Volume 1, Track 12
Posted on | July 16, 2008 | 2 Comments
“B-Boy Bouillabaisse” by Beastie Boys (1989)
To be sure, lyrics like “Got busy in Frisco, fooled around in Fresno/Got over on your girlie ’cause you know she never says no” are not the stuff of Bob Dylan but the final track that ends Paul’s Boutique is a veritable hodge-podge of brilliantly cut samples mixed with over-the-top frat humor lyrics. “B-Boy Bouillabaisse” clocks in at over twelve and a half minutes and packages together ten disparate fragments that shift and change to become a malleable hip hop masterpiece. Largely overlooked by most mainstream radio stations because it was not a continuation of License To Ill, Paul’s Boutique is one of the most important albums of the last twenty years because of the magnificent touches that producers the Dust Brothers and the Beasties put all over it but “Bouillabaisse” is the defining piece; the “Desolation Row” of the album. The song boasts an impressive twenty four separate samples used and lyrics that range from the straight-up comical (“I met this girl last night with a peculiar cackle/I laid the bait and she took the tackle”) to random sports anaologies (“More updated on the hip hop lingo/My favorite New York Knick was Hawthorne Wingo”) to the adolescent pervert that lies in all men (“There’s a girl over there/With long brown hair/I took her to the place/I threw the mattress in her face”). There is a little bit of everything here and even though it sounds a little dated now it is still acts as a great landmark on the road that rap and hip hop ultimately took to get to where we are today.
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August 6th, 2010 @ 10:33 am
[...] is the penultimate song on Paul’s Boutique (it leads into the glorious, twelve minute opus “B-Boy Bouillabaisse”) and its strength lies in the Beasties’ ability to produce an addictive and fun song. Using [...]
September 13th, 2010 @ 1:51 pm
Paul’s Boutique is one of my fave discs and while everyone remembers Licensed to Ill, I find their second effort so much more of a music experience. I can remember how upset my mom was when we played Licensed to Ill on the way home from the store and we didn’t even make it past Rhymin & Stealin before she stopped it, handed it to me and said she was dissapointed that I didn’t have taste in music like she thought I had. It was at that point in my 11 years that I realized that I had freedom of choice and that while I had a hard time understanding their lyrics I found a new group to worship! Many of my friends were dissapointed with Paul’s Boutique, but who wanted another Fight For Your Rights song anyway? The Beasties were advancing musically and they weren’t afraid to mix it up a bit and to this day they keep changing up their style. Their best disc by far!