For a "crook" rapper, Prof can be disarmingly warm-spirited and silly. The Minneapolis native is the kind of player who fantasizes, "We could put a skyscraper where my garage is, 'vator to the top and give each other massages." He boasts, "I'm so Rick Ross, I'm such a big boss," even if a real gangster would never say that.
Prof is clowning for an audience he imagines is more innocent than he is. You can find YouTube footage of him belly-flopping onto the bananas at a supermarket, a gesture as true to his giddy nihilism as the claim, on his latest album, "King Gampo," that "I ain't hard, but I'm willing to bet I'm harder than you."
His version of being image-conscious is posing on the cover eating spaghetti and chocolate in a filthy bathtub -- homage to a scene from the movie "Gummo." You have to wonder: How much of Jacob Anderson, 27, is in Prof and his music?
"A lot of my fun songs are things that if I had the permission or know-how, I'd definitely do," he says by phone from his tour van. "I'd pour champagne on elderly folks all day long if I could."
Prof whipped a crowd into a frenzy during 2010's Soundset festival and toured this year with Atmosphere. "King Gampo" is getting play on college radio. Part of Prof's appeal is satire -- he rhymes like Humpty Hump reincarnated as Slim Shady with Nicki Minaj's multiple vocal personalities. But he's clear-eyed about a violent past he doesn't mythologize too much.
The title "Gampo" goes back to a childhood friend in south Minneapolis whose name became synonymous in his circle with shoplifting and other trouble. "I don't even know if he's alive," Prof said. "It had to do with poverty. There were so many times when we were hungry, and we'd just go steal some shit."
"King Gampo" coheres on the sheer strength of Prof's endlessly inventive melodic sense, and the guiding concept that feeling like a million dollars means something different to a person who grew up with no dollars. Mocking allowance-getters on "Poor Me," Prof still wants the stuck-up woman of "Lucky," for whom he sings, "I swear to God I'll be as rich as you," and the one he seduces on "Need Your Love" with the line, "Take a look around, girl, everything is paid for." There's class yearning even behind the question: "Why you staring at me like I'm from Neptune, drinking with my pet loon in your dad's guest room?"
Prof wants it all -- a Grammy, to be a millionaire -- and he's said he'll buy his mother a nice new car when he gets it. So what does she think of his hip-hop career?
