Free Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique by Dan LeRoy

friends had initial reservations about the album as well. Cey Adams, who has been one of the Beasties’ principal sounding boards throughout their career and who now counts
Paul’s Boutique
among his favorite records, admits, “I really didn’t know what to think…it sounded like musical Swiss cheese to me.” Mike Ross of Delicious Vinyl thought his production partners had forgotten the MCs. “I remember being a little disappointed. Musically it was cool, but I just thought: ‘Where are the Beasties on this record?’”
    In addition, at a time when hip-hop was entering its Afrocentric Golden Age, the silence of prominent rappers and producers about the album was deafening. While some of that was surely attributable to the Beasties’ defection from Def Jam—the home of many of those high-profile MCs—others had their own theories. Leyla Turkkan believed that without the protection of Russell Simmons, the Beastie Boys suffered in the hip-hop community because of their skin color. “There was definitely a racial undertone,” she asserts. “Absolutely. There’s no question.”
    On the other hand, Sean Carasov, who was by now working in A&R at Jive Records and had signed A Tribe Called Quest, disagreed. “Capitol never had any faith in
Paul’s Boutique
as a black album,” he says. “So people like D-Nice and KRS-One weren’t even given the opportunity to endorse it.” 25 Neither was Marvin Young, whose massive single “Bust a Move” peaked that fall, just as the Beasties were fading. Young would have told anyone who asked that he thought
“Paul’s Boutique
was the greatest sampling record ever.” 26
    Mike Simpson also believes the album’s cool receptionfrom the hip-hop community had little to do with the music. He recalls the Beasties being invited onstage at the Greek Amphitheatre during Run-DMC’s Hollywood tour stop in 1988, and performing “Shake Your Rump,” to rapturous response. “The crowd went crazy,” says Simpson, “and I remember Darryl Mac—DMC—going, ‘Holy shit! This is the jam!’” The reason such sentiments never reached the public, Simpson thought, was that “there was just so much cool stuff happening at the time—you already had A Tribe Called Quest, and De La Soul.”
    Comparisons to the latter group, and its own sample-heavy, Day-Glo masterpiece,
3 Feet High and Rising
, would dog
Paul’s Boutique
for the remainder of 1989 and beyond. De La’s debut, produced with élan by Stetsasonic DJ Prince Paul, would beat the Beasties’ disc to the shops that spring. And “because it came out first,” notes biographer Angus Batey, “the Long Island trio stole much of the Beasties’ thunder.”
    This has led to the charge, over time, that
3 Feet High
was a direct influence on
Paul’s Boutique
, a theory which Prince Paul himself believes is correct. “Ad-Rock told me that. And I was like, really? Because I thought
Paul’s Boutique
was a great record, but I’ve never really seen any similarities. I’ve just never seen the overall feel of a record that came close to
3 Feet High”
he says, before adding, “But maybe that’s just my ego!”
    Paul’s friend, producer Dan the Automator, also says the Dust Brothers and Mario Caldato have told him that “physically, they wore that tape out” while making the Beastie Boys’ album. He continues, with a chuckle, “And you wondered why they called it
Paul’s Boutique?”
    Simpson, however, disputes this allegation. “I remember listening a lot to ‘Plug Tunin’”—De La’s 1988 independent single—“but not the album.” Mario Caldato confirms that
3 Feet High
didn’t reach the shops until
Paul’s Boutique
was being mixed—although after a studio runner brought back a cassette of De La’s classic, Caldato adds, “we were bugging out.”
    All opinions pro and con about the album aside, it would be sales figures that would cast the final judgment on
Paul’s Boutique
for some while to come. By that yardstick,