Paul's Boutique is released

Why it matters

Paul's Boutique came out July 25, 1989, on Capitol Records. It is the Beastie Boys' second LP, the album they made after they walked away from Def Jam over a royalty dispute and moved to Los Angeles. The production this time was not Rick Rubin. It was a new group of producers called the Dust Brothers (E.Z. Mike and King Gizmo, who would later produce Beck's Odelay). What the Dust Brothers did on Paul's Boutique is push sample density past anything anybody had ever attempted on a major-label rap record. The album credits more than 100 sources. Every bar has at least two samples running underneath it. "Shake Your Rump," "Hey Ladies," "Egg Man," "Shadrach," "Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun." Paul's Boutique sold poorly on release; Capitol expected another Licensed to Ill and got an art project. Over the next fifteen years its reputation steadily climbed until it became, by general consensus, one of the great rap albums ever made. It also became a record nobody could ever make again, because the 1991 Grand Upright ruling shut down the level of uncleared sampling that powered the entire album. You should hear it. Nothing else sounds like it. Nothing else is allowed to.