Less noted nowadays is the fact that upon release, and relative to expectations, Paul's Boutique stiffed from a sales perspective. You could buy the 4 panel gatefold in the cutout bin for <$5. In time, it garnered the respect it deserved, but it wasn't gonna inspire cash hungry copycats.
I think this is largely because a lot of people didn’t get what made them appealing.
You’re talking about poorly played instruments, a sort of annoying vocal timber, mixing rap and rock in a way that wasn’t being done, especially by white people, very often at that time.
The B-Boys were damn near on the ground floor. With the help of their producers they made one of the first Bass Bumping albums, the most elaborately mainstream sample album and arguably cleared the way for all the rap/rock albums with Check Your Head.
It's a good question, there's prob just not a lot of tolerance room for cheeky all white rapper groups, there at least should have been one in the 2010's though i agree
Not even collab groups with macklemore and ____ ____ ____
Talent, also effort. They were genuinely engaged in growing as musicians and people. And I think that was possible only because of the strength of their friendship. A lot of factors made what they did irreproducible. Nobody wanted just to hear three white rappers—we wanted Ad-Rock, Mike D, and MCA.
I think the Beastie Boys ran with Run-D.M.C.’s heavy end-rhyme style while rap as a whole was shifting (post-Rakim/BDK etc.) to subtler & more unpredictable phrasing.
& Beastie Boys by then were established weirdos with an audience less invested in the hip hop zeitgeist.
Lol. I'm tempted to attribute that to the vibe that came out of their friendship too? (Besides also being a product of the era they came out of.) The tendency has been for rappers to step back and let each other flow, which they did—but they always made a point of sounding like a unit.
I think three is the ideal number for that. Two can work (I'm thinking of, like, EPMD), but a duo isn't quite a group; and more than that, you lose the intimacy.
I'm still amazed they went from "Girls" to "This disrespect to women has got to be through." That's just…not what you see from three young men with rising careers in entertainment. It only worked because they meant it.
They were already at that point, many of those songs are meant to be tongue in cheek satire of meathead assholes. But when those guys unironically came to their shows and sang along the Beastie Boys cut it out because it clearly wasn’t working. That’s why Paul’s Boutique feels like a drastic shift.
Well, that and the striking difference in production style. Yeah, I was 10 and we definitely were not reading Girls or the wiffle ball bat line in Paul Revere as ironic. Probably the giant penis at the concerts did not help either.
Ehhhh... I love the Beasties but if you read/watch enough about the early era it's clear that there wasn't that much satire to it. Paul's Boutique is an artistic shift (the Dust Brothers get a lot of credit for that) but it's lyrically not that much more evolved
Well… I am down with this because they are literally two of my most favorite bands.
Like, if you asked me to name my favorite band, it would be down to these two.
Comments
You’re talking about poorly played instruments, a sort of annoying vocal timber, mixing rap and rock in a way that wasn’t being done, especially by white people, very often at that time.
2 unique 2 be copied?
can
do it
like mixmaster can
Excuse me, ima go throw up now
Joey Valence and Brae seem to be in the direct lineage, in terms of mix between punk and hip hop
STYLE!
They outran the others by a country
MILE!
Not even collab groups with macklemore and ____ ____ ____
Just groups in general aren't really a thing.
& Beastie Boys by then were established weirdos with an audience less invested in the hip hop zeitgeist.
Like, if you asked me to name my favorite band, it would be down to these two.
How’d you come up with that correlation? Asking sincerely.
https://bsky.app/profile/jeffertoya.bsky.social/post/3lgdmklvtr22x