Both albums still blow me away!

[pesto pizza]

I listened to Check your head last night and just like Paul's Boutique it still blows me away. I would of thought after 21 years and 24 years, I might of still think they were classic albums but a little bored with these albums after the amount of times I've played them.
But no after each album ends I'm like fucking hell that was amazing!

[Mister-Gerard]

I completely agree. CYH is great, still after all these years. I remember the CYH tour in Brussels in 92, best gig ever seen. Something's got to give was really awesome.

[pm0ney]

Check Your Head is my favorite album of all time and obviously my favorite Beastie Boys album. There is not a band that has ever existed besides the Beasties that could have made that album. I can't think of higher praise.

[Micodin]

I think both are perfect albums.

It's great that they are both different sonically but you can still tell it's a Beastie Boy record.

[3stooges]

I agree, they're my two favorites, and I think they're their two best. Just my personal opinion.

Check Your Head was actually more mind-blowing to me. Paul's Boutique was genius, and blew me away for sure. But there were other albums out there at the time that were similarly impressive, in a similar way (It Takes A Nation, 3 Feet High). With the samples and dense production.

Check Your Head, on the other hand, when I first heard it, it was a sound that was nearly unrecognizable to me. The hardcore and the jazz wasn't really new....but the hip hop tracks were just....this futuristic sound that somehow simultaneously expressed a raw throwback sensibility. It's hard to explain but I don't really think anyone had done anything like it at that point. Since then, we have heard people do similar things, but at the time it was just something new.

Hindsight is 20/20, so looking back at it you can tell some of the influences, it's almost like if you had Funkadelic or Hendrix doing hip hop production, with the Beasties rhyming over it. But at the time, there just wasn't anything else like it yet. And to be honest...people have done some similar things but I don't think anyone's done anything quite as dope as those beats on Check Your Head. They are just something else.

[Michelle*s_Farm]

I think both are perfect albums.

It's great that they are both different sonically but you can still tell it's a Beastie Boy record.

So true. When you consider them together with the first full length LTI LP it is quite amazing the sonic contrasts (but clear continuity).