BACK IN THE DAY: THE BEASTIE BOYS "PAUL'S BOUTIQUE"

Well, there's nothing like it.  The Beastie Boys' Paul's Boutique didn't sound like any record that came before it, or anything since.

I remember buying it when it first came out, but I don't remember why I bought it.  I liked a bunch of songs on their debut album, Licensed To Ill. But it seemed like a novelty album, and it's appeal was... I'd describe it as douche-y.  Also their style was very derivative of Run-D.M.C.'s (understandable as they were a big influence and both groups were produced by Rick Rubin).

I think I may have heard "Hey Ladies" and thought that they didn't sound like they'd progressed too much. But the music was so much... thicker. I was intrigued.  So I picked it up.  When I first listened to the record, I was puzzled.  What the hell?  I know a lot of other people had the same experience.

But every time I came back to the album, I liked it a little bit more. I was always catching new references in the lyrics and in the music.  In fact, there is an entire website that explains every reference and lists every sample.  And there's a great book about the album that tells you just about everything about how it was made - it's part of the excellent 33 1/3 series.  You couldn't make an album like this today without a multi-million dollar sample-clearance budget and probably an army of lawyers.  I mean, they sampled The Beatles! You just couldn't do that today, but back then, there were no rules about it.  It was a cool era: other hip-hop LPs like Public Enemy's It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back and de la soul's 3 Feet High and Rising were similarly dense with samples, but no one can (legally) release albums like those today.  It's interesting to note, though, that this album was about the time where hip-hop's mainstream started losing interest in the Beasties.  On Licensed, they were signed to Def Jam and were managed by RUSH (both owned by Russell Simmons).  On this album, they left New York for L.A., ditched Def Jam and signed to Capitol (who didn't really have a hip-hop team in place), left RUSH management, and moved on from producer Rubin to The Dust Brothers.

Today, it's one of my favorite albums, and unlike Licensed To Ill, it's aged really well, and still sounds ahead of its time.

THE BEASTIE BOYS - A BEGINNER'S GUIDE

How did The Beastie Boys react to the news that they're being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? They haven't really said much. On one hand, they don't seem to take this kind of thing seriously. On the other, it has to feel pretty good to be acknowledged. Along with the Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five and Run-D.M.C., they are the only hip-hop artist to be inducted thus far.  And they are the only band with roots in hardcore punk to be inducted.  Add to that, the fact that Adam Yauch has been battling cancer... well, that has to add some weight to this. I hope he's doing well, and I hope they show up and perform. I'd guess they'd do a hardcore tune, at least one hip-hop tune, one of their hard rockers and an instrumental funk jam. How many other bands have so many modes? So there's a lot of great stuff in the long line of LPs.

The Compilation: the 2 CD set Sounds Of Science has almost all of their modes: hardcore punk, their days as a Run-D.M.C. style Def Jam group, the Paul's Boutique era, their hard rock stuff, instrumental funk and even their country phase (which was very brief).  It has hits, album tracks and rare stuff too. And great liner notes by the band. If that's too much for you, go for the single CD Solid Gold Hits.

The Classic Album(s): They had a lot of game changers.  First, their debut full length, 1986's Licensed To Ill on Def Jam. It has lots of douchey anthems like "Fight For Your Right" and "Brass Monkey," but on the other hand, it was pretty groundbreaking and has lots of amazing tracks.  They completely flipped the script and risked everything by leaving Def Jam, Rush Management and producer Rick Rubin for L.A., Capitol Records and The Dust Brothers for 1989's Paul's Boutique. At the album tanked at the time. Now: it is considered a classic.   After that, they picked up their instruments again for another classic, 1992's Check Your Head. This sort of mapped out the rest of their career, which they'd split between straight up hip-hop, hard rock tunes with Adam Horowitz on the mic, hard core punk tunes with Mike D shouting, and instrumental funk jams.

After that, they still released great albums but nothing as groundbreaking. Still, 1994's Ill Communication is amazing, 1998's Hello Nasty is great. I think 2004's To The 5 Boroughs is totally underrated, and ditto for this year's Hot Sauce Committee Part 2. I also dig their instrumental album, 2007's The Mix-Up. And, although they weren't at their best as a hardcore band, the 1994 compilation Some Old Bullshit is still solid, plus it has their legendary prank call "Cookie Puss."

PROG ROCK STAND UP! KANYE WEST SAMPLES KING CRIMSON

Kanye West is back to rapping (as opposed to singing with autotune).  His new song "Power" features a sample of King Crimson's "21st Century Schizoid Man."  Who would have thought that Greg Lake (later of Emerson, Lake & Palmer) would end up on one of the hottest hip-hop tracks of the year?   Check out the track for yourself right here.

PUBLIC ENEMY AND THE DRIVE BY TRUCKERS: THE CONNECTION

That headline might be a bit misleading: the connection between Public Enemy and The Drive-By Truckers I am referring to is in my mind, but follow me for a second here.


I really, truly believe that one of the most important things music can do is make you see something from someone else's point of view. It doesn't have to do that, of course. It rarely does. But I think it is great when it happens.

When I was in college, I came upon Public Enemy's 1988 classic, It Takes A Nation Of Millions to Hold Us Back. I had already been listening to hip-hop for a while: I was not a hard core fan, but I enjoyed it. I had Run-D.M.C.'s King Of Rock when I was in high school. I didn't really understand where they were coming from, exactly, I just knew I liked the music. I liked LL Cool J and a few other artists. But It Takes A Nation Of Millions just blew my mind. That's an overused phrase, but it was true. I never heard anything like it before (fair to say, neither had anyone else). The lyrics made me think about things that I hadn't thought about before: namely, what it was like to be black in America in the '80s. When you put together all the songs it really tells a story. Not just the "hits" like "Don't Believe The Hype" and "Bring The Noise." I'm talking about "Black Steel In The Hour Of Chaos," "Rebel Without A Pause," "She Watch Channel Zero" and "Night Of The Living Baseheads." These songs informed me about the lives of people who lived less than 30 miles away from me, but who I never met and wasn't likely to. That's pretty valuable, and very few art forms are able to do this.

Nation saw Chuck D rebelling against the system, as it were: he did this brilliantly in "Black Steel" where the main character goes to jail for refusing to be drafted, and then escapes. But he didn't shy away from pointing the finger at his own community, as he did in “Night Of The Living Baseheads” (about the effects of drugs and dealing drugs). Without having anything to "check" the album against, I felt it was a, uh, fair and balanced album.

Much more recently, I got into The Drive-By Truckers, thanks pretty much to the great SIRIUS XM channel Outlaw Country. I'd heard of them before listening to the channel, but hadn't really paid them much mind. I'd read that 2001's Southern Rock Opera was considered to be a classic. But after hearing the band frequently on the channel, I realized that this is a great American band, so I started getting their albums. I am a big fan, and Southern Rock Opera is straight-up incredible.

I kind of pride myself on being able to get along with people from different cultures and sub-cultures, and I like learning about them. I'm not trying to appropriate or claim anything, I just like learning about different people and what they like and what their lives are like. In the past decade or so, I have been realizing just how different the south is to where I grew up in New Jersey. I've been trying to understand it, but nothing has ever explained it to me as well as Southern Rock Opera. "Ronnie and Neil" - about Lynyrd Skynyrd frontman Ronnie Van Zant and Neil Young - says a lot about what Drive By Trucker Patterson Hood called "the duality of the southern thing." Young famously called out some racist stuff that took place in the south in his songs "Alabama" and "Southern Man," and while Van Zant was a fan of Neil's, he sang in "Sweet Home Alabama" that "I hope Neil Young will remember, a southern man don't need him 'round anyhow." "Ronnie and Neil" touches on the sensitivity that southerners feel when they think they're being judged by someone who isn't from there. But still, Hood concludes, "to my way of thinking, us Southern men need both of them around." He explains a lot in "The Three Great Alabama Icons" (they are Van Zant, Bear Bryant, George Wallace) and later in "Wallace" (sung from the perspective of the devil, waiting for George Wallace). He kind of sums it up in "The Southern Thing" where he sings "Proud of the glory, stare down at the shame, the duality of the southern thing." The album isn't political per se, it's more about how people are affected by the times that they live in. And the album isn't just about that. "Let There Be Rock" (not the AC/DC classic, but it quotes it) is as much a rallying cry for rock and roll as "Bring The Noise" is for hip-hop. They both take great pride, without reservation or cynicism, in their music.

The Truckers started in 1996, and PE about a decade earlier. The Truckers' latest, The Big To-Do, is one of my favorite albums of the year so far. You don't hear much about it: the media is much more occupied with the latest indie rock band with an expensive publicist. PE's latest, How Do You Sell Soul To A Soulless People Who Sold Their Soul?, was incredibly underrated. The song "Harder Than You Think" is classic, and towers over whatever singles were on the hip-hop charts that year. Again, the media doesn't pay much mind: hey, soulja boy just tweeted something! These are both groups in it for the long haul, who have made several great albums (and have several important contributing members, I don't mean to diminish the importance of Flavor Flav, Mike Cooley, Terminator X, etc. just because I haven't mentioned them here). But if you trust the recommendations that I make here at No Expiration, I urge you to get these albums if you don't already have them. If you do, maybe I've helped you to listen to them in a new light.
Patterson Hood (via Bon Scott): "Let There Be Rock."

Chuck D (via, well, you know...): "Run-D.M.C first said a DJ could be a band, stand on its own feet, get you out your seat."

DIDDY SAYS HIP-HOP DOESN'T TAKE ENOUGH RISKS ANYMORE

I couldn't have made that one up. You can check out the interview at MTV. I just gotta say it: Diddy calling for more musical risk taking... who woulda thought? Of course, the interview was to plug his new cologne. Having to support a brand that crosses into restaurants, clothes, cologne, etc. probably doesn't leave much room for musical risks!