Ooh The Dew Doo Man, but a sticker on the cassette casing lists the final, correct title which references Public Enemy's 1988 second album It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back. Some copies had clearly made their way to the press too, as the November 1991 issue of SPIN magazine lists the Resident Alien LP in a list of staff selections in ‘heavy rotation’.
Meanwhile, the Mic Teluxe record never got finished due to his alleged ‘misappropriation’ of funds. An advance was given, and studio time was booked but it was said that Mic Teluxe was slyly selling the studio time on to other artists. By the time that the Mic Teluxe record’s production reached six-figures, no songs were completed or mixed. Only one Mic Teluxe track has surfaced so far, a song called Sexy, which was uploaded to Soundcloud by Prince Paul in December 2020. As heard on this track and his appearance on Ooh The Dew Doo Man, Mic Teluxe was a talented MC, and we can only imagine how good that record would have been if it was completed.
With Simmons upset at Mike Teluxe’s behaviour, and the Resident Alien LP indefinitely shelved, Dew Doo Man Records was going nowhere fast. Noticing that other Def Jam acts were having their records shelved too, Prince Paul attempted to form a union within Def Jam of other artists (including Sam 'Sever' Citrin of Downtown Science) who were being treated poorly by the label and Rush Management. Word soon got back to Simmons, who quickly put an end to Dew Doo Man Records and released Paul from his contract. Despite Simmons and Cohen’s reputations as tough businessmen, the parting was surprisingly amicable. As Paul recalls in a 2012 interview with Unkut:
“He called me to his house one day, it’s like, ‘You don’t want to on this label anymore, do you?’ I’m like, ‘Nah, not really’. He’s like, ‘Contact your lawyer and I’ll have my lawyer write something up. It’ll be fine.’ I was like, ‘Yeah?’...Russell knew I was a good dude and I had good intentions. He told me, ‘We made you do this deal, didn’t we?’ He knew it wasn’t like I was like, ‘C’mon Russell- hook me up, man!’ They pursued me, and at the end of the day I didn’t give them what wanted. He’s a business man and he didn’t see it as marketable. He said, ‘We’re on a clean slate – I owe you nothing, you owe me nothing. Let’s keep it moving’”
Due to the amount of work going into running a label and producing both Resident Alien and Mic Teluxe, as well as the De La Soul Is Dead album, Prince Paul was turning down plenty of projects during his commercial peak as a producer. The plug being pulled on the label was not just a blow for Prince Paul but for music, too. While it’s clear that his heart was never entirely into having his own label to begin with, he approached the idea with the typical sideways creativity and humour that makes his work not only unique but so lovable.
Some great later projects that saw Prince Paul working with friends and underground legends such as MC Paul Barman, Mr. Dead and Metabolics, Horror City and The Last Emperor show that it was a missed opportunity - Dew Doo Man Records could easily have become a legendary label home to some of the most inventive records in hip hop. Prince Paul was never going to go down the route of signing commercially-friendly acts and pumping out hits, but that was all that Rush were after.
Luckily for us, the Resident Alien LP was bootlegged on CD-R sometime in the noughties, and is easily available to listen to online. It's a fun listen, with good beats and performances, plenty of humour and showcasing the uncommon perspective of Caribbean immigrants in New York hip hop. As seen with the piece in SPIN back in November 1991, the record would certainly have found an audience who would have loved it. It may never have been a 'hit', but who cares? It's a different record, and a good one at that.
So Dew Doo Man Records was over just as it had begun. One single and two videos officially released, one finished (and one unfinished) record shelved. What happened next?
Mic Teluxe would seemingly retire from being an MC without officially releasing a record, but would continue to engineer plenty of records throughout the nineties and noughties (no more Prince Paul productions, tellingly).
Resident Alien continued for a few more years, and in 1994 they appeared on a self-released 12” and cassette EP of fellow Amityville Prince Paul collaborators Horror City, though Paul was not involved.
Prince Paul would continue to be one of the most creative and innovative producers, and began a solo career in 1996 with the album Psychoanalysis (What Is It?) before teaming up with Dan The Automator to form Handsome Boy Modeling School. Their track Rock N’ Roll (Could Never Hip Hop Like This) on the 1999 album So… How’s Your Girl would feature samples from Ooh The Dew Doo Man. He would continue to use the ‘Dew Doo Man’ character on business cards throughout the noughties.
In 2005, Prince Paul released Hip Hop Gold Dust, a compilation of various rare and unreleased cuts dating back to 1981, which included two Resident Alien tracks including the previously unreleased track Alone.
Prince Paul’s interview-podcast series What Had Happened Was with Open Mike Eagle was released in 2020, and the final episode touches on the Dew Doo Man saga. While he said that he thought the record was ‘hokey’, he said he would be open to putting the record up online as he said the mixes circulating were not the final mixes.
In 2017, a wave of sexual assault allegations against Russell Simmons surfaced, leading him to step down from all of his business and charity roles. A 2020 documentary Off The Record covers these allegations, and in 2025 Simmons filed a lawsuit against the filmmakers, seeking $20m in damages.
This article is from Issue 2 of SECRET SAUCES. You can buy a copy of that here.
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