On May 4th, one of my heroes passed on to the great beyond. Adam Yauch, MCA of the Beastie Boys, succumbed after a three year battle with cancer. Adam Yauch, Adam Horovitz, and Michael Diamond were together the Beastie Boys. The Beasties were an anomaly of rap. Three Jewish-cultured, upper-middle class white boys from Brooklyn who had walked into what was traditionally an African-American dominated style of music. In the process of doing so, the Beastie Boys helped change the face and sound of rap. As LL Cool J said in his remarks during the induction of the Beastie Boys into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, others had taken rap to the edge of suburbia, but the Beasties drove it right into the center of town. Yauch himself extended his distance from the typical. He was a practicing Buddhist, an outspoken advocate for peace, and a rapper promoting respect for women. Yauch was 47. He leaves behind a wife and daughter.
I was exposed to the Beasties at what may be considered the midpoint of their career. It was around 1999 when their song “Intergalactic” was climbing charts and winning awards. I had been one of those suburban kids that met rap as it drove through town. Their music was fun, goofy, catchy, and even danceable. It would not be till many years later that I would hear the Beastie’s sophomore album “Paul’s Boutique.” Widely considered the Beasties magnum opus, “Paul’s Boutique” did something that today is considered impossible through conventional means: it used an enormous number of samples to create new music altogether. This impossibility is not because of technical inability or loss of skill (see Girl Talk), it is because there is a legal and commercial environment that prevents it.
“Paul’s Boutique” was the Beastie Boys’ answer to “Licensed to Ill,” their blockbuster freshman album produced by the legendary Rick Rubin of Def Jam Records. Dissatisfied with the immature, frat-boy image that Rubin had crafted for them, the Beasties withdrew from their record contract with Def Jam and moved to Capitol Records to create “Paul’s Boutique.” Working with album producers the Dust Brothers, the two entities explored a new musical composition based on music sampling. Sampling is a technique of taking a sound or music, cutting it, looping it, and twisting it in a variety of ways for use in a new song. In many cases, the samples form the music that artists will rap over with original lyrics. For Paul’s Boutique, the Dust Brothers altered the sampled music in so many ways that in some cases, the original music borrowed to make a track was indistinguishable in the layers of sound being used. Michael Simpson of the Dust Brothers estimates 100 to 300 different songs were sampled to create the fifteen tracks of “Paul’s Boutique.”
Before the Beastie Boys even had an album to release, there were already legal questions stirring about the ability to “sample” music. Wasn’t this plagiarism? A smart-aleck’s way of profiting off of another musician’s labor and creativity? The Beastie Boys had already been a target of a sampling-related lawsuit for their song “Hold It Now, Hit It” off of “Licensed to Ill.” Jimmy Castor, author of the sampled track, would settle with the Beasties, receiving a percentage of the records sold. Around the same time of the Beasties-Castor dispute, the rap group De La Soul had too been sued by pop rock group The Turtles for sampling their music. It was clear at the very least that where there was the use of an original song without a license, particularly when it came from the master recording, the songwriter or their copyright holder could come seeking a payday. Sample clearance would not be optional.
From the inception of “Paul’s Boutique,” Yauch envisioned the album as the nail in the coffin of sampling. He saw an opportunity to make something over the top, an album that would sample everything, poke the sampled musicians in the eye with the album’s new sound, all while creating something that would never be possible again. The album would certainly go over the top with its relatively enormous number of samples. As the album neared completion, the Dust Brothers were asked to submit a list of samples used for clearance. Poor recordkeeping combined with the vast number of samples used, some indistinguishable in the layers of sound, would make it impossible for the Brothers or Beasties to list them all. After furnishing some semblance of a list to Tim Carr, the artists and repertoire representative from Capitol Records, Carr would later state that the label “cleared what they had to clear.” Mario Caldato, engineer on the album, estimated that a quarter million dollars were paid for sample clearances in Paul’s Boutique.
Today, this album could not be created.
Following the creation of “Paul’s Boutique,” sampled musicians began to more regularly seek paydays for use of their music, sometimes suing to receive their fees. As Kembrew McLeod and Peter DiCola cite in their book Creative License, rap musicians quickly became alert to litigious artists. Posdnuos of the rap group De La Soul recalls avoiding George Clinton music while he was pursuing Westbound Records for sampling-related damages and George Harrison because of his distaste for rap. By the 1990s, it was also becoming clearer that rap was not a passing fad. Rap music was a lucrative business with opportunities for copyright holders to earn money off the music they owned by allowing others to sample it. Costs quickly escalated for the transaction, the negotiations, and the music. Even with all this effort, there was no guarantee that the copyright holder would even allow the sample to be used. Today, artists like Girl Talk who use samples without permission dodge these issues by relying on fair use arguments, a copyright doctrine that allows for use of copyrighted works without permission or payment in limited circumstances. This position is tenuous at best, relying on untested legal theories and alternative distribution channels. This state of affairs would rapidly ensure Yauch’s goal, that an album like “Paul’s Boutique” would never be created again though mainstream distribution. McLeod and DiCola estimate that if “Paul’s Boutique” were to be cleared for all its licenses today, the album would have lost around $20 million.
The reasons for and merits of today’s licensing system are a conversation for another blog post. For now, a tribute to a fallen member of the rap community and a masterpiece of music. Paul’s Boutique remains a double platinum standard bearer of rap and, in Yauch’s words, a nail in the coffin of music sampling. As a friend said shortly after his passing, I guess MCA finally made it to Brooklyn. Rest in peace, Adam.
For those uninitiated to the music of the Beastie Boys, here are some of my favorite songs: Hello Brooklyn, Flute Loop, Super Disco Breakin’.