EWA100 - #23. Beastie Boys - Paul Revere

23. Beastie Boys - Paul Revere (Def Jam/Columbia. 1986. From the LP Licensed To Ill)

Raven Mack: The Beastie Boys are stupid zen buddhist dumbfuck minor league jam band goofs now, so it's hard to remember they were actually relevant to for-real rap music at one point. I mean, they could kick it with Biz Markie and shit. This song probably brought more warm feelings to American youth relations than any other though, and mostly by accident.
I have a jukebox, like a real giant useless jukebox which is basically an old man's ipod, except it can only hold 200 songs, and unfortunately every two of them have to be attached physically to each other. Which brings me to "Paul Revere". When The Beasties blew the fuck up as asshole white kids down for whatever schtick, the ginormous hit for them was that fight for your right to party song. When that was released on vinyl format (7 inch for radio stations and my jukebox eventually), the opposite side was "Paul Revere". Now, for some reason, on the actual Licensed To Ill record, "Paul Revere" was the one song that black people loved the most. I am basing this on all the black people I grew up around and how they knew the words to "Paul Revere" but probably nothing else musical by white people. And the party fighting song was definitely a huge hit amongst the more rock-oriented white folks of the planet earth ball.
I'm not sure why this song is so fucking great. I mean, the beat is weird for the time, and apparently still holds value as that goddamned annoying-ass "So Crispy" song is basically this same beat with a touch of annoying 2007 tinkerbell drum machine spice on top, but it doesn't seem like the most slamming beat ever or anything. And the rhymes are as cornily humorous as anything else on the record. Perhaps it's the story itself, since 99% of rap music, lyrically, is nothing more than stringing together metaphorical and linguistical trickery with no real attention given to cohesion of thoughts. Still, this is a great super fun song that I'm proud to have a copy of in my old man ipod (selection E11, as opposed to E12, because I insert my seven inch records with my favorite side getting top billing, not according to the retarded marketing schemes of corrupt record labels).

Mike Dikk: I have some mind-blowing theories about this song, but unfortunately they will have to wait until we get a little further into this list. I didn’t initially like The Beastie Boys because “Fight For Your Right” and “No Sleep Til Brooklyn” Are horrible songs. Seriously, if you like those songs in 2007, you need to fucking grow up already.
However, if you cut out those two songs, along with a couple others from Licensed To Ill, and strip it down to the dirty gutter songs you have one H E Double Hockey Sticks of an LP. It’s not something that can really be duplicated (not that anyone with a brain would want to) because it’s so retarded and sophomoric. Almost immediately after Licensed To Ill, it became the unwritten Rap law that you had to be totally serious when it came to rapping on record. I’m not saying every successful rap act after Licensed To Ill was completely serious, but I can guarantee you none of them were this goofy either.
Outside of the goofiness, this record became highly influential to a lot of artists, black and white. That’s why The Beastie Boys will always be the most universal group as far as rap is concerned. I think they’ve since lost all their street cred, but they were putting out records with weird jam songs on it that people of all races, colors, and creeds could get down with.
“Paul Revere” sticks out of Licensed To Ill because, like Raven said, it’s the most well-liked song by both sides of the racial rainbow. Personally, I never looked at The Beastie Boys as white boys trying to do black music back then because I only knew of like ten rap groups, and The Beastie Boys was one of them, making the black-to-white ratio not as one-sided as it would get, up until Eminem came out and balanced things out again. I’m going to end this bit here though in fear of getting too “racial”. Race is the only thing you can’t joke around about on the internet, and I joke around about it a lot, and I’m trying to be totally serious here people. Don’t make me stoop down to that level.

Download: Beastie Boys - Paul Revere

There was never an official video for this song, but Youtube has an insane amount of home made videos for Paul Revere. Some of them are ok, but most of them are crap. Since this is Dumpin.net and not IReallyGiveAShitAboutYourAVClassProject.com, I present to you the two worst home made Paul revere videos on all of Youtube. (I couldn't decide which one was worse)

The first video is some hippie douche who thought it would be a good idea to make an acoustic version of Paul Revere. This is pretty bad on it's own, but the fact that it sucks and it didn't deter this hackey sack fucktard from posting it on Youtube makes it especially terrible:



Here is the worst band I have ever heard hanging out in a bedroom that they most likely share with each other, covering Paul Revere. What makes this especially awful is that they pointed the video camera at a mirror because they couldn't find anyone to stomach this in real time. I really hate hippies.