Re: Hey Ladies
I was a huge fan at the time and was eagerly awaiting the album. I bought the single as soon as it came out (still have it). It also had Shake Your Rump and a couple Dust Brother mixes on it. I thought all of it was incredible.
It was a big change, and I was, like Mister-Gerard said, always surprised by what they did next. But I was very open-minded. I was 19, and smoking a lot of weed and always checking out new different music. I was way into hip hop at the time, but also into alternative rock and older rock like Hendrix and the Beatles and just soaking everything up, so the Beasties' new music was just amazing to me. I just remember being so excited to hear their stuff and what they were coming out with next. I also was psyched thinking about what the shows would be like, which unfortunately I never got to go to, as they just ended doing a few small shows and never toured. I didn't get to see them live again till 1992, which was like a whole other era in their history, as they changed styles so fast back then.
Hey Ladies is probably not their best song from that time, but the musical track is very strong and the rapping is good. The chorus is very weak though. I remember the video coming out later. We thought it was hilarious. It is kind of similar to the video for No Sleep Till Brooklyn, where they are just dressing up and having fun and making fun of another style and fashion.
It is interesting that you guys say they never played it live. That is funny, because it is one of the songs I had imagined them doing when they would tour the album. I'm sure they would have, but the tour never happened. And after that, I think they just felt that they had moved on to CYH and had a lot of songs to play, and it just didn't make the cut any more. It does kind of surprise me though, they they wouldn't have thrown it in a few times just for fun.
I just remember me and my friends would play that tape high all the time (I recorded the record to a tape, so I could play it in the car, or on a boombox, or home stereo, etc., that's how we did it back then).
When the album came out we were just blown away completely. So many samples, so many rhymes....Listened to it constantly and had the album memorized after a couple months...but still, always hearing something new every time I listened to it. To this day, it remains a big influence on me as a musician, sonically (not so much lyrically or thematically). I consider that album basically a pillar of popular music at the time, along with stuff like It Takes A Nation, 3 Feet High and Rising, Mother's Milk, and other influential albums like Bleach, Stone Roses, Pretty Hate Machine, etc. But I would have to say that the production on Paul's Boutique is as influential as anything that came out back then. People are still trying to do what they did back then today.
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