125. Beastie Boys, "Paul's Boutique"

 

Although the cover is all New York (well, actually it's a fake clothing store in the Lower East Side), the album is all Los Angeles.  In the past 2 days I have read both that it's the "Sgt. Peppers of hip hop" and the "Pet Sounds of hip hop," which gives you some idea about how it's regarded now.  It is surely one of hip hop's most classic albums, a total blast.  It was so much fun listening to this again.  In fact, I can remember this album being a big hit even with my non-hip hop loving friends, that's how deep it goes.

What's more important here, the Beastie's inimitable raps or the Dust Brothers' dizzying production, a dense soup of samples that would be 100% impossible to do today since everything would cost so much more to clear?  Let's take track 3, "Johnny Ryall," which contains samples from at least nine songs, including not unusual suspects like Kurtis Blow's "AJ Scratch" and "Kool Is Back" by Funk Inc. and not-so-usual suspects like "One of These Days," the opening track on Pink Floyd's Meddle and "Momma Miss America," not one of Paul McCartney's best known songs, and even the Beastie Boys' "Fight for Your Right (To Party!)," the one hit before this album.  The backing tracks are so intricate that producers the Dust Brothers intended to release them as the album before the Beasties heard it and wanted to rap over it.

And thank God they did.  The raps are just as dense and rapid jam-packed as the backing tracks.  You've got to love "Sounds of Science," where the Boys turn their attention from girls, getting fucked up, and doing crimes to, uh, more high-minded interests:

Now here we go dropping science dropping it all over
Like bumping around the town like when you're driving a Range Rover
Expanding the horizons and expanding the parameters
Expanding the rhymes of sucker M.C. amateurs
Naugels, Isaac Newton Scientific E.Z.
Ben Franklin with the kite getting over with the key
Rock shocking the mic as many times times the times tables
Rock well to tell dispel all of the old fables
I've been dropping the new science and kicking the new knowledge

The album concludes with a multipart suite called "B-Boy Bouillabaisse."  Part 3, "Stop That Train," is not unfamiliar to those of us who have had the experience of riding Muni late at night:

This one's dedicated to the boofers
In the back of the one train
They be kickin out windows high on cocaine
And then I jump the turnstile
I lost my last token
Right between the cars
Pissin, smokin
Head for the last car, fluorescent light blackout
Policeman told my homeboy "Yo, put that crack out"
You know you light up when the lights go down
And then you read the New York Post
Fulton Street, downtown

Columbia didn't really know what to do with the record, given its wild departure from the Beasties' debut Licensed to Ill, and it peaked at number 24.  It was more of a slow burn, a cult classic, as it remains to this day.  

Is this album in my personal Top 500? Definitely.