Very few people knew what to make of it at the time, but 25 years to the day from its release (July 25, 1989), the only way to think of the Beastie Boys’ “Paul’s Boutique” is as a masterpiece.
In 1989, the New York trio were almost on the scrapheap. Their 1986 debut album “Licensed to Ill” had been a huge sales success, but it had also pegged them as overgrown frat-boys.
“Paul’s Boutique” — named after a clothing store on the Lower East Side — let the world know they weren’t just jokers out to make a quick buck on hip-hop, but pioneers in the genre and in music as a whole.
Here are five ways it changed pop.
It took sampling to the next level.
The vast majority of “Paul’s Boutique” was constructed from pieces of other music to create a dense, layered patchwork of sampled sound that was previously inconceivable — especially in an age when computers were not everyday items. And it’s unlikely that “Paul’s Boutique” will ever be matched in this aspect.
Even though music software has made the sampling process much easier, copyright laws mean that an album like “Paul’s Boutique” would be strangled by litigation before it was even released.
It proved that white kids could rap, too.
Many hip-hop purists in the ’80s understandably felt “Licensed to Ill” was a cheap, moronic imitation of a growing African-American art form by dopey white boys, but “Paul’s Boutique” helped break racial barriers.
The album’s interchanges were lightning fast, laugh-out-loud funny and had references that could jump from Charles Dickens to Colonel Sanders within the space of one verse. Without the Beasties, it’s hard to imagine that the likes of Eminem, Macklemore or even Iggy Azalea would have anything to aim for.
It showed the potential for music videos.
During the late ’80s, Adam Yauch’s interest in film pushed him to take command of the visual side of the Beastie Boys, and he used the pseudonym of Nathaniel Hornblower to direct many of the videos for “Paul’s Boutique.”
A particular example is the beautifully animated “Shadrach” video, every frame of which was painted by hand. Even now, it’s an eye-popping work of art.
It pushed the Dust Brothers to the foreground.
The beats and sample-based sounds of “Paul’s Boutique” were partly produced by the Dust Brothers (John King, a k a King Gizmo, and Michael Simpson, a k a E.Z. Mike). The LA duo had worked with the likes of Tone Loc and Young MC before collaborating with the Beastie Boys, but the success of “Paul’s Boutique” established them as major-league producers.
They went on to work on Beck’s “Odelay” and the score to the “Fight Club” movie. The Chemical Brothers adored them so much that they originally tried to call themselves the Dust Brothers too.
It brought The Beatles into hip-hop.
Prior to “Paul’s Boutique,” sampling The Beatles was something that virtually no one in hip-hop had dared to do, partly because they knew they’d never get permission and partly because they’d probably get sued. The Beastie Boys did it anyway on “The Sounds of Science,” dropping in bits of several Beatles tracks including “Back in the U.S.S.R.” and “The End.”
Although it annoyed the Beatles estate, the Beasties managed to avoid paying any royalty checks and, in doing so, they emboldened the hip-hop world to dip into the Fabs catalogue a little more — which paved the way for Danger Mouse’s famous 2004 “Grey Album,” which mashed-up Jay Z’s “Black Album” and the Beatles’ self-titled release (a k a “The White Album”).