After their debut 'License To Ill' appeared on every radio in the world with hit smash singles such as 'No Sleep 'Til Brooklyn' and '(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party!)' people dismissed this hip-hop trio as a novelty, that they only had a few good songs and would be gone soon after. Thoughts were that they could never make anything better than their debut and all albums coming afterwards would only sell a few copies and lose mainstream appeal.Needless to say, they didn't expect this at all.
Mike D, MCA, and Adrock are back with a vengeance, wanting to raise their name even higher than before, not even in terms of fame, but in talent. They wanted to be known not as those guys who had those successful singles, but talented artists that could stand on their own, even after all of the fame died down. And this album certainly proved it.
The rhymes are fierce, no matter what they're talking about, from their lives, to how awesome they are, to egging people. But no matter what they talk about, no matter how serious the subject is, it sounds happy. The boys are obviously having fun, and messing around, pretending to be hardcore gangsters, it almost feels like they're making fun of hip-hop as a whole at times, even though I don't think that was entirely their intent.
Adrock, Mike D, and MCA work so well throughout these songs it's almost like they're metaphorially cutting through the songs like the songs were butter and their voices were hot knives. They work so well together with such energy, humor, cleverness, and accuracy that it's almost impossible to imagine any of them ever having a solo career. They're best friends, and it shows, with the way they interact with eachother in the songs. They're having the times of their lives, and it shows.Onto the beats, around 300 songs, give or take, are sampled throughout this whole album. You can probably recognize parts of a few songs, up to even around 30 samples per song, of just instruments, rhythms, and other assorted things. The boys only play instruments on one track, 'Staring Down the Barrel of a Gun', and the rest, like I said, are entirely composed of samples to create whole new songs. They even sampled a few Beatles songs on 'The Sounds of Science' which actually caused them to be sued by them, but Mike D joked before "We were sued by the Beatles. How cool is that?
This album is just a wild ride. From the slow, boring opener of 'To All the Girls' leading into the energy-packed 'Shake Your Rump', to the ending 12 minute track of 'B-Boy Bouillabaisse' where they go through several short songs in that period to end the album on a high and varied note, it's just an album full of excellent rhymes, style, and beats. Chuck D of Public Enemy even joked that the deep dark secret within the hip-hop community was that Paul's Boutique had the best beats.
Production brings this down a leg or two, but that's expected, this was recorded in '88 or '89 afterall. I just wish the songs sounded a bit more full.
I don't even know how much I can go into this. The album is just brilliant. A real landmark hip-hop album that changed the world. The reception to this at first was bad, but then the world began to see how awesome of an album this is.
One of my favorites, and possibly my favorite by these guys.
8/10
Recommended Track(s): Shake Your Rump, Eggman, The Sounds of Science
