Beastie Boys members Ad-Rock and Mike D. not too long ago revealed a stunning discovery, studying that the music on their gold report for Paul’s Boutique was not music from the album in any respect.

The two residing Beastie Boys members have been guesting on the Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend podcast after they dropped just a little bit of data on the host about their gold report. One would possibly naturally assume that the band’s personal music is pressed into these gold report plaques that you just get for reaching a sure gross sales plateau, however Ad-Rock proceeded to debunk that concept after conducting his personal experiment.

How Did Ad-Rock Find Out What Was on the Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique Gold Record?

“So we’re at our studio here in California and I was smoking the pot,” revealed Ad-Rock to the bemused host. “This was a long time ago. And we had a gold record on the wall. It was our record, Paul’s Boutique. I was looking at it and I could see it has our label and I could see that it has whatever, like nine songs on the one side. And I was looking at the actual gold record and it only had four songs on it.”

The off depend piqued the musician’s curiosity, so he shared with O’Brien that the members determined to open up the gold report plaque and check it out. “Open it like, I mean, broke the glass and took the record out and put it on the thing,” clarified Mike D.

“It was somebody doing like piano versions of like Barry Manilow, like [Morris Albert’s] ‘Feelings.’ Just some other shit,” confirmed Ad-Rock of what was on their Paul’s Boutique gold report.

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The change up appeared to baffle O’Brien and the band members alike. “I don’t know about anybody else,” mentioned Ad-Rock when O’Brien questioned if all gold data simply had random music on them. “I’d like to think that for, you know, Barbra Streisand, Donna Summer, Barry Manilow, a real mega-star, that it was actually their record,” added Mike D.

Beasties Gold and Platinum

According to the RIAA, the Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique album was licensed gold for 500,000 copies offered on Sept. 22, 1989, just a bit over two months after the album was launched. While the boys might have deconstructed the plaque for that album to study the nice thriller of what was on their gold report, Paul’s Boutique has since been licensed platinum (in 1995) and double platinum (in 1999), with the most recent certification noting over two million copies offered.

Licensed to Ill stays their largest vendor, with the 1986 album reaching a diamond certification (10 million offered) again in 2015. Ill Communication (1994) is a triple-platinum vendor, as is 1998’s Hello Nasty. Check Your Head, their 1992 album, is a double-platinum vendor and their 2004 album, To the 5 Boroughs, went platinum.