Beastie Boys - Paul's Boutique 2xLP

Capitol / UMe (2019, Reissue)

Every Wednesday, in honor of Ed Lover Dance Day from Yo! MTV Raps, I take a break from rock and roll to write a little bit about hip hop. In the late 80s and early 90s hip hop ruled my musical life. During this often called 'Golden Era' I discovered so much incredible music. As I am slowly replacing the CDs I've had for thirty plus years with vinyl copies, I'm going to talk about some albums that had a really important impact on me during some very formative years.

It's 2024 and I'm writing about Paul's Boutique.  Granted, I did buy this double LP version close to two years ago at this point, but that doesn't really explain why such a classic album took over 30 years to get in my collection.  When I went looking for this double LP version to finally buy, I had a really difficult time finding it.  Eventually one popped up on Amazon.  When it arrived, the top left corner was dinged in pretty bad.  When I contacted Amazon to exchange it, they didn't have anymore, so they ended up just refunding me for the record and they let me keep it.  So yeah. normally a corner crease like that would bug me quite a bit, but on a free record?  That's much easier to stomach.

Back to why I didn't have this in my collection until a few years ago.  If I'm being honest, it's because I didn't really pay it much mind for a really long time.  When it was originally released in 1989, I had no idea it even had come out.  Zero visibility at all in my world.  I'm I'm not sure I would have cared at the time.  License To Ill was a record I found incredibly annoying as a kid.  I thought the videos I had seen were dumb and I really didn't like the other kids that were listening to it.  It wasn't until 1992 that the Beasties came back onto my radar when videos from Check Your Head started getting played on Yo! MTV raps.  

I loved "Pass The Mic" and bought the cassette single.  I picked up the whole album after seeing the Video for "So What'cha Want."  I didn't really think of going backwards at the time and was happy with Check Your Head and Ill Communication when that came out.  It wasn't really until college that I started to hear the lore of the 'forgotten' Beastie Boys record that was very loved for being so ahead of its time.  It still took a while for me to hear anything on it and even then it was piecemeal.  What I heard was good, but it didn't wow me like their 90s work.

I ended up with the CD in my collection when I was working in the music industry in the early 2000s.  I got it along with a bunch of other Capitol records back catalog from a friend that worked there.  But I really didn't listen to it, I just filed it away in the CD rack and it just sort of hung out there for many, many years.

It was my wife that really opened me up to the album and listening to the whole thing, as an album instead of a handful of songs,  That made me finally appreciate what an incredible record this is.  I think it's meant to be listened to as an album.  Chopping it up for singles, videos or mixtapes does a serious disservice to the overall piece of music that they created.  So yes, I grabbed the 30th Anniversary double LP version and it gets to sit right alongside of Check Your Head and Ill Communication on my record shelf.  For me, that's the Beasties trifecta.  And while Paul's Boutique is very different from the other two, it's every bit as good as they are.

Beastie Boys - Paul's Boutique:
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nc8KjgcZoiX8wIogP9lm5BzBfepScP6CU