Paul’s Boutique

The first Beastie Boys album was silly and fun. Licensed to Ill became part of the soundtrack when hanging out freshman year of high school.

It wasn’t until the summer before our senior year when Paul’s Boutique dropped. As much as the first album was simple and all about partying, this record was… complex. I tried to get into it but the layered sampling and time shifts threw me off.

It was the insistence of my friend Danny Parker that I really gave it a listen. He was adamant, flipping the tape over and over as he taught me how to drive stick shift in his Mazda 3 with the forgiving clutch.

If you listen with intent long enough, sometimes things sink in – especially if they’re so far out and dense with goodness. I would eventually learn every lyric to Paul’s Boutique (and there are many). It’s an album I’d bring to a desert island without hesitation, for there is always something new to uncover and it reminds me of good friends and a moment in time.

---

And lastly, only because lyric websites are hot garbage, here are the words to The Sounds of Science, included because I take great pride in knowing EVERY. SINGLE. WORD.

The Sounds of Science (listen)

Now here we go dropping science, dropping it all over
Like bumping around the town like when you’re driving a Range Rover
Expanding the horizons and expanding the parameters
Expanding the rhymes of sucka MC amateurs
Naugles, Isaac Newton, a scientific EZ
Ben Franklin with the kite, gettin’ over with the key
Now rock shockin’ the mike of the many times, times the times tables
Rock well to tell, dispel all of the old fables

‘Cause I’ve been dropping the new science
And I’ve been kicking the new knowledge
An MC to a degree that you can’t get in college
Now the dregs of the earth and the eggs that I eat
I got pegs through my hands and one through my feet
Shea Stadium, the radium, EMD squared
Kicked out of the Palladium, you think that I cared?
It’s the sound of science
The sound of science
Science

Rope-A-Dope
The newest in new
“Right up to your face and diss you”
Waxin’ and milkin’
All of y’all square heads

Time and money for girls covered with honey
You lie and aspire to be as cunning
Reelin’ and rockin’ and rollin’ B-sized D-cup
Order the Quarter Deluxe, why don’tcha wake up?
My mind is kinda flowing like an oil projector
Had to get up and get the Jimmy protector
Went berserk and worked, and exploded
She woke up in the morning and her face was coated

Buddy, you study the man on the mic
D, do whatcha like (Huh)
Drunk as a skunk am I from celebration
To peep that freak unique penetration
Well, I figured out who makes the crack
It’s the suckas with the badges and the blue jackets

Professor of science ’cause I keep droppin’ it
I smell weed ’cause y’all keep packin’ it
People always ask me what’s the phenomenon
Yo, what’s up? Yo, what’s goin’ on?
No one really knows what I’m talkin’ about
And yeah, that’s right, my name’s Yauch

Ponce de Leon, constantly on
The fountain of youth, not Robotron
Peace is a word I’ve heard before
So move and move and move up on the dance floor
‘Cause I’m gonna die, gonna die one day
‘Cause I’m goin’ and goin’ and goin’ this way
Not like a roach or a piece of toast
I’m goin’ out first class, ain’t goin’ out coach

Rock my Adidas, never rock Fila
“I do not sniff the coke, I only smoke the sinsemilla”
Well, with my nose I knows, and with my scopes I scope
What I live I write, and that is strictly rope
I’ve got science for any occasion
Postulating theorems, formulating equations
Well, Cheech Wizard in a snow blizzard
Eating chicken gizzards with a girl named Lizzy

Droppin’ science like Galileo dropped the orange

Beastie Boys