Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Happy 20th Anniversary, Paul's Boutique

One of the finest hip-hop albums of all-time, end of story, the Beastie Boy's critically acclaimed, commercially ignored 2nd album, Paul's Boutique, was released in 1989.  It has now been re-released in a 20th Anniversary Edition.  I think for those of us alive and cognizant at the time, it still took a year or two to notice just how great it was.  Lots of Beastie Boy fans were into the straight up rock samples and snotty lyrics of the Licensed to Ill, and did not dig the maturing efforts (though, really, not that mature) of the Boys.

The album could not be made today.  It simply could not be.  Consider just Shake Your Rump--it contains unlicensed samples from The Bar-Kays, The Funky 4 + 1, Sugarhill Gang, James Brown, Afrika Bambaataa and Led Zeppelin.  There simply is no way to get those samples now.  Of course, it doesn't matter how many great samples you use, if your shit is wack, yo.  And this shit ain't wack.  It is a brilliant, brilliant and super-fun record.  

Enjoy!



4 comments:

Lucy Rhode said...

Brilliant.

Twenty years?

Shit.

Andrew Wice said...

Hold on, let me just get my water pipe and I'll sing along!

Muumuuman said...

At this point should we still call them the Beastie Boys? They're not really boys any more.

Big Blue Monkey 2: The Quickening said...

egg man.