Beastie Boys - Paul's Boutique Review

Retrospect is a fucking beautiful phenomenon. Capitol Records would have sure loved a stack of stock in that particular power when the Beastie Boys arrived on their roster at the fag end of the 1980s, fresh from their brat-rap rise to notoriety with Rick Rubin’s Def Jam.

Back then an extra dimension was what The Beasties were crying out for, after stoking such cultural tumbles as Volkswagen badge half-inching, not to mention a line in stage shows that, comparatively, lent strip clubs moral fibre. This was fun, sure, and anybody who hates on 'Fight For Your Right' or 'No Sleep Till Brooklyn' to this day clearly doesn’t recognise a classic party tune if it slaps them around the baby-maker. But nobody was proclaiming the two Adams and Mike D were anything more than – dare we say it – honky white boys having a ball; least of all the band themselves, painfully aware that the game was pretty much up if they repeated Licensed To Ill....full text Artist: Beastie Boys
Album: Paul's Boutique
Produced by: Dust Brothers
Label:Capitol
Release Date: July 25, 1989

Beastie Boys are:
Michael "Mike D" Diamond
Adam "King Adrock" Horowitz
Adam "MCA" Yauch

#156 on RS' 500 albums of all time list

despite all the love hip-hop gets on these forums, especially for these guys, i was surprised by the lack of album reviews under the beastie boys. the only one is 1986's Liscene to Ill, which is argubly their worst effort.

anyways this is the review for Paul's Boutique, their sophomore release from back in 1989, and most definately one of the most important, and even neglected, albums in the ever-growing genre of hip-hop. along with the help of the Dust Brothers (who would help produce other such landmark albums like Beck's Odelay, the Beasties help introduce hip-hop into soundscapes that went beyond songs dependent on a simple beat and a sample or two. this is an album of a staggering array of layers and textures, that wasn't really rivaled until the release of DJ Shadow's Entroducing... in 1996. Beat after beat, groove upon groove, this album was also a pinnacle in showcasing hip-hops ability to act as a pop-culture almanac, as this album samples and lyrically references as diverse as the Beatles, Bob Marley, Curtis Mayfield, James Brown, rockabilly, The Flintstones, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Welcome Back Kotter, Sir Isaac Newton, Psycho, J.D. Salinger,.....well you get the idea.

Not only did the genre grow from this, so did the Beastie Boys themselves. this album is unique as it illustrates their lyrical transition from the violent-and-mindless-frat-boy-gansta-wannabe-delinquency to the quirky and obtuse wordplay style that they now almost exclusively claim as their own in mainstream rap today. this is quite simply an amazing album, needles to say....full text Like this summer's block-buster movie sequels, the Beastie Boys' second album was anticipated with some hope tempered by much dread. On their bratty 1986 debut, Licensed to Ill, the Beasties -- Adam "Ad-Rock" Horovitz, Adam "MCA" Yauch and Michael "Mike D" Diamond -- established themselves as the Sultans of Swagger. Thanks to the heavy-metallic single "Fight for Your Right (to Party)," the album went multiplatinum and helped bring rap to a wider (whiter) audience.


But Ill was often credited solely to scratch-meister producer Rick Rubin -- and seemed destined for the one-shot-wonder bin. When the Boys weren't being called Monkees for not playing instruments, they were being called Blues Brothers for plundering a black music form and making more louie off it. Compounding the usual pressure of a follow-up, the Beasties split from Rubin and his label, Def Jam, over a royalty dispute and set up shop in L.A., far from the urban blight of New York that fueled the pillage-and-anarchy lyrics of their debut....full text