"It's a brilliant album. What's not to like? It's universally loved and accepted as an album, as a collection of music. When you're a kid you listen to Beastie Boys because you like to sing '(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party)' because it's silly and fun but Paul's Boutique is sophisticated and mature, as well as being really musical, which I really like about it. And long before I had any awareness of what sampling was, all the different bits that they use I was always curious about what they were. I always knew they were from other songs, because some of them I recognised. But it was super fascinating to me. I was already in love with New York and the idea of moving to New York. And in my adolescent fantasy I thought: ""I'm going to graduate high school, I'm going to move out of the house, I'm going to move straight to New York, and then maybe, one day, I'll get to meet one of the Beastie Boys."" And now I've met all of them! James [Murphy] is really good friends with Ad-Rock and he'd be at the studio with us and I'd go there and be with Adam, and eat pizza with Adam. It was so bizarre because 15-year-old me was losing her mind but I had to be cool. But also it was totally normal because he's just a normal guy and he's hanging out with my friend who's just a normal guy and they're doing normal stuff. But no matter how many times I meet them or see them I've never stopped being star-struck. I have to stop myself falling apart."

"I discovered this album relatively late. I liked funk, and disco was an earlier discovery for me when I was in my late teens. But, around 1985, I found Sly And The Family Stone. I was about 23 at the time and – wow – was that a discovery, not knowing that that particular album was out there before then. I played it from morning until night before we were doing the Notorious album, which was very influenced by Fresh. For me, it is the greatest funk album. I could have picked a James Brown album – I love Live At The Apollo, which was such a terrific record – but the songs on Fresh like ‘If You Want Me To Stay’ and ‘In Time’ are just masterpieces. Fresh has got such a mood to it. It is very difficult in the studio to capture a mood. In a live show it is easier because there is an atmosphere there already – you’ve got the audience, you are playing together, there is a danger something can go wrong any minute and you will take a song off somewhere and you cannot get yourselves back. But, doing it in a studio and capturing a real vibe is the apex of music. If you can do that and you can get that – then you have something great. The Stones were always very good at that, as were The Who early on. But, this album, Fresh, is just pure vibe and every time I listen to the organ swells in the songs I can almost feel the guy playing them. You don’t get that so much in modern records. That’s what we’ve lost. Andy Newmark played drums on the album and they are some of the greatest drum tracks ever recorded. It’s not just feel – it is vibe. Love it."