Following a Monster Debut
The Beastie Boys’ Licensed to Ill,” CQ “their self-consciously idiotic debut,” TL was the first rap album to reach #1 and a true blockbuster. It “was sonically similar to the rap-rock hybrid of Run DMC’s Raising Hell but has a jovial, frat-party feel quite apart from many of the band’s hip-hop contemporaries.” TB “In a genre dominated by hardcore rappers like Public Enemy and N.W.A., three white boys who fought for their right to party didn’t seem capable of becoming a hip-hop powerhouse.” RV “Most considered the Beastie Boys a joke rap group.” RV They were “pigeonholed by many as a one-and-done gimmick.” PM
So what do you do next? “Ditch the producer, say farewell to the frat boy image, and make the music you feel truly represents you rather than going down a path that puts you in a box.” CQ That seemed risky enough, but the Beasties were also dealing with “their messy, litigious departure from Def Jam,” AM “the epicenter of hip-hop.” CM They also bolted from “their beloved New York to Los Angeles…It appeared that the Beasties had completely lost the plot.” AM
“When Paul’s Boutique dropped in 1989 there was a collective double-take.” CM Initially, it “was too much for casual fans upon release, [but] it soon made a devout following willing to inhabit these tracks.” CM Similarly, many critics thought it “was a muddled mess…but that’s the nature of the record – it’s so dense, it’s bewildering at first, revealing its considerable charms with each play.” AM
Creating a Masterpiece
Paul’s Boutique eventually “proved skeptics wrong. Gone were the screeching guitars and Led Zeppelin riffs indicative of License to Ill.” RV Instead, they created “a tribute to ’70s funk and fast talking” CM with samples from sources as diverse James Brown, the Beatles, Curtis Mayfield, the Commodores, Elvis Costello, Bob Marley, the Ramones, and Afrika Bambaataa.
“The sheer number and range of samples on this album is unrivaled.” RD “There is so much information in the music and words that it can seem impenetrable at first, but upon repeated spins it opens up slowly, assuredly, revealing more every listen. Musically, few hip-hop records have ever been so rich; it’s not just the recontextulations of familiar music via samples, it’s the flow of each song and the album as a whole, culminating in the widescreen suite that closes the record.” AM
“The album wasn’t as successful as the group’s first album upon release, but its esteem grew as time went on.” CQ It “is a far more musically impressive statement than the group’s debut.” TB “It’s now rightfully exalted as a production masterpiece and a hip-hop game-changer.” PM It has even been called “the Beastie Boys’ magnum opus” CQ and “one of the high points of late-1980s hip-hop.” TB “The unspoken consensus among the hip-hop elite,” TM according to Public Enemy’s Chuck D, was that the Beastie Boys “’had better beats’ than just about anyone in the game.” TM
Reinventing Their Sound
“To put it mildly, it’s a considerable change from the hard rock of Licensed to Ill, shifting to layers of samples and beats so intertwined they move beyond psychedelic; it’s a painting with sound. Paul’s Boutique is a record that only could have been made in a specific time and place.” AM “Few records of any kind evince this much head-spinning joy…it announced that the Beasties were an innovative force.” TL
The Beastie Boys recruited Mike Simpson and John King, better known as “the Dust Brothers, a Los Angeles-based production duo who helped redefine what sampling could be with this record.” AM The created “something unheard of in hip-hop at that time. While the lyrics showed growth and their true love of the genre, the album remains a stalwart of lists like this because of its production innovation.” CQ “The result is a psychedelic sound collage, often drowned in reverb that sounds nothing like anything that came before.” TB “Hip-hop wasn’t done like this in 1989. Production before this album was still very simple and sparse.” CQ
Sampling
Paul's Boutique is “known for its inventive sampling and layered production, with tracks like Shake Your Rump and Hey Ladies showcasing their unique ability to blend diverse sounds into an adventurous and influential hip-hop record.” OH “The Beasties didn’t invent sampling, but they did elevate it into an art form that still has crate diggers in awe of the trio’s to-the-boroughs-born chutzpah.” EW’12 Paul’s Boutique “layered samples on top of samples and looked beyond the typical sources of jazz, rock, and gospel. It’s one of the first hip-hop albums where ‘lush’ is not only an apt description, but probably the best one. It’s one of the best examples in any genre of reinvention.” CQ
“On some tunes, each individual drum tone is drawn from a different source. Then the group crams tons of information where the beats would ordinarily go and drops in more sampled exclamations to punctuate the lyrics or provide ironic running commentary.” TM
On one song, Egg Man, the Beasties sampled Sly and the Family Stone, Public Enemy, Curtis Mayfield, Bernard Herrmann’s score from Cape Fear and dialogue from Jaws and Psycho.” TL Other “Snatches of familiar music…[include] Loggins & Messina’s ‘Your Mama Don’t Dance’ and the Ramones’ ‘Suzy Is a Headbanger’ – but never once are they presented in lazy, predictable ways.” TL
“All of the samples were stitched together and overstuffed until they became a mattress for bouncy, pop culture obsessed rhymes (‘There's more to me than you’ll ever know/ And I’ve got more hits than Sadaharu Oh/ Tom Thumb, Tom Cushman or Tom Foolery/ Date women on TV with the help of Chuck Woolery’).” TL “The Dust Brothers and Beasties weave a crazy-quilt of samples, beats, loops, and tricks, which creates a hyper-surreal alternate reality – a romanticized, funhouse reflection of New York where all pop music and culture exist on the same strata, feeding off each other, mocking each other, evolving into a wholly unique record, unlike anything that came before or after. It very well could be that its density is what alienated listeners and critics at the time.” AM
The End of Free Sampling
The album marked “the very end of what might be called the ‘free’ era of hip-hop: The Beasties used most of the material without permission from the original creators. Less than two years after this release,” TM “a series of lawsuits, most notably Gilbert O’Sullivan’s suit against Biz Markie,” AM “changed common hip-hop practice about samples, making it prohibitively expensive to reference other recordings in the collage style heard here.” TM Now all samples had to be cleared with their creators; the result was that “the only person who could afford to make it is Bill Gates.” TL “Which is really a shame, because if ever a record could be used as incontrovertible proof that sampling is its own art form, it's Paul's Boutique.” AM
An Homage to the Beatles?
“The Sound of Science includes Beatles samples, and B-Boy Bouillabaisse is a nearly 13-minute tribute to Abbey Road. The Beasties wanted this to be as expansive and diverse as The White Album or Abbey Road, and they clearly succeeded.” RV Like Abbey Road this album “ambitiously stitches together song fragments in a way rarely heard before or since.” RS500
The Lyrics
Paul’s Boutique “documents the Beastie Boys’ substantial evolution as lyricists.” TM “Lyrically, the Beasties have never been better — not just because their jokes are razor-sharp, but because they construct full-bodied narratives and evocative portraits of characters and places.” AM The album finds the trio “perfecting their patented three-man weave and showing a keen knack for portraying their own unique Beastie vantage on the world.” PM They “became a machine-gunning quip dispenser, flattening rivals with wisecracks while shouting down all sorts of biases and double standards.” TM
While there were songs such as “Shape Your Rump” that “wouldn’t have been out of place on the Beastie Boys’ debut” TB the Beasties “take in a wider variety of subjects…and showcase a markedly improved delivery style.” TB The album “is dense with language, as lines are traded with breakneck enjoyment and jokes hit like rimshots as vocal samples supply exhortations.” CM
“Few pop records offer this much to savor, and if Paul’s Boutique only made a modest impact upon its initial release, over time its influence could be heard through pop and rap, yet no matter how its influence was felt, it stands alone as a record of stunning vision, maturity, and accomplishment. Plus, it's a hell of a lot of fun, no matter how many times you've heard it.” AM
|
