Ah, (the) Beastie Boys. It doesn't take long for them to piss me off. Nothing like name-checking yourself, Mike Dee, to inform us you're busting rhymes and whatever. The first song sounds like every bit of melody, if you can call it that, is a sample of a potentially better song. In 1989, Paul's Boutique was considered revolutionary and a major turning point in music for it's heavy use of sampling. And I have to admit, as much as I hate sampling as a basis for producing music, the sound on this record is pretty impressive.
That doesn't change the fact that hip-hop sucks and is completely lost in really lame cliches that haven't changed since 1989. I'll give credit to (the) Beastie Boys and Paul's Boutique for the landmark role it had in making hip-hop the sample monster it is today. Beyond that I really don't think it's too much to ask for artists to play and record their own music rather than just chop up someone else's.
I listen to Toucher and Rich in the morning on 98.5 The Sports Hub. The hosts originally appeared as the morning guys for 104.1 WBCN (The Rock of Boston). As former rock DJs I would think they'd be on my side in this argument about sampling. Instead they play a lot of hip-hop songs and marvel at the "great samples" the artists use. One track they play uses the theme from the TV show Taxi as its melody. They lament that it wasn't released because the guy who wrote the theme from Taxi won't let whoever the hip-hop guy is use the sample. My response is in the same situation would be, "Too freakin' bad!" There's a way around having to shelve a song because you can't use someone else's recording for your melody. It's called writing and recording your own damn melody. It doesn't even have to be all that different from the Taxi theme to avoid a copyright claim.
I don't think I really even care to listen to Paul's Boutique anymore, but I'll let the album finish and report back anything egregious I hear. Such as "The Sounds Of Science" which may be the most obnoxious hip-hop song I've ever heard in my life. The first minute or so of the song is a slow rap over weird sound effects. The rest of the song samples "The End" off Abbey Road. I never thought I'd feel any sort of fond emotion for that song, but "The Sounds Of Science" is an unfortunate travesty.
On a few tracks on this album the sampling reaches a new extreme of putridness. One song uses a tiny snippet of "Jungle Boogie" (just the lead singer saying "Get" in a low rumble). Another song uses at most one second from Mountain's "Mississippi Queen" (two snare hits and a guitar note). "What Comes Around" pisses me off the most. It takes the intro to "Moby Dick" and adds extra empty space between the snare hits to fit the slower beat of their "song". It makes one of the legends of hard rock drumming sound like a total slug.
This fucked up sample appears a couple more times in the song just to increase my rage. There's no good reason why this song couldn't have matched the tempo of "Moby Dick". There's also no reason when this was being recorded that some asshole in the studio couldn't have picked up a drum stick- and just one would have sufficed at this speed- and pounded out their own recording of this drum part.
OK, I think I've hit the nadir... "B-Boy Bouillabaisse" during the "Get On The Mic" section contains a loop of a sample of a guy beatboxing. I mean... That's it, right? The worst sin in music history? There's no excuse for this. You recorded your own lyrics, so you have a microphone and a mouth. Why can't you just do your own damn beatboxing for 3 minutes rather than looping a sample?
I know it's going to come up again at some point. Maybe I've said all I can about how much sampling sucks. Maybe next time I can just get away with writing, "Ugh, samples!" and be done with my review. 1 star.
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