Paul's Boutique (30th Anniversary Edition)＜Black Vinyl＞

デビュー作は当時のスラッシュメタル・シーンとも呼応した内容だったのに対し、2作目となる本盤はキャリアでも最もヒップ・ホップ・マナーに寄った傑作だ。のちにベックの『オデレイ』でも手腕を発揮することになるダスト・ブラザーズの起用がその要因で、スライやクール&ザ・ギャングなどのファンク、サントラ、果てはビートルズまで、これでもかとサンプリングしまくったカラフルなトラックは、同期のネイティブ・タン勢に通じるスタイリッシュな匂いすら放っている。当時話題となった8面体ジャケもしっかり再現されており嬉しい限り。

ビースティ・ボーイズの1989年セカンド・アルバム『ポールズ・ブティック』の30周年を記念する180g重量盤2枚組LPが発売!

1989年7月25日にキャピトル・レコードからオリジナル・リリースされたセカンド・スタジオ・アルバム。ダスト・ブラザースのプロデュースにより、ヴォーカル以外は全てサンプリングで制作された野心作。メンバーのマット・ダイクのアパートメントとロサンゼルスのレコード・プラントで1988～89年にレコーディング。

180g重量盤ブラック・ヴァイナル2枚組。

Rolling Stone (p.72) - 5 stars out of 5 -- "[A] high-water mark of hip-hop's golden age of sampling....PAUL'S BOUTIQUE became a dense, dizzying collision of lyrical references..." Rolling Stone (4/11/02, p.105) - Ranked #5 in Rolling Stone's "50 Coolest Records" - "...Their accidental turn into great artists..." Rolling Stone (12/11/03, p.134) - Ranked #156 in Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Albums Of All Time" - "[I]t ambitiously stitches together song fragments in a way rarely seen before or since." Rolling Stone (2/6/03, p.65) - 5 stars out of 5 - "...A celebration of American junk culture that is still blowing minds today - even fourteen years of obsessive listening can't exhaust all the musical and lyrical jokes crammed into PAUL'S BOUTIQUE..." Spin (p.95) - "Dense, arty, and with enough production hijinks to fill a junkshop, it honored hip-hop history while predicting the future." Q (1/95, p.268) - 3 Stars - Good - "...betters its Bud-spraying predecessor on all counts: slower, funkier, funnier more diverse in reference....there is upbeat fun...silliness...and brooding invention..." Mojo (Publisher) (p.118) - 5 stars out of 5 -- "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." Mojo (Publisher) (6/00, p.125) - "...An album which shredded the rulebook. From 'Psycho' to 'Superfly', from Sly Stone to Ringo's dope beats on SGT. PEPPER, there's so much going on here that it sounds like a compilation....one of the most inventive rap albums ever made." NME (Magazine) (11/19/94, p.46) - 9 - Excellent Plus - "...Five years on from its release way back in August '89, [PAUL'S BOUTIQUE] is still an electrifying blast of cool....If you thought ILL COMMUNICATION was cool, check its younger incarnation..." Pitchfork (Website) - "PAUL'S BOUTIQUE is a landmark in the art of sampling, a reinvention of a group that looked like it was heading for a gimmicky early dead-end, and a harbinger of the pop-culture obsessions and referential touchstones that would come to define the ensuing decades' postmodern identity..." Record Collector (magazine) (p.79) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "[M]usic that seemed to digest all that had gone before it....An astonishing coming of age document..."

Such was the power of Licensed to Ill that everybody, from fans to critics, thought that not only could the Beastie Boys not top the record, but that they were destined to be a one-shot wonder. These feelings were only amplified by their messy, litigious departure from Def Jam and their flight from their beloved New York to Los Angeles, since it appeared that the Beasties had completely lost the plot. Many critics in fact thought that Paul's Boutique was a muddled mess upon its summer release in 1989, but that's the nature of the record -- it's so dense, it's bewildering at first, revealing its considerable charms with each play. To put it mildly, it's a considerable change from the hard rock of Licensed to Ill, shifting to layers of samples and beats so intertwined they move beyond psychedelic; it's a painting with sound. Paul's Boutique is a record that only could have been made in a specific time and place. Like the Rolling Stones in 1972, the Beastie Boys were in exile and pining for their home, so they made a love letter to downtown New York -- which they could not have done without the Dust Brothers, a Los Angeles-based production duo who helped redefine what sampling could be with this record. Sadly, after Paul's Boutique sampling on the level of what's heard here would disappear; due to a series of lawsuits, most notably Gilbert O'Sullivan's suit against Biz Markie, the entire enterprise too cost-prohibitive and risky to perform on such a grand scale. Which is really a shame, because if ever a record could be used as incontrovertible proof that sampling is its own art form, it's Paul's Boutique. Snatches of familiar music are scattered throughout the record -- anything from Curtis Mayfield's "Superfly" and Sly Stone's "Loose Booty" to Loggins & Messina's "Your Mama Don't Dance" and the Ramones' "Suzy Is a Headbanger" -- but never once are they presented in lazy, predictable ways. The Dust Brothers and Beasties weave a crazy-quilt of samples, beats, loops, and tricks, which creates a hyper-surreal alternate reality -- a romanticized, funhouse reflection of New York where all pop music and culture exist on the same strata, feeding off each other, mocking each other, evolving into a wholly unique record, unlike anything that came before or after. It very well could be that its density is what alienated listeners and critics at the time; there is so much information in the music and words that it can seem impenetrable at first, but upon repeated spins it opens up slowly, assuredly, revealing more every listen. Musically, few hip-hop records have ever been so rich; it's not just the recontextulations of familiar music via samples, it's the flow of each song and the album as a whole, culminating in the widescreen suite that closes the record. Lyrically, the Beasties have never been better -- not just because their jokes are razor-sharp, but because they construct full-bodied narratives and evocative portraits of characters and places. Few pop records offer this much to savor, and if Paul's Boutique only made a modest impact upon its initial release, over time its influence could be heard through pop and rap, yet no matter how its influence was felt, it stands alone as a record of stunning vision, maturity, and accomplishment. Plus, it's a hell of a lot of fun, no matter how many times you've heard it. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine