Masterpiece: Check Your Head

[Today: The Beastie Boys find their sound...]

Because the Beasties’ second album, Paul’s Boutique is now considered a stone classic by almost everyone who counts, it’s easy to forget that it didn’t sell particularly well or have many critics lining up behind it at the time. Rolling Stone printed a glowing review upon its release, only to pan the album in its 1989 year-end issue. Because Paul’s Boutique barely scratched gold sales (500,000 copies) it was considered something of a failure in its day.

But chilly critical reception and sub-standard sales alone didn’t make the album a poor career template. The Manhattan-sized collage of samples that comprised Paul’s Boutique was an angle doomed by changes in copyright and sampling laws – overnight it became the type of record that would cost millions upon millions to produce. The Beastie Boys were smart enough to sense the prevailing trends and head in a surprising new direction.

Before 1992, the idea of this group playing their own instruments and acting like a real band was something akin to science fiction. But right from its front cover the drastic attitude change of Check Your Head was starkly apparent. Featuring a fuzzy black and white photograph of the group looking like skate punks, it marked an extreme departure from the cartoon lear jet on the cover of Licensed To Ill and the technicolor fish-eyed Brooklyn intersection that graces Paul’s Boutique. The inside photos show the band playing (playing!) and looking like they were deeply into it.

This detour produced a more mature, organic sound that simultaneously pointed towards the group’s future, while drawing upon their punk roots. Check Your Head built extensively on the dusty samples and sharp-tongued, smart-assed attitude of albums past. By adding live funk grooves and intense punk energy to the mix, the Beasties expanded their sonic parameters by miles, and helped usher in an era of eclectically influenced groups performing wildly hybridized styles of music that refused to be defined by narrow record store bin labels.

Listen: Funky Boss

Tags: Beastie Boys, Check Your Head, Hip-Hop