Paul's Boutique

Those of you who have known me for a long time know of my love affair with rap music, which has been from when I was nine to the present day, although I'll constantly tell people that anything from 1984-1996 was infinitely better than the stuff that's out today.

I was the only kid in my fifth grade class who listened to Public Enemy, Big Daddy Kane, and Biz Markie. While the other kids were listening to Guns N' Roses or New Kids On The Block or Bobby Brown, I was rocking Sir Mix-A-Lot's first tape, "Swass". However, albums by the aforementioned artists cannot be considered my favorite rap albums by a long shot.

My favorite album of all time is "Paul's Boutique" by the Beastie Boys. Not just my favorite rap album, my favorite album of any genre, period.

The Beastie Boys will always be my favorite rap group. They were (and are) three Jewish guys from New York who could rap their asses off. I'm Jewish, wish I lived in New York, and wish I could rap (at least on a decent level), so you can probably figure out why I'm so into them. It was an absolute thrill to see them in 2004 when they toured to support the "To The 5 Boroughs" album...the only thing that would have made it perfect was if I found a way to kick it with them after the show. Their DJ, Mix Master Mike, is so damn good that I almost announced my retirement from the DJ world.

But I digress.

I first heard "Paul's Boutique" in the summer of 1989. I was at Camp Ramah in Canada, and one of the counsellors, Adam Silver, had picked the tape up on one of his days off, when he went into Toronto. He knew me from the previous summer, therefore knowing I was a huge rap fan, and he let me borrow the tape for a day. I put the tape in my Walkman, and immediately loved everything about it...the odd beats and insertion of bites from other songs, even the great album cover (a picture of New York's garment district), and the fact that the Beasties were still alive and kicking, since it had been a good three years since "Licensed to Ill", their major label debut, had come out and I thought they might have gone the route of many one-hit wonders.

The only thing I disliked about the tape at the time was the parental advisory notice, which would prevent me from acquiring the tape for a couple of years (I was 12 when it came out). But everything else about this one was just perfect.

Apparently, I was in a minority as far as the general public was concerned. Critically, "Paul's Boutique" was well-received, however, upon its initial release, many people did not buy it. Who knows why...maybe they thought the collage of samples and odd rhymes was too much like De La Soul's "3 Feet High and Rising", another classic rap album that came out within the same year. Maybe they were disappointed that "Paul's Boutique" sounded drastically different than "Licensed to Ill" did. However, the beat junkies, DJ's, and others looking for quality rap music dug it, in fact, Public Enemy's Chuck D has remarked that back in the day, many DJ's knew that "Paul's Boutique" had some of the best beats. So it was a cult classic until 1992, when the Beasties made their full-blown comeback on the heels of the "Check Your Head" album. Fans liked "Check Your Head", and picked up "Paul's Boutique" (if they didn't already have it) to bring themselves "up to date" on the Beasties' actions in the studio.

I didn't acquire "Paul's Boutique" until 1991, when I finally said 'the heck with it' and copied it off of someone at camp. I was almost able to cram the entire tape on one side of a 100-minute tape (50 minutes in length), but I couldn't, thus cutting off the end of the true hip-hop tour de force, the thirteen-minute "B-Boy Bouillabaisse", but I didn't care. Upon revisiting "Paul's Boutique" two years after its initial release, I remember not liking it so much at first, mainly because of the references to smoking weed, which I don't do, but I'm more lax about other people doing it...that's another debate altogether. The more I listened, the more I liked the beats, which made me view things in a different light.

Since about 1992 or so, "Paul's Boutique" became a favorite, gobbling up the juice in my Walkman's batteries. In the summer of 1994, if I wasn't playing "Ill Communication" (another Beastie classic), I was playing "Paul's Boutique". I put "Car Thief", a favorite track on the album, on a mix tape I made for my best friend, who, at the time was an aspiring rapper and wanted to hear some different beats, and it's now one of HIS favorite songs. Of course, when I started buying CD's over tapes, I picked up a used copy, and it's also on both of my iPods. However, in 2002, I began my most ambitious project related to "Paul's Boutique" to date.

After spending a considerable amount of time hanging around record shops and surfing the Internet, I decided to try and find every song the Beasties sampled on the album. To my surprise, I was already off to a good start, as many of the songs they used, such as "That Lady" by the Isley Brothers, "Time" by Pink Floyd, and "Machine Gun" by the Commodores, were readily available. Others were harder to find, but thanks to fellow record collectors, I got mix tapes and was tipped off to these songs. When I gathered enough of the songs (I'm still about 75% done with this quest), I made a series of mix CD's for a friend of mine, where I sequenced the songs in the order they are heard on "Paul's Boutique". (You'll have to ask her for copies of "Samples from the Boutique", I'm afraid...I only made one copy of Vols. 1-3!)

There's also the way the Beasties rhymed on the tape. I'm surprised no one ranks Ad-Rock, Mike D, and MCA alongside KRS-One, Rakim, and Kool G. Rap (three of my other favorite rappers). These three have a knack for alluding to people, places and things most other rappers wouldn't refer to, such as Japanese baseball great Sadaharu Oh, game show host Chuck Woolery (both in the album's leadoff single, "Hey Ladies"), "The Brady Bunch" (in "Shake Your Rump"), and race car driver Mario Andretti ("Shadrach"). Beat-wise, the Beasties expanded their palette by sampling not just the classic rock and old school rap frequently used in "Licensed to Ill", but funk and jazz records, some of them bordering on the obscure. A quality I have always admired about the Beasties is their knack for taking three or four old songs and smashing them together into one great new one.

Seriously, I could describe why this album is so great for a long time, but I still wouldn't do it any justice. Just buy "Paul's Boutique". Listen to the CD, then listen to it again. You won't be sorry.

Welcome to the jungle, we've got fun & games...

Hello. Please allow me to introduce myself...I'm a man of (intellectual) wealth and taste.

I'm 32 years old, live in Michigan, and I'm currently in grad school at Wayne State University, aiming for a Master's degree in library science. I hope to work in a music archive somewhere. My dream job is to work at the Rodgers & Hammerstein Sound Archive in New York City. If not there, I would love to work in another music archive.

I'm the DJ at a sports bar in Troy, called Champps. If you're ever around there and you read my ramblings, let me know who you are and I'll play a song for you. :) My busiest time of the year is football season (both college and pro) and the NCAA men's basketball tournament--I play the music during commercial breaks, so even though you have to sit through them, you don't have to hear them.

If you haven't figured it out yet, I love all kinds of music (however, I do draw the line at Kenny G.)! I'm the type of guy who will listen to Frank Sinatra one day, and Guns N' Roses the next. My favorite genres of music are jazz, R&B (particularly old school soul & funk), alternative, and rap. My favorite group is the Beastie Boys, and my favorite album ever is their second full-length, "Paul's Boutique". One of my hobbies is taking old records and converting them to compact discs.

My heroes (besides the Beasties) include my family, Frank Zappa, Mick Foley, Jim Henson, and many more...just ask!

I love to travel. I haven't been able to afford to do that so much lately, but my favorite places to visit are New York, San Francisco (actually, anywhere in northern California), and Chicago. I've also been to the Caribbean, Mexico, Canada, and Israel. I've done a lot of cool stuff in my life...just ask.

I also love sports. Favorites are baseball, basketball (college and pro) and football (more college than pro). Pro wrestling is also a guilty pleasure...I've been watching the WWE for about 20 years, and am just now getting into TNA.

I'm into meeting people who are into music, into theatre, intellectual pursuits, movies, sports....just don't strut around like your stuff doesn't stink or be a bully. If you act like a jackass, I will call you out. Not a threat, just a promise.

That's all for now...I'll be dropping the knowledge as time permits. And if you don't know, now you know...