Review
“The idea was simple: to ask a group of authors to each write a book about a classic album. What emerged became Continuum’s 33 1/3 series. Without guidelines or rules, each author embraced their own favourite album and chose exactly how they wanted to write about it.As a result, each book is by turn anecdotal, obsessive, technical and personal, but always passionate.” ―Swell Music, December 2006
“…recognized as a cultish, kaleidoscopic classic…a frequently illuminating and entertaining tale…” ―Stevie Chick, Mojo
“Just how the hell did three snot-nosed party boys from Brooklyn go from fighting for the right to party to creating 1989’s hip-hop masterpiece Paul’s Boutique? The album, with its thousands of samples, is an aural encyclopedia of musical landmarks, served up in a funk stew of arrogance, attitude, and ultimately, adoration for the components from which it comes. LeRoy has done a great job capturing the surroundings, the people involved, and the reaction then. The insights as to how the record was constructed, from the mighty foot of John Bonham to the scratchy guitar of ’70s funk, are illuminating. Fire up Paul’s on the iPod, crack the spine of this little tome, and “Shake Your Rump”.” ―James Mann, The Big Takeover
“Eminently entertaining and essential.” ―Greg Renoff, New Books Network
About the Author
Dan LeRoy is the Director of Writing and Publishing at Lincoln Park Performing Arts Charter School, USA. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Newsweek, The Village Voice, Esquireonline, and Alternative Press. He is the author of The Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique (Bloomsbury, 2006), The Greatest Music Never Sold (2007), For Whom the Cowbell Tolls (2014), and Liberty’s Lions: The Catholic Revolutionaries Who Established America (2021).
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Paul’s Boutique was one of the most counterintuitive records ever made. The band’s initial success on Def Jam, with the rude, crude and multiplatinum 1986 debut Licensed to Ill, had been unlikely enough; a trio of white Jewish kids and their white Jewish producer became hip-hop’s biggest stars overnight by offering a primal fusion of metal, rap, and teenage rebellion. But Paul’s Boutique abandoned the producer, the label, and the formula, instead smashing apart hundreds of old records and pop culture references, then Scotch-taping them back together in unexpected new combinations. With a trio of unknowns at the production controls, it was a suicidal way to follow up a number one hit.
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