It is a tale as old as time or at least since as old as rock n’ roll. How do you follow a classic game-changing album?
The Beastie Boys’ debut album, Licensed To Ill, was released in 1986. The album was filled with juvenile humor, rock samples, pop culture references, and actual hip-hop. It was a perfect recipe for the perfect time.
Exactly, six months before the Licensed to Ill was released, Run-D.M.C. released Raising Hell. Raising Hell broke down the door and made hip-hop a viable option for pop radio and suburban America. Wisely, The Beasties rode through this door like Paul Revere on his horse.
Run-D.M.C.’s cover of Aerosmith’s hard rock chestnut, “Walk This Way,” spearheaded their takeover. So, The Beasties took the concept of using memorable guitar hooks even further. While Raising Hell was predominantly hip-hop with a couple of rock flourishes to keep the rockers interested, Licensed To Il was predominantly rock with a couple of hip-hop flourishes to keep the hip-hop heads interested. It worked. The album went to number one and sold 10 million copies.
Then, The Beasties went away for a couple of years. Rap became more popular, and, for people currently in their late forties/early fifties, entered its golden age. Paid In Full. Straight Outta Compton. Nation of Millions. All classics. All were released between Licensed To Ill and the Beasties’ follow-up album. Despite the list of classics, hip-hop heads were still waiting anxiously for this follow-up album. In the summer of 1989, it was finally here. The title was Paul’s Boutique.
Pauls’ Boutique’s first track is “To All The Girls.” When I saw the title, I thought this song would feature a bunch of bratty schoolboy lyrics about girls over a Black Sabbath rift. Instead, listeners were treated to an undetectable bass line which gradually got louder but never much louder than whisper. Instead of bratty lyrics about girls, we got what sounded like a dedication to all girls spoken in a somnolent voice. “To All The Girls” was much closer to There’s A Riot Goin’ On rather than Paranoid. I was very ferdutzt.
The rest of the album was a collage. Yes, you had a Led Zeppelin riff here. A Deep Purple riff there. But you also had obscure jazz samples, mingling with Flintstone references, mingling with Superfly samples, mingling with biblical references. Heck, Paul’s Boutique ends with “B Boy Bouillabaisse,” which is modeled after side two of Abbey Road. The Beasties even sampled “The End” from the Abbey Road suite of songs.
This is a very long way of saying Paul’s Boutique was unexpected by especially me and the frat boys who loved Licensed To Ill. The album peaked at 14 and sold about two million copies. It was considered a bust.
However, as their career progressed, it became apparent Paul’s Boutique reflected the Beasties’ true selves much more than Licensed to Ill. They got into Buddhism, became socially active, and never made anything close to a rock album again. The Beasties from Licensed to Ill are forever stuck in 1986. On the other hand, The Beasties from Paul’s Boutique will live forever.
When De La Soul dropped 3 Feet High & Rising, people they were stuck in 1968. From their colorful album cover to their colorful clothes rather than the all-black outfits of N.W.A. to their saying (This is the D.A.I.S.Y. Age Y’All), people thought they were flower children wanna-be’s.
Despite this, everyone from Quest fans to Dirty South fans to West Coast fans admired the music. It was creative. The album’s running theme was a game show (the inner album credits took it up another level) with little skits throughout the album.
The actual songs were some of the best pop music ever made. Similar to Paul’s Boutique, which dropped three months later, 3 Feet High & Rising relies heavily on samples. Whereas Paul’s Boutique’s samples were geared towards the obscure, 3 Feet High & Rising’s samples contained some very familiar (and melodic) sounds. Hall & Oates’ “I Can’t Go For That.” Steely Dan’s “Peg.” “Sittin’ on the Deck of the Bay.”
With the mix of the new and familiar, 3 Feet High & Rising became a critic’s darling and fan favorite. Which naturally begged the question, what is going to be De La Soul’s second act? They decided to kill themselves.
The D.A.I.SY. Age was over as the album cover of De La Soul’s second album, De La Soul Is Dead, made abundantly clear. The album cover featured a broken flowerpot with a daisy split onto the floor. Ironically, album cover recalls another vestige from the late 60’s, The White Album.
Instead of a game show, De La Soul Is Dead featured running commentary about the album itself. The narrators lamented the album’s lack of misogyny, false macho violence, and other early nineties rap cliches. Basically, the narrators were saying De La Soul were out of touch with the other rappers of the day, and they were.
For as much as De La Soul wanted to declare themselves dead, their natural music gifts bewrayed them. Outside of the heavier material, more obscure samples, and running commentary, De La Soul Is Dead feels like more of a continuation of 3 Feet High & Rising rather than the 180 Paul’s Boutique felt like.
Yet, like Paul’s Boutique, De La Soul Is Dead reflects the artists as their true selves. While De La Soul might not have been flower children stuck in the late 80’s/early 90’s, they were melodic, witty, creative, and unique especially in the rap game. De La Soul Is Dead perfectly captures this.
In hindsight, Licensed to Ill and 3 Feet High and Rising might have been the groups way to get their foot in the door. Once their foot was in the door, they could show the world their true selves on their follow-up album with the leeway a hit debut album afforded them.
How do you follow up a game-changing debut album? Be yourself.