The repertoire of samples, courtesy of the Dust Brothers, was just amazing for 1989. The B-Boy Bouillabaisse also covers a lot of variety, and it was such a huge step up compared to License to Ill.

Well, the density and variety of the samples and rhymes was a quantum leap from the (admittedly often uproariously fun) crudity of Liscensed to Ill. And "Hey Ladies," is still a blast to hear. The record smells of pre-gentrification NYC, at least to me.

I still marginally prefer Check Your Head, but maybe that's because I'm a snob and I like the jazz.

Licensed to Ill is their best album. People don't want to admit it because they think how seriously a group takes themselves is somehow related to artistic quality.

Well, even on their later albums, you could hardly accuse the Beasties of solemnity. They always kept a sense of fun, god bless 'em.

I like Ill Communication the best, because I must be different.

(although I'll admit that I love putting 'Girls,' on bar jukeboxes. "All I really want is girls, two at a time, I want GIRLS!")

/male pig

I think the big difference is not just in the sample usage, but the role that the DJ plays in the overall production. Paul's Boutique gives the DJ a far more starring role, and the MCs are not just mixed lower, but their role in the music is also distinctly different.

Licensed to Ill had fairly simple beats, and the MCs were the forefront of the music. In Paul's Boutique, it's really all about the DJ, and the MCs are present in more of a supporting role.

I don't think I could make an honest comparison about which one is better, because they seem so differently focused, and I think they both hit their marks quite well.

The excitement was also the hype. At the time, the album represented Crown Royale's attempt to launch into a record label/media franchise.

But life's funny, isn't it? James Lavelle who had lent a hand in creating the album, went and started Mo'Wax sometime afterward. That label wound up becoming a number of things Crown Royale never lived up to. Ah, well...

Grand Royal.

*hic*

What matildaben said!

1. It's one of the high-water marks of the golden age of sampling.
2. It was simultaneously a huge leap forward and something that alienated a significant portion of their fanbase.
3. It's a total weed album (even more than the rest of the Beasties' output).

Wasn't Grand Royal more of a Check Your Head-era thing?

Paul's Boutique vs. Check Your Head is probably one of the longest running disagreements in my marriage. He prefers the former, I like the latter. Yet,like Matalin and Carville, we make it work.

And box is right about it alienating part of the fan base. It was a hugely unexpected turn for them and a lot of people really, really LOATHED it. But other artists loved it and were influenced by it, so it can be hard to appreciate just how original it was at the time.

it's not my favorite (any more) but it was for a while, because the rhymes are more cleverly witty or wittily clever on that album than any other, imo, and because the production is LEGALLY UNREPRODUCABLE today. It's one thing to say that it was a leap forward in sampling and all that, but mostly when people say that they just mean "it's good production and used more and more recognizable samples than any other album before it." But more impressive is that it used more and more recognizable samples than any other album SINCE.

See, thanks to this album (unprosecuted) and Biz Markie's I Need A Haircut (biz got the shit sued out of him) among others, uncleared samples became illegal, and cleared samples cost a lot of money. If you check a list of the samples used, and consider how many there are, and who from, you'll realize that it would cost more than the album (one of hip hop's most successful albums of all time) has EVER made to make that album again. And that's IF you could even pay to clear all those samples (which you could not, some people simply refuse to be sampled.)

when I say they're more cleverly witty, I just mean that Paul's Boutique is to Ill Communication as Oscar Wilde is to Lord Byron.

both clever. both witty, one is just a little more smirky about it. the other's more brash and ballsy.