Released on 25 July 1989, "Paul's Boutique" was the second studio album by American hip hop band Beastie Boys, under the production of the band itself and the Dust Brothers, the album is one of the most eclectic records ever done due its extensive use of samples, drawn from a wide range of genres including funk, soul, rock, and jazz. The album spawned two singles "Hey Ladies" & "Shadrach", despite its innovative sound, the record did not match the sales of the band's debut "Licensed To Ill" and also was promoted minimally by Capitol, despite its initial commercial failure, with the years to come, the album became the band's breakthrough achievement due its innovative lyrical and sonic style earning them a position as critical favorites within the hip hop community, a sort of "Sgt. Pepper" of hip hop music and a seminal work in sample-based production.
Following the commercial success of "Licensed To Ill", the band was focusing on making something more creative depth and less commercial, their previous album had been enormously popular and received acclaim among both mainstream and hip hop music critics, although its simple, heavy beats and comically juvenile lyrics heading the band to be signed with Capitol Records and EMI Records.
The production of the Dust Brothers introduce the band into the world of sampling, helped to establish the practice of multi-layered sampling as an art in itself. While the Dust Brothers were set on making a hit record, they agreed with the group on producing a more experimental and sonically different record, with an amount of 105 songs being sampled, including 24 individual samples on the last track alone. The Dust Brothers produced the backing tracks with the intention of releasing an instrumental album, but were persuaded by Beastie Boys to use them as the basis of their album
All the tracks were recorded in Matt Dike's living room in Los Angeles, with the exception of "Hello Brooklyn" and "A Year and a Day" from the "B-Boy Bouillabaisse" suite; other tracks such as "A Year and a Day" was recorded in Yauch's apartment building in Koreatown, Los Angeles, the rest of the recordings for Paul's Boutique were later mixed by the Dust Brothers at Record Plant Studios in Los Angeles.
On its initial release, the album was commercially unsuccessful because of its experimental and dense sampling and lyricism, in contrast to the group's previous album. It was a commercial disappointment peaking at only #24 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart, and #14 on the Billboard 200 chart. Ten years later prior its original release, the album went to sell over 2 millions copies.
