It is a bit strange when the albums of my life start coming up for the 20th anniversary reissue circuit. I’ve gotten used to the tenners but this is something new. Its not like I was hip to the Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique on the first go-round. I cannot claim to have been that cool of a 7-year-old. At the time I knew mostly “Fight For Your Right (To Party)”. In the ’90s, however, the Beasties were kind of a musical rite of passage for suburban white boys. As such, they did well with the power and influence they wielded.

Growing past their early notoriety as boorish party boys (a role they played very cleverly, so don’t think I will ever grow tired of License To Ill), the Beasties emerged as unlikely paragons of global awareness and social responsibility. Contrary to the suspicions of many parents of the era, the Beastie Boys were probably the best thing for society that I was listening to at the time. Furthermore, through their label and magazine Grand Royal, they were immensely influential culturally. In that window before the internet was a daily fact of life, the Beastie Boys familiarized millions with a kind of pop culture hyper-awareness and helped introduce the idea of investigating what had previously been dismissed as junk culture as a legitimate treasure trove. It is no overstatement to say that Grand Royal permanently effected how I view pop culture and was a mainstream stepping stone into deeper waters for myself and others.

A decade or so past the peak of their greatest broad relevance and regard, the Beasties have occasionally been put into the slot of critical punching bags, but this is something time will likely correct. That was the case with Paul’s Boutique. Although critically adored in some corners, their second album was publicly perceived as an enormous flop. After conflicts with Def Jam (another area the Beasties were pioneers), a label switch and a lengthy, indulgent recording process, the much delayed sophmore album came out well past the height of their initial popularity, and didn’t click with the public, who largely ignored it.

In the years since, however, Paul’s Boutique has slowly and steadily gone platinum while being canonized as a landmark classic for fans of hip-hop and pop in general. Some records don’t hold up to their reputations, but Paul’s Boutique deserves every superlative accolade it has received. Within a year of it’s release, De La Soul and Biz Markie were sued over sample clearance and the rules and economics of sampling would change forever. Coming right before that shift, Paul’s Boutique would be prohibitively expensive for a major release today. Not only is it one of the most engaging and inventive hip-hop albums ever, but the work of the Beasties and the Dust Brothers on Paul’s Boutique stands as a record that fully took advantage of the anything goes sampling atmosphere of the ’80s.

Listening to Paul’s Boutique today, it is still a doozy. The stream of cultural referents in the music and lyrics are both mind-blowing and exuberantly playful. The scope is as ambitious as the epics of the first psychedelic revolution in the late ’60s. While there is much time capsule value to the content, enough time has passed for it not to sound dated. It is alternately timeless, historical, contemporary, and forward-looking. There is an erroneous thinking that surfaces here and there that hip-hop was never a substantial albums medium as rock and roll. Well, now time has told and proven that quaint little theory wrong. Paul’s Boutique will always be with us and always inspire.

I guess It Takes A Nation Of Millions is coming up for the big 20 year assessment, too. Wow.