Beastie Boys
Paul's Boutique

THE REVIEW

“Paul's Boutique” was released in 1989, three years after the commercial explosion of “Licensed to Ill”, an entertaining record and nothing more, although it was one of the first to combine rap and rock (even featuring Kerry King from Slayer in one track).

However, this album is much more ambitious. First of all, the three abandon Rick Rubin and choose the coolest duo of the moment as their producers: the Dust Brothers (yes, the very ones the Chemical Brothers adored so much that they borrowed their name at the beginning of their career). This choice marked the expansion of their music's boundaries beyond the hard guitar riffs that emphasized their rap for Ali Baba and their rightful claim to make noise. Thanks to the Dust Brothers, the three lovable idiots from the Big Apple decisively shift the balance towards black music, especially towards funk and seventies disco, making “Paul's Boutique” a more refined album, laying the foundation for their experiments in the 90s.

Sampling is obviously the foundation of everything (samples taken from Sly Stone to Curtis Mayfield), thanks to the skill with which the Dust Brothers stitch everything together in a frenzy of beats, loops, and various tricks. However, the new direction does not store away the powerful hard rock riffs, the raucous rapping, quirks, and the irony of “Licensed to Ill” (emblematic is the silly line "A lot of parents seem to think I'm a villain, but I'm just chillin'. Like Bob Dylan”). In the showcase of Paul's Boutique, all the items of this refined collection are prominently displayed: they do their best in “Shake Your Rump” with its continuous succession of different sounds, in “5 Pieces Dinner” where the three jokers take a trip to Nashville to dabble in bluegrass before returning to heavy guitars in “Lookin' Down the Barrel of a Gun”.

However, the moment that summarizes the ambition of the album is the long final track, “B-boy Bouillabaisse”, where the Beasties mash and mix assorted remnants of heterogeneous music to cook one of the spiciest and most varied sonic soups in their career as renowned musical chefs.