Paul's Boutique

i was automatically gonna give this 2 stars (nice but will never listen to it again) but then i was like what do i hate fun? this can be stupid and worthy of an extra star at the same time. i would like this better if it were just an instrumental tbh

If this would have come out when I was 16 I would have listened the shit out of it. Having heard the musical sons and grandsons of this before the original changes a bit my perspective. Anyways, I enjoy this and thanks ti wikipedia I know how important this Album is.

Beasties are interesting. There are some awesome tunes on here but they occasionally sound like rich, white arseholes trying to be rappers which is slightly grating.

Great rap

Not a big fan. Lyrics and rhymes are clever, but was not able to finish it because of its length

I thought I liked the beastie boys but I think I might just like a few songs (none of which are on this album). I'm ranking purely on enjoyment and this is one the most irritating things I've ever listened to.

Cool mais moins ma vibe La partie rap est cool mais l'instru est pas assez entraînante à mon goût

love em

Loved it. Loud and aggressive, crazy samples and I'm sure I didn't catch all of them. Got a little long and repetitive but the highs were excellent.

Personally I’m just glad that it’s not Hello Nasty since my husband used to use Intergalactic as an alarm clock. Still love how fun they are though

The second Beastie Boys album I've gotten! I think "Paul's Boutique" definitely went down smoother this time round cause of the added prior experience, though I think I prefer "Ill Communication". Their frat boy type humour still isn't my favourite, but I'm more here for the creative production and sampledelica than the lyrics.

2.5 Definitely some amusing bars here but mostly just not enjoyable to listen to for me

Voice in my left ear, voice in my right, something childish, something obscene, yeah boy, It's not a horrible formula, but it's kinda silly.

- i don't listen to hip hop much but it is kinda like listening to hamilton - fun vibe - dirty - Most lyrics are sooo random

I was going to start by complaining about how boring that Boo Radleys album I got a few days ago was, but who cares? This is so much more exciting. It was apparently made when the Beastie Boys needed a makeover, after critics had written them off as a novelty act. Produced with the Dust Brothers in LA (the same duo who later worked on Beck’s Odelay), this is truly sampling heaven in every way. Hundreds of samples are put together so densely that even the recognizable ones, like the Beatles on “The Sounds of Science” or Curtis Mayfield’s “Superfly” on “Egg Man”, become something completely new. The songs are more low-key and less over-the-top than on their debut, which makes the humor more tasteful and the sarcasm more obvious. “Shake Your Rump” kicks ass, “Johnny Ryall” is funky and fun, and “Egg Man” is definitely one of the funniest songs they’ve ever written. How about all of those samples on "Hey Ladies" and how fun they are?? What a masterpiece this is. But why focus on individual songs or details? How about that closing suite, “B-Boy Bouillabaisse”? There’s so much intelligence and creativity here that it hurts they never quite reached these heights again. THIS gets the 5! Simply timeless and idiosyncratic in every way. It belongs in every serious music lover’s collection.

Grand yeah

First listen. I think it builds on their debut album pretty well. Good stuff.

I've always felt like I should love this album. Its a classic Beastie Boys album but honestly I found it mostly annoying. It still have some great tracks though.

Happy to spin this one on vinyl today. Fun to listen to. Bit of a departure from License.

Очень интересный альбом, у Beastie boys в сравнении с первым альбомом вряд-ли будет что-то достойное (к сожалению не дошел до последних альбомов). Он очень классный и достойный, лучше послушать

I didn’t know any songs on this album other than Hey Ladies… the rest were ok but not really memorable. Good beats but nothing extraordinary. (3)

Not that bad and I kind of enjoyed it, although I love this kind of music and I believe it deserved a 3.5 ratings

Buenas música, buen bajo, letra 8/10, todo junto 9/10

I listened to this one a few months ago for the first time. I had a really great time listening to this one that first time and definitely still miss the experience.

Not the Beasties best work. No track stood out and the B Boy Bouillabaise was random.

The only thing that really piqued my interest was “ Looking Down the Barrel of a gun… Which is heard on the Beavis and butthead soundtrack. Nostalgia. The rest is ok. Goofy. I get why it was popular in its time. Is it an album to put on at a party? I dunno. Probably not the best flows. It’s got good ideas, though. The experimentation is commendable.

6/10

Such an album. It had been a while but you can't help but move your body listening to this. Mid 4s.

A bunch of 5th graders yelling over groovy samples. Cool…

Beastie Boys - Paul’s Boutique Before listening to this album, my main exposure to the Beastie Boys was their singles, some of which I enjoy like Sabotage or Intergalactic. So I went in with expectations that were fairly high. Unfortunately, this album is totally puerile and goofy as hell. The lyrics are so cringey and the ‘rapping’, more like shouting, is repetitive reusing the same rhyme scheme throughout. It’s so bad it’s almost good and I’ll concede I was entertained listening to it and laughed a few times. So I feel I could only give it either 1 star or 5 stars. OK, there are a handful of serious redeeming qualities. The way that samples are incorporated is quite creative and original. It’s also interesting from a historical perspective to hear an album that could never been made today, now that the draconian lobbying of the big record labels has killed off sampling. So I would give it 1.5 stars if I could.

Couldn't be bothered to listen to any more of this stuff, very one dimensional

Not my thing at all.

One of my absolute favorites. A gem that literally could not be made today because of all the samples and changes in how those must be cleared. Absolutely stellar and a great high-energy listen. Perfect for a Monday morning.

Holy crap this album is amazing. I fucking love the (basically) drop on Shake Your Rump. This is some of (if not the) BEST FLOW EVER. Love how many samples there are, this is truly the golden age of hip-hop. The ending song "B-Boy Bouillabaisse" is like if Dream Theater Made a Hip-Hop song. I don't think that the yelling is not very tiring because it's not yelling, they're from New York. THAT'S HOW THEY TALK. I love the riff/melody in Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun. Plus with how iconic this album is and how many awards it has won. How many hip-hop groups have been indirectly or directly influenced by this album. I cannot help but love this album with all my heart. Highlights: Shake Your Rump, Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun, and B-Boy Bouillabaisse Honorable Mentions: Egg Man and Johnny Ryall 10/10

As I read in a review, this is definitely an album that needs to be heard a few times. So I will

Album No. 0218 on my list. "Paul's Boutique" is the first Beastie Boys Album from the 1001 list for me. I had known a few of their songs (the stuff everybody knows) and how important they have been, but as far as I can recall, I've never listened to an entire album. "Paul's Boutique" is a solid early hip hop album to me. I'm not the biggest fan of the band's rapping style and most of the lyrics, but it was a fun, enjoyable listen anyway. Plus, I liked the flow and dynamism of most of the songs. Besides, there was a solid dose of well-done sampling apparent as well. I don't thing it's particularly likely that "Paul's Boutique" will become an all time favorite, but it's simply an okay and I'm glad that I gave it a listen. The two other albums of the band on the 1001 album list are, as far as I remember, rated somewhat better, so I'm looking forward to listening to those as well. I'll add "Shake Your Rump", "Johnny Ryall", and "Looking Down The Barel Of A Gun" to my playlist. 3/5 stars.

Surprenant pour moi, une belle découverte

Quick review on Beastie Boys — Paul’s Boutique They’re white. They can rap. My best analogy for it is if Alvin and the Chipmunks grew up and started doing hip-hop… this is what it would be. BBs best songs are still Sabotage, Remote Control, No Sleep Til, Brooklyn, and Fight for Your Right… none of those songs are on this album. You do the math. Stars: 2/5 Rating: 4/10

I love Beastie Boys, and I like Paul’s Boutique…and even though it’s probably the worst of their major releases (Check your Head and Ill Communication are my faves) it’s still pretty solid. Paul’s Boutique feels like License to Ill (not quite as good), and it always felt like they started to evolve after this record. I like Paul’s Boutique, it’s super fun, but the Beasties get better after this. 8/10

Sorry, I just can’t. This is so majorly boring.

Hilarious. Literally bought this on vinyl yesterday. Damn fine album.

no mg tanto muy de fondo puede ser

This is absolutely insane.

I’m not really into rap and/or hip-hop, but I actually don’t think the music on this album is that bad at all. Three stars...

We finally hit an album I listened to on my own within the past two weeks! It's not my favorite album of theirs but it's great. Almost feels like ADHD with sounds and rhymes coming non stop from different directions.

This is the hardest album to rate so far. I don't even know if I liked it. I appreciate the work and effort into making all these samples come together although I don't think they all worked. Sitting on the fence with this. 5/5 for experimentation. 2/5 for execution. This gives it 3.5 overall. This review will probably change after a few more listens.

overrrrrrrrerated

7.5/10

Was okay but probably won’t listen again

Probably not my favorite beastie boys album, but is a landmark work of sampling. It has some underrated singles compared to some of the BB tracks that get more play, which feature the trio's distinct cadence. It's a genre classic. 5/5

Egg song: 5 stars. Sometimes great, mostly terrible. Never mediocre though

Such a great record. Maybe their best

It was fun

I almost hate to give this 5 stars, because I don't think this is my favorite Beastie Boys album. But it's so good, and such a step up from License to Ill. You still get the kind of bratty yell-rapping, but there's such a leap in the samples and overall production. It's a dense album, but so much fun every time. It still sounds fresh. Quite an achievement.

This Beastie Boys albums sure sounds like a Beastie Boys album

There are some BB songs that I like. As a group, I like them and appreciate their contribution to the genre, era, and generation that listened to them. I wish, wish I liked this album. Listening to it while doing things wasn't possible, I need to stop and focus on it to be able to hear what they were saying, and even then it took effort. There's no song that stood out for me, the vocals didn't change over any song or across any song, it was the same across the whole album for every moment that a word was spoken. If somebody rated this five stars I'd genuinely believe them, but for me, it missed out on many elements.

c'est vraiment la plus belle decouverte depuis le debut. Je trouve ca vraiment tres cool. Ils me font marrer.

Belle découverte, ils m'ont régaler avec leur samples. Parfait pour travailler (pas du tout). J'ai découvert un style que j'écoute jamais et j'avais tort

Well, this is infinitely better than whatever the fuck Ill Communication was. The album seems to have come out before the Beastie Boys discovered the concept of screaming their lungs out into a mic. Unfortunately, it doesn't mean that their music isn't still annoying, it just doesn't make me want to drill a hole in my head. There are some funny songs ("Egg Man" is actually hilarious), and some good storytelling ("High Plains Drifters") but after a while, hearing a bunch of white boys rap (badly) about fucking nothing becomes lame. Also, the back-and-forth singing where they each say a couple of words... That's interesting at first, but a gimmick is a gimmick and it quickly becomes distracting.

Tämä on jostain syystä jäänyt huomattavasti vähemmälle kuuntelulle itselläni vrt aiemmin listalla ollut Ill communication, joka tuli puhkikuunneltua opiskeluaikoina. Tämä on itseasiassa parempi albumi, ehjempi kokonaisuus, ei skipattavia biisejä kuten Ill communicationilla. Vaikka soundi on hyvinkin ajalle tyypillinen (kasari-ysäri -taite) niin tämä kuitenkin on kestänyt aikaa toisin kuin vaikka Run-Dmc tms. Tavallaan tiesin mitä odottaa, on kuultu ennenkin mutta pitkästä aikaa kuunneltuna loistava lätty. 4/5

4/5 it’s hard to not have fun when listening to the Beastie Boys. They’ve got their energy of three goblins, and the instrumentals aren’t that bad either.

kinda chilll

Feels like high school boys rapping over beats in the best way lol

Very influential album, amazing that it's form 89'. Beastie Boys is amazing.

Just fucking love the beastie boys, so fun, so groovy so wicked so cool. 5/5 Best Song: looking down the barrel of a gun

Massive, easily their best album. A masterpiece of sampling.

This album has some of the best sampling ever. When they sing a bar and then rhyme a sample with it? It's euphoric when it hits. However, the vocals themselves are just so annoying and grating. I can handle the Beastie Boys in one or two song bursts, like maybe happening to hear Intergalactic or Sabotage back-to-back on a playlist, but being yelled at for an entire 53 minute album is just exhausting. I basically had to try to ignore the vocals to enjoy the genuinely good instrumentals and samples. Favorite Track: Car Thief

just white boys cosplaying

2 - TERRIBLE

Three-leaning-four

Thought this was a bit more chilled than the other beastie boys album. Good background

Love this album. This showed that they had more to their armoury than the debut.

Number: 274 Familiarity: Extremely (5) Rating: 5 Before: ======= I guess it's going to be a 5. Let's see. After : ======= So, in keeping with my current system, I would rate it 4 as the average rating of all the tracks comes out to 4.2. However, it's The Beastie Boys.

After my main Beastie Boys experience being License to Ill this one was a real treat. It’s crazy the amount of progression we got from one album to the next. All the samples, the cleaner vocals, but still all that raw Beastie Boys energy.

Kunstenaars in geluid, melodie en tekst

3.5

Woof. When I saw this album pop, I originally thought "Oh, the Beastie Boys! This'll be a good one!". It turns out that while I really enjoy the odd banger Beastie Boys song now and again, 23 tracks of it back-to-back is Too Much. Their vocal style gets incredibly repetitive very quickly. Also, I guess I'm just very musically uncultured but while I see a lot of praise in these other reviews for the sampling on this album, some of the tracks just sound like a kid just got their first electronic keyboard and is trying out all the built in sound effects.

SEHHH NENA

Alright, this is a really fun, jumpy, quick, album. It's fast, it's daft, it's fun. 8.6/10

Hip-hop in itself can be quite fun, but I can’t stand those whiny voices of the Beastie Boys for the length of a whole album. So, marks deducted for performance.

It really seems that Beastie Boys really opened the door for rap to be enjoyed by white people, and that's it. Their sampling style is clearly a big influence on Eminem, and that's all I can think of.

From the Vault #47 (January 11, 2026) Second Beastie Boys album already. I'm still getting used to hearing these albums in close proximity of one another now that I'm working my way down this list by genre and year of release. I listened to Licensed to Ill a few days back and wasn't big on it. It's already been memoryholed, truth be told, though I recall not getting down with the tacky instrumentals above all else. I'm pretty sure the vocals didn't move me, either, which is a shame as I think Mike D has a good singing voice. I've also verified that, tragically, "Intergalactic" doesn't appear on any of the albums which feature in the book. Unfortunate, as I've given it a relisten and can still put it down as one of the few hip-hop tracks I like. Anyways, I'm pretty sure this album is widely considered to be the Beastie Boys' best, so I'm curious to give it a go. Hello from two months later. I completely forgot to write this here review section after I had written out everything else, so I'm sitting my ass down in detention and finally paying my dues. I'm liking this album more now than I did when I first listened to it. My biggest gripe at the time was how empty these songs felt. There's a lingering feeling of dead air which hangs over these tracks, as if the music is muffled or only coming through one ear. Another point of criticism I had is that, while I appreciated the novel sampling, none of these samples worked together in a way which created immersive soundscapes or gripping instrumentals, which I blame as the sole cause for this album's feeling of emptiness. Listening to it now, I view the music through a slightly different lens. I think the stripped-back production serves to emphasise how methodical Beastie Boys' songwriting is. The album has a near-identical vocal delivery across its 15 tracks, yet I'm surprised that the band managed to make it work. I chalk it up to all three Beastie Boys being talented vocalists. Their foolhardy sound aligns with the lyrics quite nicely, too. Overall, this is a perfectly accessible release. It held my attention for the entirety of its runtime, which is a rare feat for music, even with the albums that I like. While I could feel the limitations of this music chafing at every moment, I suppose I respect this album. Book time. Plenty of diverse samples. One of the last sample-heavy albums to be released before there were significant law reforms surrounding uncleared samples. That's about it. Wikipedia says that while this album didn't perform as well as their debut, it was innovative within the hip-hop genre and has a very strong critic backing. Yup, this seems like a good enough pick to me. I cosign this inclusion.

Was fun but gets exhausting quickly

More I’d their regular stuff. 4/10

I would love this if I were a punk

During my listen I jotted down a lot of reasons why this album shouldn't work. The tracks overuse simple A/B rhymes throughout. The lyrics come off as something written by a unruly teenager trying to seem all fly and gangsta, but ultimately read more immature than cool. The overall feel of the album is Bart Simpson trying to stick the finger to teachers/adults. "59: Christie Street" is basically "Lolz I saw a vagina!" The lines are delivered in cartoonish almost goofy voices which made me think of Justin Roiland. It's like Mr. Meseeks and Mr. Poppy Butthole came together to record a hip hop album. However: Somehow it works. The trio delivers their wonky lines with such authenticity and ernisty that it comes off as fun, but never silly. It's the neighbourhood teenagers bullshit boasting about their misdeeds in such an endearing way that is infectious. The rebellious rascal energy of these troublemakers reminded me of my own teenage mindset, their bears made my head bop. I love that this album has moments like "5-Piece Chicken Dinner" which have no other purpose than to be fun, adding to this vibe. Ultimately I think it's a fun album, but it's too long for what it brings to the table. I think the album would have achieved the same energy and message at half its playtime. As it stands, It is a light 3 for me.

Unreservedly love this -- not the best album on here, but hard to think of any that are more fun.

entiendo muchas cosas del hiphop con este disco. o sea no entiendo, pero me hacen sentido al escucharlas y entender que pueden provenir desde aquí. suenan MUY 90s.

Beastie Boys – Paul's Boutique (1989) On Day 276, this record proved to be an absolute peak musical experience. The production and sampling work orchestrated by the Dust Brothers is nothing short of insane every single beat hits with surgical power and infectious groove. "Shake Your Rump" sent genuine shivers down my spine with its immaculate low end, while tracks like "Hey Ladies," "The Sounds of Science," "Shadrach," and the towering 12-minute closing suite "B-Boy Bouillabaisse" were on an entirely different level of artistry. Beyond the mind-boggling crate-digging, the vocal chemistry and fluid, tag-team rhyming between the three MCs held everything together effortlessly. Even when the album violently shifted gears into raw punk and heavy metal energy on "Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun," or leaned heavily into vintage disco-funk, the sonic identity never fractured. It was daring, wildly experimental, yet completely cohesive from front to back. A flawless milestone of hip-hop history. An undeniable 5/5.

What a treat this turned out to be. Full of eclectic samples (some I recognised, most I didn't) and consistently strong throughout. I thought this was significantly better than Ill Communication.

"It's a trip. It's got a funky beat, and I can bug out to it!" -Lloyd Lindsay Young

no

What an album. It defines the beginning of sampling. (Listened to it on Apple Music)

I liked it more than I thought I would. I'd only heard one of their songs in full and wasn't really a fan of it, but the songs on this were catchy.

Oh My Gawd!, the best Beastie Boys album ever!!

Attitude, energy, and adolescence.

Good if youre angry

I was looking forward to this one since it’s often the highest rated of their albums and I haven’t heard any of the tracks before. I thought it was pretty good, but it didn’t really sound very distinctive from other rap of that era. They really developed their unique sound later on. It sounds like the sampling is what this album is really known for, but I didn’t really catch anything familiar on a first listen.

It's 3.5

Can't believe I've never heard this before! I've liked the other three Beasties albums I've heard, so not sure why this one has eluded me until now. I guess this is the reason I carry on with this thankless task! Back to yet more dire 70s rock tomorrow, no doubt...