Playing the geek image to his advantage, the one-time Barnes & Noble staffer’s aim to rejuvenate hip-hop’s spirit kicked off when he started writing absurdities for emcee friends at the Rhode Island School of Design. After sending him 1998’s self-pressed EP ‘Postgraduate Work’, he won the backing of De La Soul producer Prince Paul for the haphazard sex musings of 2000’s ‘It’s Very Simulating’ EP. Yet it was a different Prince – PM Dawn’s late Prince Be, operating under the pseudonym All Those Mutha Fuckin’ Reasons – let loose on this B-side. In contravention of Be’s hippy image, his throwback beat is every bit as inventive as Paul’s, with multiple scratches and a cheeky DJ Yoda-like voice-over at the start (“We’re now going to progress to some steps which are a bit more difficult”). Capturing Barman at his most fluid and animated, ‘Housemate Troubles’ is jammed with nasal disses of the football jock he shares his student flat with, the acid reflux of sniping couplets like “I make rap masterpieces/You can’t complete your crap Master’s thesis” offset by an acute A-side that makes great hay parodying Bad Boy’s millennial hip-hop/R&B fusions.