The Beastie Boys‘ debut hip-hop album License to Ill is my top 3 hip-hop albums of all time. I know this may seem a little out-of place on this blog, but Paul Revere is just too good for people to be missing out on. The whole reverse-beat it has going is fucking great, and the lyrics are entertaining to say the least… a spaghetti-western type story that reads like a play, each Beastie having his own role in the tale, here’s my favorite verse:
MCA:
“Now, I got the gun, you got the brew
You got two choices of what you can do
It’s not a tough decision as you can see
I can blow you away or you can ride with me”
Ad Rock:
“I said,
I’ll ride with you if you can get me to the border
The sheriff’s after me for what I did to his daughter,
I did it like this, I did it like that
I did it with a whiffleball bat”
The Beastie Boys started as a hardcore punk band, but switched to hip-hop around 1983, and in my books, any hip-hop before ’96 earns a green tick. But the ’86 (or was it early ’87?) Paul Revere (much like the rest of License to Ill) is a track that could have been released yesterday and still be fresh. Take a listen and you’ll see what I mean: