Seen in that light, a run-through of the songs on the album begins to reveal a ton of hidden treasures. Chuck D of Public Enemy admitted years later that Paul’s Boutique was the ‘dirty secret’ of the hip-hop community, who admitted privately that better beats were impossible to find. The Beastie Boys’ fanbase had evidently been expecting jagged guitar riffs and songs about frat parties, not the extended funk jams that populated Paul’s Boutique.īut here’s the thing: as the years passed and the music of the Beastie Boys, as well as the entire hip-hop movement, matured and became a serious art form, more and more namechecks began to appear from various places for the record. The public’s reaction was muted in comparison to the ecstatic response that had greeted the band's debut album Licensed To Ill. In theory, the Beastie Boys’ second album shouldn’t have been a hit – and in fact it both wasn’t and was, at the same time. Oh My God featured a slick guest rap from Busta Rhymes, who was a couple of years away from success himself as a solo artist at the time while Raphael Saadiq of the R&B group Tony! Toni! Toné! supplied an appropriately honeyed vocal on the track Midnight.īeastie Boys - Paul’s Boutique (Capitol, 1989) The dreamy flow of words on the album’s biggest single Award Tour – by far the band’s best-known song to this day – was complemented by the slick but always subtle musical textures that were laid down by the group.Įlectric Relaxation, too, sounded as its title would lead you to expect, saturated with smooth grooves from the catalogues of jazz and soul musicians Ramsey Lewis and Ronnie Foster. These examples aside, on this record A Tribe Called Quest proudly explored a lyrically obscure world of its own. By 1993, and their third album Midnight Marauders, the Tribe had refined their music still further, including explicit social commentary such as Steve Biko (Stir It Up), recorded in honour of the murdered South African activist and Sucka N****, which discussed the usage of racial epithets.

A Tribe Called Quest - Midnight Marauders (Jive, 1993)Ī Tribe Called Quest had made an impact as early as 1990 with their single Can I Kick It?, which sampled a diverse range of sources such as Lou Reed’s Walk On The Wild Side and the British children’s TV series SuperTed.

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