Princess Superstar isn’t the type of nice Jewish girl you’d bring home to mom and dad for Shabbat dinner. She is a rap vixen with a mouth that needs to be washed out with soap. Princess Superstar is hot and she makes sure you know it. She’s got the rhyming skills, ego-centric lyrics, and attitude of a true hip-hop goddess. “Get in ya shit like a colostomy impossible to compete with me/A Prophecy–I’m gonna own everything like I was an apostrophe/Number one on Billboard a record of me just coughing see.” But Princess Superstar redefines the genre with her performance art-like approach and her self-aware sense of humor.
On her fourth and latest album Princess Superstar Is…, Princess Superstar displays her gift for lyrics that are naughty, quick-witted, and fun. “I’m a cunning linguist,” she boasts on “Wet! Wet! Wet!” On “Bad Babysitter,” Princess Superstar is sending her charge to his room long before bedtime, eating all the food in the house, and inviting her boyfriend over for sex, all while fantasizing about the man of the house, the “hot Jew, Mr Weintraub.” (“I’m a bad babysitter, got my boyfriend in your shower, Woo! I’m makin six bucks an hour.”)
Princess Superstar is the creation of “28”-year-old New York-based artist Concetta Kirschner. (According to New Music Express she’s been “28” since at least July of 2000.) But Kirschner should not be confused with her alter ego. On “Untouchable Part 2” she raps, “Fuck Princess I’m talkin’ ’bout Concetta. You never met her.” Of the Princess Superstar character, Kirschner says, “It’s definitely a part of me because I created it, but it is more like a character because I don’t walk around being all (laughs) like that.”
Kirschner says the name “Princess Superstar” was actually inspired by a vintage toy drum set she was using for a project several years ago. While pondering names for her project, her significant other at the time suggested she call herself “Superstar,” which was printed on the drums. Kirschner thought, “No, let me make it even more obnoxious,” and Princess Superstar was born.
Kirschner’s work has earned the respect of other hip-hop performers including some of the genre’s luminaries. Princess Superstar Is… features guest performances from High and Mighty, Jzone, Bahamadia, and fellow over-the-top lascivious rapper Kool Keith, to whom Princess Superstar raps, “I think about you and the things you say when you rhyme/Won’t beat around the bush so you can beat around mine.” But Princess Superstar’s collaborations cross genres as well, with British indie folk rocker Beth Orton lending her vocals to one track.
Princess Superstar has been compared to a slew of other rappers. In “Welcome to My World” she notes that she’s been called a “white Lil’ Kim,” a “female Kool Keith,” and “the female Eminem,” to which she replies, “I’m the black Shirley Temple.” Kirschner acknowledges that “it’s frustrating” constantly being compared to other artists, “because then how’s anybody supposed to do anything new?” When pressed for her own comparisons, she says that she sees herself as “ten different artists all smooshed together.”
Kirschner says her work draws upon a diverse group of influences, including Queen Latifah, Prince, David Bowie, and her own Jewish heritage. Kirschner, whose Italian-American mother converted to Judaism before marrying her Jewish father, says that while she doesn’t come from a very religious background, she feels “a strong sense of being Jewish, for sure.” (On one song Princess Superstar refers to herself as a “Kike and a Wop.”) Kirschner says her work owes something to the “great tradition of Jewish humor.” She explains: “People throughout the history of Judaism have had that humor, so I guess I relate to that the most…the smarts.”
