An amazing spell of great weather has finally broken here in the UK. It has provided the opportunity to work on a new post and get it shared to all like minded music lovers out there in the blogosphere.
There haven't been any hip-hop posts on the blog (apart from the Costello/Roots collaboration, not because I don't like the music, far from it, but mainly due to a lack of high quality bootlegs in my collection. This is one all hip-hop heads should enjoy as well as fans of 70's soul and funk.
Beastie Boys - Saul's Boutique
Original Uploader's Notes:
"The quick and to the point version is this is a collection of instrumental versions of the tracks from the Beastie Boys' Paul's Boutique album. They were primarily sourced from the vinyl intended to be used for their live tour circa 1989, though that tour did not happen as planned and the vinyl went mostly unused, eventually falling into the hands of collectors.
There are several versions of the instrumentals from Paul's Boutique around, but most are either mp3 sourced or very low quality. Unless there is an official release of these instrumentals, this will probably be the best quality version available, period.
There are some small patches where there were skips and jumps that were unable to be repaired, but you probably won't notice them unless you're really into digging for such detail. Seriously, I think I covered them up pretty good. Also, the name is from Saul's Boutique having been written in sharpie on the label of one of the show vinyls.
This is a project I did with some friends. One of those friends would like to remain anonymous, but they generously provided the raw audio. The other friend is Harvey Cliff, artist and all-around awesome guy, who did the artwork and handled the physical packaging. Myself, I cleaned-up the audio a bit, edited it, sequenced and pseudo-mastered it. We had some professionally manufactured cassettes made that we gave to friends and intend to give copies of to the remaining Beasties and the Dust Brothers.
Lineage: STU > Vinyl > WAV > edited in SoudForge and iZotope RX > foobar2000 FLAC frontend > FLAC
Track list:
01 Ask for Janice, Pt. II
02 Shake Your Rump
03 Johnny Ryall
04 Egg Man
05 High Plains Drifter
06 The Sounds of Science
07 3-Minute Rule
08 Hey Ladies
09 Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun
10 Car Thief
11 What Goes Around
12 Shadrach
13 59 Chrystie Street
14 Stop That Train
15 A Year and a Day
16 Hello Brooklyn
17 Dropping Names
18 Lay It on Me
19 Mike on the Mic
20 A.W.O.L.
21 Some Dumb Cop Gave Me Two Tickets Already
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Notes about the original album released in 1989
"The Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique was a masterpiece in sampling, and an album that could never be made in the same way again. Created during the golden age of sampling – that is, before stricter copyright laws were enforced – it epitomised the times. Alongside 3 Feet High & Rising by De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest’s Low End Theory, Paul’s Boutique marked a change in hip-hop, towards the D.A.I.S.Y. Age of rap music you could dance to.
At the time of its release Paul’s Boutique was a relative commercial dud for the Beasties, given that the success of Licensed To Ill had taken the trio from middle-class punk kids to rap poster boys overnight. In Licensed To Ill the Beastie Boys came to disturb the peace, at least for the white, middle-American music market Def Jam were looking to break into. They succeeded in that. “I’m real mad at the Beastie Boys, they definitely messed up a lot of things for me,” said LL Cool J in a 1987 interview. But the Licensed To Ill formula was not built to last. You can only play the teenage rebels for so long.
Anything from “100 to 300” samples lie within Paul’s Boutique according to one of its creators, Mike Simpson of The Dust Brothers. With production partner John King the duo crafted Paul’s Boutique from their LA studio armed with an MPC and a near-encyclopaedic knowledge of funk, soul, rock, rap, jazz and everything in-between. For the Beasties, Paul’s Boutique was their unabashed ode to ’70s funk and bravado, an album as lyrically potent as it was tongue-in-cheek and one that helped set the tone for rap music throughout the ‘90s."
Paul's Boutique tracklist
To All the Girls
Shake Your Rump
Johnny Ryall
Egg Man
High Plains Drifter
The Sounds of Science
3-Minute Rule
Hey Ladies
5-Piece Chicken Dinner
Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun
Car Thief
What Comes Around
Shadrach
Ask for Janice
B-Boy Bouillabaisse:
a. 59 Chrystie Street b. Get on the Mic c. Stop That Train d. A Year and a Day e. Hello Brooklyn f. Dropping Names g. Lay It on Me h. Mike on the Mic i. A.W.O.L.
The website ‘Paul’s Boutique Samples and References List’ is the ultimate resource for the album Paul’s Boutique by the Beastie Boys. It has been compiled through internet collaboration since about 1993, it stands to document the samples and references included on the album.
see: https://paulsboutique.info/
I’ve included one example for the track ‘Shake Your Rump’ of the kind of information that is included on the site.
For further info on all the tracks, including b-sides go to the above website.
track 2. ‘Shake Your Rump’
Sample: Alphonse Mouzon - ‘Funky Snakefoot’ from Funky Snakefoot (Blue Note, 1974)
As one of the most underrated breaks in sampling Alphonse Mouzon’s criminally slept on ‘Funky Snakefoot’ appears only a handful of times in modern day hip-hop. Although Kris Kross’s ‘I Missed the Bus’ didn’t exactly set the world alight, the Mouzon break would become the backbone to one of the Beastie’s most recognisable party anthems ‘Shake Your Rump’.
- The main drum roll is from “Funky Snakefoot” by Alphonze Mouzon from the 1973 album “Funky Snakefoot”
- Beat is Harvey Scales’s “Dancing Room Only” from the 1979 album Hot Foot (A Funque Dizco Opera)
- Additional beats from “Super Mellow” by Paul Humphrey from the album "The Drum Suite"
- "Shake Your Rump-ah" - from the Unity album by James Brown and Afrika Bambaataa
- Mostly taken from the "Car Wash" soundtrack by Rose Royce
- "It's the Joint" - song of same title by Funky 4+1
- Bong hit
- ‘Scratch’ heard under "the most packinest", "your belief, chief" and at the end - "Could you be Loved" by Bob Marley
- "Hoo-ha! Got them all in check." - "8th Wonder" by The Sugarhill Gang
- Afrika Bambaataa’s, "Jazzy Sensation"
- Ronnie Laws, "Tell Me Something Good"
- The sound similar to a straw being pulled through a soft drink lid is an African percussion instrument known as a "cuica" (kwee-kuh). The instrument was originally used in Africa for lion hunting because the sound produced is very similar to a female lion’s roar, thus attracting the male. The cuica’s sound is produced by pulling and pushing a wet cloth on the bamboo stick.
- The disco call is from Foxy’s "Get Off"
- After the chorus phrase "Shake Your Rump-a" there is a drum break with synth. The first two run throughs, right before the rap starts again,
- The concluding drum fill is from "Good Time Bad Times" by Led Zeppelin.