Album: Paul’s Boutique.
Year: 1989.
My favorite song on the long-simmering landmark Paul’s Boutique, “Looking Down The Barrel of a Gun” is a song that merges Beasties past with Beasties future.
On one hand, as a relatively straightforward song on an album that mixed and matched samples with the abandon of Jackson Pollock brushstrokes, it could have been at home on Licensed to Ill – right down to the “Mississippi Queen” mini-sample – which probably explains my instant attraction to it in 1989.
On the other hand, it’s a song where the Adams Horovitz and Yauch played guitar and bass, presaging the rest of their career, where they would rap on top of homegrown funk jams. So it felt more organic somehow than anything else on Paul’s Boutique, which was otherwise so revolutionary – even in the era of Prince Paul and the Bomb Squad – it felt like the sounds of science fiction.
Official Video for “Looking Down The Barrel of a Gun”
My Certain Songs Playlist on Spotify