10 Rock Stars That Completely Changed Their Genre

The idea of the Beastie Boys even talking about anything outside of macking on girls and partying felt a bit silly during the mid '80s. After all, since most of their songs amounted to the kind of stuff you would hear blasting out of a college dormitory, the formula already worked pretty well to begin with. Aside from the 808s though, The Beasties plugged in their instruments and gave us a trippy as hell experience on Paul's Boutique.

Outside of the outrageous amount of samples going on, their sophomore effort was a lot more mature than anyone thought was possible, having been informed by everything from old school hip hop to hardcore punk to the world of jazz. If you had even thought of playing this to the same guy who got down on something like No Sleep Till Brooklyn, chances are his head might explode.

Despite not really going over that well with their core fanbase, Paul's Boutique turned into one of the greatest slowburns of the entire '80s, going on to become one of the foundational pieces of sample based hip hop going forward. This was just the starting point though, as stuff like Check Your Head and Ill Communication showed even more growth. Not bad a couple of kids who just decided to screw around and make some hip hop on the streets of New York.