Critical reception Retrospective professional ratings Review scoresĬontemporary reviews of Paul's Boutique were uniformly positive, with the production singled out for praise. The album was re-released in a 20th anniversary package remastered in 24-bit audio and featuring a commentary track on January 27, 2009. The album received a gold certification by the Recording Industry Association of America on September 22 of its release year it went on to sell over 2 million copies by January 1999 and was certified double platinum. It was a commercial disappointment, peaking at only #24 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. On its initial release, Paul's Boutique was commercially unsuccessful because of its experimental and dense sampling and lyricism, in contrast to the group's previous album, Licensed to Ill.
The cover art and gatefold is a photograph of Ludlow Street (as shot from 99 Rivington Street), credited to Nathanial Hörnblowér, but shot by Jeremy Shatan, who was the original bassist for the Beastie Boys, when they were known as The Young Aborigines. The panoramic photograph of Ludlow Street by Jeremy Shatan. On the cover of the album the group hung a sign saying "Paul's Boutique" on an existing clothing store called Lee's Sportswear at the corner of Rivington and Ludlow streets, in Manhattan's Lower East Side. The album is named after a store the group made up called Paul's Boutique. The recordings for Paul's Boutique were later mixed by the Dust Brothers at Record Plant Studios in Los Angeles. The location of recording was credited in the album liner notes as the Opium Den. The fifth part of the album's finale suite "B-Boy Bouillabaisse" was recorded in Yauch's apartment building in Koreatown, Los Angeles.
Īll the tracks were recorded in Matt Dike's living room in Los Angeles, with the exception of "Hello Brooklyn". I think half of the tracks were written when we got there, and the other half we wrote together. They offered to strip it down to just beats, but we wanted all of that stuff on there. They'd put together some beats, basslines and guitar lines, all these loops together, and they were quite surprised when we said we wanted to rhyme on it, because they thought it was too dense. As a result, a lot of the tracks come from songs they'd planned to release to clubs as instrumentals – "Shake Your Rump," for example. The Dust Brothers had a bunch of music together, before we arrived to work with them. Speaking about the album 20 years on, Adam Yauch said: Records Inc., the landmark lawsuit against Biz Markie by Gilbert O'Sullivan, which changed hip hop artists' approach to sampling. We had spent about a $1/4 million in rights and licensing for samples." This type of sampling was only possible before Grand Upright Music, Ltd. According to Sound on Sound, most of the samples were authorized "easily and affordably, something that would be 'unthinkable' in today's litigious music industry." Mario "Mario C" Caldato, Jr., engineer on the album, said that "we realized we had spent a lot of money in the studio. Ĭontrary to popular belief, most of the sampling for Paul's Boutique was eventually cleared, but at dramatically lower costs compared to today's rates. The Dust Brothers produced the backing tracks with the intention of releasing an instrumental album, but were persuaded by Beastie Boys to use them as the basis of their album. In total, 105 songs are sampled, including 24 individual samples on the last track alone. While the Dust Brothers were set on making a hit record, they agreed with the group on producing a more experimental and sonically different record. Paul's Boutique was produced with the Dust Brothers, whose use of sampling helped establish the practice of multi-layered sampling as an art in itself. Put together on samplers with tiny memories, small fragments of staggeringly disparate musics drop in, then are snatched away abruptly rhythms and melodies remain in focus as textures and sounds constantly shift.
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