Beastie Boys
“I like poison ivy. I put that shit on my sandwich. I eat it like asbestos. I don’t even care.” – MCA
“You eat asbestos?” – Ad-Rock
“They’re annoying idiots.” – Al
Albums Reviewed:
God, have my last few days been a mess. If you drag down, the first paragraphs of the reviews for both Hello Nasty and To the 5 Boroughs make reference to, essentially, my wanting snow to die and being “completely fucked” if my pipes froze or I ran out of hot water again because I had no one to plow my mountain of a driveway and thus no way to receive assistance if such an event happened.
Well, guess what happened.
You know
what’s fun? Shoveling
for an hour, becoming filthy and sweaty and nasty, then turning on your shower
and getting nothing but cold water. Add in my living situation and, well, let’s
just say you should be glad you weren’t in my general vicinity early Tuesday afternoon. I had to go crawling back to the plower my landlord had basically told to fuck off a week
earlier, leaving me caught in the middle between my landlord, who’s paying for
like two-thirds of the plowing costs (“He’s screwing us! There’s no way I’m paying that much for a
plowing job!”), and the plower (“Tell your landlord
I’m not screwing anyone! I almost
crashed twice on your driveway today! No
one else will touch you!”). Meanwhile I had tickets to an Interpol
concert in
So, anyway, if you wanted the Beasties page up a few days ago (since you voted for it and all), I guess this is my long, meandering way of saying I’ve been a little preoccupied.
And now I will actually get to talking about music, for this page here, as the first dedicated to critiquing an artist that plays that darn hippety-hop the kids are into nowadays, is a truly momentous occasion for me and my website. And before we start, I must admit that I (obviously) am a little less acquainted with rap music than, say, anything with white people playing guitars in it. As of now, besides the Beasties and Rage Against the Machine (who really don’t even count), the rap records I’ve been able to listen to and digest in full include: Straight Outta Compton, some OutKast, an Eminem album or two, a decent smattering of Public Enemy (who, from what I’ve heard, fucking RULE!), a few Roots records, and, um…I guess that’s about it. I have that Streets album all the critics love so much on my hard drive right now, but I haven’t gotten around to listening to it yet. And I know I should acquaint myself with Run DMC and Wu-Tang and Tupac and Dr. Dre and Ice-T and others, but I’ve been too busy listening to the new 3 Doors Down album and reveling in its powerfully insistent “eh, it’s not awful” qualities (and guest spot by BOB FUCKING SEGER!!!!! YEARRRRGGHDFHJHJHHHH!!!!!) to bother. And 50 Cent, outside of “In da Club” (which fucking owns), sucks, by the way.
Anyway, the Beastie Boys are probably the perfect rap group to dig into if you’re a preppy, suburban white boy who’s scared of rap music, but want to dip into it anyway. First, they’re white (a big help). Second, they don’t rap about “gats” and “hoez” and “bitchez” and “gangsta shit” or anything even remotely abrasive, like the black power politics of Public Enemy or the Adidas product placement shenanigans of Run DMC, instead busting rhymes about obscenely funny shit and dropping references to campy seventies sitcoms and horrible fast food restaurants and other things ironically detached, hipper-than-thou, WASP-y twenty-somethings like me can dig. Third, except for To the 5 Boroughs (which is pretty much straight-up hip-hop), even haters of all rap, regardless of its relative quality, can find something to enjoy in Beasties records, from the heavy guitar riffs and ridiculous lyrics of Licensed to Ill to the sea of fascinating samples of Paul’s Boutique to the fact that Check Your Head, Ill Communication, and Hello Nasty, to varying degrees, aren’t actually rap records (though, admittedly, I hesitate to say that too confidently about Hello Nasty). The Beastie Boys are rap for people who don’t like rap.
That’s not to insinuate that they’re marginally-talented commercial whore bullshit mongers like Nelly or Ludacris, however. See, they actually started out as a hardcore punk band and only changed to funny rock-tinged hip-hop later on, after realizing they sucked ass at being a hardcore punk band (evidence for which can be found on both Check Your Head and Ill Communication), and then after Rick Rubin told them to. So their tastes have never strictly been hip-hop only, just hip-hop-centric, and after they made a goofy parody record that became the best-selling rap album of the eighties and subsequently made them pariahs to both the hip-hop community and Tipper Gore, they explored this whole “eclecticism” thing to fine effect, rapping about fried chicken and drive-by eggings over eighty-bazillion seventies soul samples layered on top of each other, then turning into a pseudo-soul/funk band themselves for a while, followed by producing the only record I’ve ever heard that I’d classify as “sci-fi-hop,” before finally coming full circle and going back to “the old-school shit,” whatever that is. It’s a pretty fascinating career arc, though it’s made a little frustrating by a) the fact that they’ve never been able to make a record that I, without qualification, LOVE, just a bunch of records I really like, and b) the fact that it’s somehow taken them eighteen damn years to produce six albums, and most recently six years to produce their most boring one to date. Workaholics they are not.
From left
to right, the Beasties are: Mike D (real name: Michael Diamond), MCA (real
name: Adam Yauch), and Ad-Rock (real name: Adam Horovitz). All three
are Jewish kids from relatively upscale neighborhoods in
And, onto the reviews!
Pedro Andino
(pedroandino@msn.com) writes:
I know I am a white guy but
hey! I loved the beastie boys! they started as white guy punk rockers and also
that did not work out! then came licensed to ill! the party album! so 4 hits
come, fight for your right, no sleep till brooklyn,
girls, and brass monkey. then came paul's boutique! sampadelic to the core! scoring hits like hey ladies and
shake your rump! check your head is next and the beastie's play the
instruments! yes! instrumentals! ill communication is the same thing but much
more different. sure shot and sabotage rule the airwaves! hello nasty is a
return to the sampadelic styles of paul's boutique and intergalactic is so cool! to the 5 is a
much more rap focused album but hey old school rap is way better than the faggoty g unit crap! ha ha ha ha ha
ha ha ha
ha ha ha
ha ha! time to get ill!!!!
Licensed To Ill
Rating: 7
Best Song: “Fight For
Your Right”
OK, so if you have no tolerance for stupid frat-boy antics, old-school hip-hop or sampling you’ll probably hate this record with every fiber of your being, but when you think about it, doesn’t it make perfect sense that this was the first truly huge rap record? The first one that crossed over to the suburban, big-allowance, disposable-cash white-bread MTV audience and sold gajillions of copies? Consider:
1) It was recorded by white people! Has anyone noticed that if a rapper is white, he automatically has more “cred” around the white rocker community? With the Beastie Boys it actually makes sense, but why does Eminem get played on Boston-area alternative rock stations, and OutKast, for instance, does not?
2) Its lyrics are silly (yet surprisingly clever, if you’re paying attention) frat-boy keg humor! So they’re sufficiently ribald to seem “controversial” (at least in 1986 they were…compare them to commercial rap lyrics now, either Eminem or all the “gangsta” (god, I’m so white…) stuff influenced by N.W.A., and they sound like Sesame Street), but not so much that they might scare off Joe Average Moron Teenager in East Bumfuck Suburb, CT. “I like girls and beer! I’m white! Hee!!”
3) The most important one: they sample classic rock riffs! All over the place! So suburban rock-addled pimply kids looking for something “alternative” still have something to grab onto to satisfy their rock jones (or, failing that, they’re morons and they don’t know where the riffs came from, in which case fuck ‘em). The opener “Rhymin’ and Stealin’” takes the riff from Black Sabbath’s “Sweet Leaf” and layers it on top of a scratched version of the drum beat from Led Zeppelin’s “When the Levee Breaks.” “She’s Crafty” cleverly loops in the riff from Zep’s “The Ocean.” “Slow Ride” is based around a re-arranged version of War’s “Low Rider.” And (my favorite) the ending of the closer “Time to Get Ill” layers CCR’s “Down on the Corner” and Zep’s “Custard Pie” (Yes, that’s three overt Zeppelin samples on the same record! These guys knew their audience) on top each other in a way that’s actually very cool and original. I know I’ve lambasted the P. Diddy sampling technique in various places on this website (specifically the Stevie Wonder page), but I actually find a difference in the two techniques. It’s one thing to simply rap over a pre-existing song. It’s another thing entirely to loop in a few seconds of an old song in a clever and completely unexpected spot. True, at times the sampling on this record (especially on “Rhymin’ and Stealin’”) comes close to the P. Diddy Method, and the boys wouldn’t really hit their sampling stride until the Dust Brothers tossed together most of the backing tracks to Paul’s Boutique for them, but I still sense a difference here.
In any case, as different and
original-sounding this must’ve been in 1986 (or maybe it wasn’t…it’s not like I’m
a rap scholar here), the subsequent twenty years and countless worthless rap-rock shit acts that have tried to recreate
this record have made it lose some of its freshness. However, that doesn’t change the fact that
Mike D, Ad-Rock and MCA, while their skills as MC’s vary (Ad-Rock is clearly the best here, and stays so
through most of the Beasties’ career), are all clever fucking dudes, and toss out their sexist frat-boy party
lyrics in a way that makes it very very clear that it’s all a big joke, and thus they end
up being funny! Instead of
offensive. “Girls,” for instance, built
on that goofy, repetitive xylophone (or whatever that is) loop, is possibly the
funniest song I’ve ever heard, containing the rhyming verse: “I asked her out,
she said ‘no way!’ I should have
probably guessed her gay! So I broke
North with no delay! I heard she moved
real far away! That was two years ago
this May! I seen her just the other
day! Jackin’
Mike D to my dismay!” Plus they drop
references to
I suppose the main problem this album has, and the chief thing keeping me from rating it any higher, is that when the cool samples and occasional original riffage (the singles “Fight For Your Right” and “No Sleep ‘Til Brooklyn,” two fantastic party rap-rock anthem tunes that are just incredible songs) go away, we’re left with some pretty generic mid-eighties old-school hip-hop at times. The first handful of songs on the record (before “Girls” and the two brilliant singles) get by on samples and some superb moments from Ad-Rock (“LLLLLET ME CLEAR MY THROAT!!!!”), but once “No Sleep ‘Til Brooklyn” goes away, not much of what’s left appeals to me. Sure, they’re still good as rappers and their rhymes are still clever and funny, but you have to give someone who has a philosophical problem with rap as a musical genre (such as…oh, I dunno, me) something more than this to keep them interested. The musical backing in a number of these songs is just generically thin hippety-hoppity fake drums and not all that much else, so “Paul Revere” bores me despite a beat that sounds oddly like that “Drop it Like It’s Hot” song Snoop released a little while ago, “Brass Monkey,” notwithstanding the out-of-tune horn samples (or whatever those are) doesn’t work at all as a second blatant joke song (though, admittedly, it’s tough to come up with something as brilliantly ridiculous as “Girls” twice on the same record), and I am able to recall very little else of the last five tracks on this record, notwithstanding the CCR/Zeppelin samples in “Time to Get Ill” I mentioned before.
I’m gonna give this record “props” (oh, go me…) for the guys’ clever rapping and lyrics (especially Ad-Rock, who rules consistently) as well as some nice samples (hell, “Time to Get Ill” uses the “Mr. Ed” theme song along with the CCR and Zeppelin tunes, all in the same song!) and a couple definite classic tunes (“Girls,” “Fight For Your Right,” and “No Sleep ‘Til Brooklyn”…and maybe “Rhymin’ and Stealin,’” if I’m in a generous mood), but too much of it is just generic, albeit well-performed and very fun, “damn hippety-hop” to me.
David Dickson (ddickso2@uccs.edu) writes:
Say. You know what?
This album actually wasn't all that pioneering
at all. It was done by white boys, and they were rapping about frat
things and beer and all, but if we're talking about music, there's
abso-frickin'-lutely nothing original about this
album. Run DMC had
done the same thing both on their 1984 debut and their 1985 followup,
King OF Rock. (Hmmmmmmm. . .
)
Actually, Brad, I think you would like that latter one. It has very
few of the generic old-school hippety hop bore tracks
you cite on
here--in fact, six out of eight songs on there sound whiter, poppier,
and more melodic than anything on this album! There is a problem,
though. . . *sigh*. . .
Neither Run nor DMC can rap HALF as well as any of the three Beasties.
Frick--they practically sound lethargic on "You Talk Too Much."
I
suppose that's the ticket--the Beasties have ENERGY the Run DMC simply
didn't have. Of course, a single KRS-One would blow all five of them
out of the water put together, but. . . Pssht. Eighties rapping.
This album annoys me.
Paul’s Boutique (1989)
Rating: 8
Best Song: “Shake
Your Rump”
So the backlash against the Beasties was pretty predictable, I figure. Three upper-class Jewish guys sample a bunch of old-school seventies metal riffs, yell about beer and chicks in obnoxious voices over beats produced for them by Rick “The Bearded One” Rubin and Russell Simmons, and have the best-selling rap album of the decade. How is the hip-hop community supposed to take that? How is the conservative Pat Boone-listening retard square community supposed to take that? How are idiot payola music critics of the era supposed to take that? Poorly, poorly, and poorly. So after getting sued by Rubin over who was actually responsible for the success of Licensed to Ill, the guys gave Def Jam the finger, signed with another record company (Capitol), flew out to L.A., hooked up with the Dust Brothers, and released something about as far removed from Licensed to Ill as possible. It COMPLETELY tanked upon release and was slammed by fuckwad critics eager to paint the Jewish frat boys who sang that “Girls” novelty song as no-talent one-hit douches (probably the same critics who wrote glowing reviews of the Rolling Stones’ Steel Wheels that same year…MORONS…). But, ofcourse, the record “cultivated a small but fiercely loyal following in the years after its release” yadda yadda yadda yadda and is now hailed as not only one of the greatest rap records of all time, but one of the greatest records of all time, period.
Right, so
what do I think of it? Well, I can’t
speak for the record’s being one of the greatest albums of all time by anyone
(I’m a honky white guy who doesn’t understand the hippety-hoppity
music!), but it is probably one of
the best rap records I’ve had the pleasure of hearing (though I’ve heard, like,
20 or something, maybe), and my favorite Beasties album as well, despite a few
tracks that pretty much blow out loud and prevent me from granting the album a
9 rating. The one thing I can say about
this album is that, if you hate the idea of sampling in all its forms, this will be the record to change your
mind. And if it isn’t, then you will simply never like any rap music ever,
because sampling is to rap as recycling blues scales is to classic rock. This is the album that convinced me that
sampling could itself be an art form,
and its foremost practitioners are to be admired for the excellent musicians
they are. The samples on this record are
so clever and so thick and so layered
that it takes like ten listens to figure out everything that’s going on. The only one that serves as the entire basis
for a song is the final guitar jam from the Beatles’ “The End” on “The Sounds
of Science,” but so much of the rest is this random seventies soul stuff that I
just have no idea about tossed neatly
into the corners and crevices and crawlspaces of songs. Nearly the entire record is built on a sea of
these samples, and most of it turns into a head-spinning, funky, hilarious,
almost psychedelic at times trip of a
listen, and the best moments are absolutely brilliant. The first real song on the album, for
instance, “Shake Your Rump,” has this wicked bass line, funky guitar plucking
riff, ridiculous drum samples, low, mean
moog synth line thing, and some sampled dude going
“SHAKE YO’ RUMP-AH!!” all in the span of
less than a minute. It’s fucking fantastic, especially when combined with
the fact that the rapping of Ad-Rock, MCA, and Mike D (and, again, especially Ad-Rock, who absolutely OWNS
this album and raps lead on most of the tunes) is the best, cleverest, and
funniest it’s ever been on a Beasties album.
“I’m like Sam the Butcher bringing
The reason I don’t much like rap in general is that, to me, only about one half of one percent of rap music I ever hear contains anything I would deem “original,” but the combination of wicked samples, fantastic lyrical skills, and too many hilarious pop-culture references to count here is something I simply haven’t heard on a rap record before or since. Like how “Egg Man” recounts a drive-by egging as if it were a drive-by shooting and even samples horror movie off-key violin scratchings, and how “High Plains Drifter” drops references to Steve McQueen, Jell-O, and O.T.B. in the middle of a narrative about getting pulled over for shoplifting. The “a-GET…funkyyyy!” and cowbell samples in “Hey Ladies” are ace, and “Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun,” by sampling fucking “Mississippi Queen,” turns into a rap-rock song good enough to rival anything on Licensed to Ill. But I think my favorite line might be “and I’ve been kicking the new knowledge!” (pronounced “ka-nowledge”) in “The Sounds of Science.” Just so fucking funny.
Are all the tunes here winners? Ofcourse not, hence the 8 rating up there. The opening part of “The Sounds of Science” (before the Beatles sample comes in) isn’t the most exciting music I’ve ever heard, and both “3 Minute Rule” and especially “What Comes Around” (whose most memorable lyrical couplet involves pasta primavera) are just boring as hell. God, the only interesting thing about “What Comes Around” is that looped drum fill, which may or may not be the exact same looped drum fill employed in “Shake Your Rump.” They sound disturbingly similar, in any case. And while I applaud the Beasties for their ambition, ending the album with a twelve-minute multi-song rap suite modeled after the Who’s “A Quick One” or the second half of Abbey Road or some crap was just a piss-poor idea. Some of the little snippets in there are actually very cool (especially the one with that futuristic synth riff thing, and I love the line “I got more suits than Jacoby and Meyers!” that comes up somewhere in there), but a new idea comes in like every forty-five seconds, and half of them are just barely above total crap. I would’ve just ended the record with the excellent “Shadrach,” which comes right before it and drops references to J.D. Salinger and Colonel Sanders in about a five-second span. You’d have a wonderfully compact, focused, and exhilarating forty-minute record! But they felt like tacking “B-Boy Bouillabaisse” on there. It’s a bad-ass title, yeah, but the song is fucktarted.
It’s not often that you can say a hip-hop album is one-of-a-kind, but, to my knowledge, there is nothing else like Paul’s Boutique out there. The Dust Brothers’ production job is nothing short of immaculate. They cleverly weave and layer together tons of absolutely spot-on samples, but the record somehow never seems cluttered. The rapping is superb, and Ad-Rock’s performance here is probably the best by any of the three on any of their records. He’s so obnoxiously funny! Fantastic! A few boring-ass tracks and an overlong, misguided mess of confusion at the end drag this one’s rating down a bit, but it’s still a damn, damn good album, and likely the only Beasties album that approaches “great” status. And I don’t even like rap music!
David Dickson (ddickso2@uccs.edu) writes:
I vaguely remember listening
to this on cassette in a friend's ride
home from
"Hey Ladies," and the final nine-minute song. I do remember it
was at
least entertaining consistently. I'll get back to you on this one.
Check Your Head (1992)
Rating: 8
Best Song: “Stand
Together”
So, while Licensed to Ill is for moron keg-standing college frat boys (and those who realize most of the record is a joke that makes fun of said moron keg-standing college frat boys, like me), and Paul’s Boutique is for indie hipsters with interesting haircuts that are down with goofy seventies television show references and appreciate obscure seventies soul samples, Check Your Head is for pot-smoking college hippies who like to wear wool hats. It also means another complete change in artistic priorities for our three favorite skinny Jewish MC’s (by the way, this idea of “trying to expand as artists and change one’s artistic priorities from album to album” is something that oh, I dunno, every single rapper alive today (bar possibly OutKast, maybe the Roots, and possibly others I don’t know about because I’m a rap ignoramus) should take a cue from), as Mike D, Ad-Rock, and MCA try out the incredibly novel idea of playing their own instruments (but…they’re rappers! Don’t they just talk over a sampler? I’M FREAKIN’ OUT, MAN!!!), crafting a very interesting stew of distorted bass lines, marijuana, butt-shaking funk instrumentals, relaxing sooouuuul grooves, marijuana, fuzzy guitar yumminess, and a smidgeon of interesting, you know, rapping on top. And also marijuana.
OK, so it’s not just one fifty-four minute soundtrack for Charlie Q. Pothead to go smoke a bowl too, but it is a fundamentally different type of music than the Beasties’ first two records. Those were active, upbeat, and fun albums that made you appreciate how interesting “old-school hip-hop” could be in the hands of talented MC’s and supported by wonderful production. This one is more of a passive record. It’s perfect for just sitting back on your bean bag chair and chilling out to. “Gratitude” and “So What’cha Want,” essentially the same song if you think about it (hard hitting drum track, fuzzed-out guitars, rippin’ solo, hardcore but cool raps yelled through some sort of distortion device to make them fit with the fuzzed out guitars) are probably the only two times where the adrenaline and rump-shaking are turned up to levels that approach most anything on the band’s last two albums (let alone “Fight For Your Right” or “Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun” or something), with the only other moment that makes you sit up from your bean bag chair and put down your bong being their decidedly mediocre cover of some hardcore punk tune called “Time For Livin’” (possibly the worst track on the record). The rest is just chill-out music.
That’s not to claim it’s boring, uninteresting, or lacking in variety, though. Far from it! Throughout all these pothead soul-funk grooves, you’ll actually find tons of interesting little musical tidbits to keep you interested. Just in the first three tunes here, “Jimmy James” works up a nice rhythm track groove, “Funky Boss” is ninety seconds of irresistibly funky silliness with super scratching and keyboard embellishments (courtesy of one “Money Mark,” who plays most of the album’s keyboards and does an excellent job throughout), and “Pass the Mic” reminds you in wonderful fashion that these guys are excellent rappers as well. There’s some oddball stuff too, from a totally out-of-place Dylan sample to “The Biz vs. The Nuge,” which I believe is just Biz Markie singing over a sampled Ted Nugent guitar solo (?), to some strangely compelling samples of fifties infomercials or some crap. Is it as exhilarating as Paul’s Boutique or as mindlessly fun as Licensed to Ill? No, but it’s damn good in its own way, and there is no way either of those records would contain something as fucking interesting as “Stand Together,” a head-spinning combination of more “So What’cha Want”-esque fuzzy guitars and distorto-vocals with goofball horn samples and swirling sci-fi synths that just fucking rules.
“The Maestro” also nicely recreates that vibe seen in “So What’cha Want” and “Stand Together” and all those other tracks on this record that feature a distorted Ad-Rock yelling really loudly over a bad-ass percussion groove and fuzzboxed guitars, but this type of track is the exception rather than the norm as you move closer to the end. You might get tired of so many stoner soul instrumental grooves (there are twenty tracks on this puppy!), but to me most of these things are pretty damn interesting in their own right, and even though the second half of the album is just about swallowed alive by stuff that sounds like something halfway between lo-fi seventies soul revival and flat-out porn music, it still manages to keep me entertained all the way to the end, which is an admirable feat. The grooves are just so solid! They get uniformly great organ and keyboard sounds from that Money Mark guy, and the funky “chicka-chicka-wah-wah” porn guitars are always a nice time. Sure, yeah, I’d prefer the band provide some vocals to these tracks, and when the monster raps of “Live at P.J.’s” come on and augment the porn guitars, I’m just about in heaven, but even though this doesn’t happen much of the time as the record meanders towards its conclusion, it’s still such relaxing music. Not boring. Relaxing. “In 3’s” works its bad-ass little funky self pretty hard, yeah, but the following “Namaste” lulls you back to sleep and closes the record on a note of pure chill-out music. If you want to be taken on a goofy, exciting, engaging trip by a Beasties record, Paul’s Boutique and Hello Nasty are better bets for you, but if it’s late, you’ve got a nice book to read, and you just want to wind down after a hard week, Check Your Head might be the album you need. I love the new kind of “rock” music the Beasties have invented here with their fuzzed-out guitars, heavy drums, loud bass and distorted vocals, but you find most of that at the start, and by the end it’s time for the funky, relaxing, organic soul grooves to let you come back down to earth nice and smooth. And “Professor Booty” is HILARIOUS.
Not that I have any idea what the fuck I’m talking about.
David Dickson (ddickso2@uccs.edu) writes:
JACKPOT!! Who woulda thought such a blah '80's party joke band would
six years later turn out an album this classic, this. . .
INTELLIGENT??? The ultimate party album for
funky college kids, I
say.
Twenty tracks long, and it flows perfectly. Nine
rap songs, five funk
jams, one hardcore punk track, three goofy weird novelty things, and
two space-out Buddhist monk reggaeish thingys. Somehow, it all works.
It not only FITS, it LEAPS OUT at you. And that Mike D kid is an
ACE
on the drums. They not only play their instruments, they play them
WELL. And do SUCH INTERESTING THINGS with them! Only
flaw?
"Namaste."
Anticlimactic end to the album--should have replaced it
with a rap tune. THESE GUYS have a talent and intelligence that
belies their annoying voices. Not to mention their other three,
inconsistent, "classics": Licensed, Paul's, and Hello Nasty. I
like
this album. I like it a frigging lot.
Ill Communication (1994)
Rating: 7
Best Song: “Sabotage”
Basically the same thing as Check Your Head, which (along with the scant two year gap between albums) makes this one a total anomaly in the Beasties’ catalog. Sure, there are some changes. A bunch of the songs have flute samples (one’s even called “Flute Loop,” for god sakes), two songs at the end have totally out-of-place Buddhist monk chanting in the background because MCA converted for some reason, and, um…that’s about it, actually, in terms of the types of music you’ll find here. The major change, however (if you could call it “major”) is that the band takes a few baby steps back towards the realm of hip-hop they just about abandoned on the funk/soul/rock/marijuana eclecticism of Check Your Head, and a higher percentage of tunes (or at least a higher percentage of tunes with vocals, since there are a LOT of funk/soul instrumental thingies) contain the three guys’ remembering that they were MC’s before they were alt-rockers (as well as remembering that they were hardcore punk enthusiasts before MC’s, since there are two new speedy hardcore tunes here I don’t really like at all). With a few exceptions, not a lot of the raps are all that good, but they’re at least a little more visible than before. But it’s not like I care all that much about how many songs the guys rap on. I’m a preppy white WASP, remember.
So, not only does this one follow the same general thematic blueprint as Check Your Head, with fuzzed-out heavy rockers with distorted, yelled vocals alternating with porno instrumentals to provide about two-thirds of the music on the album, but it’s also sequenced in a way similar to its predecessor, with a strong, eclectic first half preceding a second half heavy with sly yet samey funk instrumentals. The opening few tracks aren’t as strong this time, though, as neither “Sure Shot” nor “B-Boys Makin’ With the Freak-Freak” leave the same impression as their lo-fi alt-hip-hop brethren “Jimmy James” and “Pass the Mic” (and it goes without saying that the hardcore punk number “Tough Guy” can’t touch “Funky Boss,” which was actually one of my favorite songs on Check Your Head, despite being a ninety-second novelty throwaway), but the album picks up very nicely after that. “Root Down” is one of the most interesting funk/soul tracks the guys have done on either of these records, mainly because the guys provide some excellent rhymes on top of the funkiness and the keyboard entrances after the raps are very classy and unexpected, and “Sabotage” is astounding. Definitely my favorite Beasties song, the thing is easily the peak of the Beasties’ trademark style of fuzzed-out rocker, with its hard percussion, MONSTROUS bass line, soaring guitars and by far the best rapping performance by the guys (specifically, again, Ad-Rock, who absolutely OWNS this fucking track) on either of these two non-rap records. The bridge where the song goes away, followed by just the bass tearing a hole in my face before all three come in with that yell is fucking awesome. And the thing about “Sabotage” is that, though it’s the best fuzzed-guitar rocker the guys ever did, it’s also the only one on these two albums where they don’t distort their vocals to hell. I don’t know whether that’s a coincidence or not, but I figure it warrants mentioning.
After the
fucking incredibly mediocre and overrated hip-hop groove “Get it Together”
(featuring Q-Tip from A Tribe Called Quest because, except for “Sabotage” and
“Root Down,” the raps from Mike D, Ad-Rock, and MCA on this record are either subpar or completely inaudible because of distortion
effects (see “The Update,” for instance, which is actually a bad-ass groove
otherwise)), the album turns into the imitation of Check Your Head I’ve been promising since I started this
review. Again, I like most of these grooves (especially “Sabrosa,”
which might be the funkiest thing on either one of these albums), but the
second time around it’s hard for this type of thing to not seem a little less
original and interesting. You know, “Oh,
OK, we just had a porn instrumental, now it’s time for one with fuzzed-out
guitars and distorted vocals, and maybe a slow, chill thing after that.” So, you know, it’s fortunate that they’re
still good. Examples of this goodness
include the absolutely mean “Futterman’s Rule,” which tosses a totally distorted bass
and kick-ass percussion overdubs into a classic Beasties porn/funk
instrumental, and “Do It,” with another guest spot from the fabulous Biz Markie. Although
that “Flute Loop” thing is kinda dumb and I can’t
remember a damn thing about “
Maybe I seem a dick for calling
this record a total imitation of its predecessor at the start of this review
and then criticizing it for not following the same pattern here at the end,
but, dammit, the hardcore punk song and Buddhist
chants mess up the flow! Check Your Head had a flow, you see, and the whole thing went
by very quickly and in quite a pleasing fashion. Maybe none of its raps were as hard-hitting
as “Root Down” and none of its rockers were as strong as “Sabotage,” but the
record was so consistent that it just
went down smooth and easy. Like
Hello Nasty (1998)
Rating: 8
Best Song: “Super
Disco Breakin’”
Hey, guess what! It’s gonna snow again tomorrow! FUCK! It’s gonna be a big one, too. And I have no plower any more, since my landlord told him to go fuck himself after he sent us a bill for like $500 for a one-hour job. Assdouche. I’m completely fucked here. Counting what’s already on my driveway, I’m gonna have like a foot (in three different layers!) of snow covering the damn thing. If it doesn’t warm up and/or rain, it might not even be driveable by spring break! THAT’S IN THREE FUCKING WEEKS!!!! I’m having my friends come down and visit me (because, hey, how often do you live in a cottage on Long Island Sound, right?), but if I’m still covered in snow by break I’m gonna have to unilaterally cancel all plans and drive back to Boston, because my place, despite its prettiness, sucks total ass when it snows. At this point if my pipes freeze or I run out of hot water (all of which has happened several times) I’ll have to move out, because the service vans won’t be able to get to my house! Doesn’t that RULE! And I’m paying almost a grand a month for it! HOORAY FOR HIDEOUSLY INFLATED REAL ESTATE PRICES!!!! FUCK. THIS. SHIT. IN. THE. ASS.
Fuckdammit, I’m pissed off. I like being pissed off when I’m writing a review for a shitty album, but this one’s GOOD! Really good! How am I supposed to appropriately convey my enthusiasm for this particular record album when all I want to do is curse loudly at the fuckheads that invented snow (I bet it was the French, those cheese-eating surrender monkeys…)? This whole situation is such a massive pile of bullshit I don’t even know where to begin. But whatever. A very good album must be reviewed, and apparently I’m the man to do it. The Beasties tend to take wayyyy too long between records, but this one definitely sounds like it took all four years to make. It’s a fascinatingly diverse hip-hop record that tosses aside the funk/soul/alt-rock organicness of Check My Penis? Please! and Dill Picklestickification in favor of, well, everything! Definitely the most diverse rap record I’ve ever heard. It’s got crazy weaving synth lines, weird electronic shit, samples up the wazoo (they even sample themselves a few times! Specifically that “mmmmm…DROP!!!!” thing Ad-Rock does in whatever song on Licensed to Ill that’s from), a bunch of random guests that all do an excellent job, some slow, melancholy prettiness (oooo, “I Don’t Know” is so meditatively relaxingly cool!), a reggae track for some reason, a token instrumental-ish track or two that wouldn’t sound out of place five years ago, and the best, funniest, cleverest rapping these guys have laid down on tape since Paul’s Boutique (which, admittedly, isn’t saying much considering what their last two albums were like).
Yup, the boys are rapping again, “busting phat rhymes” and dropping random hilarious references all over the place (including possibly my favorite Beasties couplet ever: Ad-Rock’s “Well I’m the king of Boggle, there is none higher! I gets eleven points off the word ‘quagmire!’” from “Putting Shame in Your Game”), but the record is not just a showcase for their MC skills with little else backing it up (like, oh, I dunno, the next record…). They’re “dropping the science” over some of the neatest, oddest backgrounds you’re likely to hear on a rap record. Old-school sci-fi 80’s synths and drum machines, combined with some of the best DJ turntable work this side of a Public Enemy record, provide much of the background for the rap tracks, but despite all this old-school shit, the band is somehow able to make the album sound very modern and in-the-moment. I’d say “3 MC’s and One DJ” is the only track that sounds like total old-school music, and it’s probably my least-favorite track on the album (is there anything else going on here besides that one scratching sound in the background? Anything???). These tunes are just so cool and layered, but in a different way than Paul’s Boutique. Crazy synths and drum machines instead of layers of 10 or 15 totally spot-on seventies soul samples, and you definitely won’t find any Zeppelin or Beatles samples here either. “Unite,” the scratchy “The Move” and the excellent opener “Super Disco Breakin’” are some of the best examples of this, but you’ll find excellent tracks of a similar vein everywhere throughout this record’s twenty-two tracks of niftiness.
But good lord that’s not all, and the diversity of this album is really what makes it stand out and rival Paul’s Boutique as my favorite from these guys. “Song for the Man” is built on an odd background of what sounds like some kind of warped lounge music, with a rollicking piano sample and trombones. “Intergalactic” is probably the strangest single released by a band of this stature in the last ten years. I don’t even know what “And Me” is supposed to be, but it’s fascinating nonetheless (there are so many interweaving video-game synths in this song I can’t even describe it accurately). “Picture This” is like some kind of science fiction new age music with lovely female vocals on top. “Song for Junior” sounds like a four-minute sample from a Santana record (hell, knowing these guys, maybe it is). I already mentioned “I Don’t Know” (you know that’s MCA singing that shit? Who knew he had such a pretty voice?). Sure, not all of these work (the reggae track, for instance, “Dr. Lee, PhD,” just bores the crap out of me), but this album is actually more interesting than Check Your Head or Paul’s Boutique, just because of its incredible oddness and diversity.
I’m not giving this record a 9 for a few reasons: first, as good as just about everything is here, there’s really not anything that jumps out at me and yells “I AM A FUCKING GREAT, CLASSIC SONG!!” like “Sabotage” or “Shake Your Rump” or “Fight For Your Right” or what have you (something Check Your Head didn’t really have either). Second, a few tracks (specifically “3 MC’s and One DJ” and the reggae thing, though “Electrify” doesn’t do all that much for me either) just totally blow out loud. Plus, I’m pretty sure I like Paul’s Boutique better, and I gave that one an 8, didn’t I? They’re both VERY high 8’s, in any case. Like 8.5’s. They’d probably get higher ratings if, you know, I liked rap as a genre. But I don’t, so they don’t. Really damn good record, though. And so unique! Just like I’ve never heard anything else quite like Paul’s Boutique or Check Your Head (well, except for Ill Communication), I’ve never heard anything else quite like this record either. Try to say that about the latest Ludacris album. I’ll give you a free cottage on Long Island Sound. But you’ll have to plow the driveway yourself.
To The 5 Boroughs (2004)
Rating: 6
Best Song: “Triple
Trouble”
Oh, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow! NO! DON’T let it snow. Unless I get a snow day, in which case let it snow until I get one, and then immediately stop.
So. Old-school rap. The Beasties used to be pretty talented practitioners of said musical genre. Then they stopped doing it and made organic soul-rock albums for pothead college students for a while. Then on Hello Nasty they sort of went halfway backwards (in that they started rapping again), but the other half was crazy eclectic futuristic sound effect sci-fi shit about as “old school hip-hop” as Radiohead. Then they took six years off between albums, which is a long damn time, even for them. So now they’re what, forty? They’re old, anyway. And through all their weird genre experimentation in the nineties, they probably never lost their love of good, old-fashioned, old-school hippety hoppety rappety music. So it makes sense that they decide to turn around and make an old-school hip-hop record now, right? Right?
I guess
it’s too bad I’m a cracker-ass cracker,
because, likeable and pleasant as it, To
the 69 Sexual Positions is the only record ever released by the Beasties
that I can safely say BORES me. It’s
just not imaginative or fun, two things you could always say
about Beasties records prior to this one (even Licensed to
But the biggest difference between the Beasties’ old records and this one? Who the star of the show is. It’s sort of been understood since 1986 that Ad-Rock and his snot-nosed, nasally delivery (think Eazy-E or Eminem, but PG-13 and Jewish) was the guy to put up front. But in the six years between Hello Nasty and this one, the hoarse rattle of MCA has turned into a low, throaty cackle that is breathtaking to listen to, and to me Mr. Yauch just carries this album for minutes at a time, right from his opening few lines about Trekkies and Klingons in “Ch-Check it Out.” Oh, sure, Ad-Rock isn’t any worse than he has been before, and Mike D still sounds like “some guy,” but the number of times that MCA takes lead on this record easily outnumbers any other Beasties album (where, again, Ad-Rock was usually the star of the show). Maybe it was because their whole shtick before was to be annoying, snotty idiots? And now they’re “mature” and shit, so the “earthy” grunt of MCA fits the image they’re trying to put across? I don’t even know. But the fact remains that MCA has never sounded this good before.
Hell, between MCA and the mildly interesting musical backing, a lot of this album actually sounds pretty good! A few tracks do just about nothing and thus blow loudly and vociferously (I’ve already mentioned “An Open Letter to NYC,” but “Hey Fuck You” is just yawn-inducing, and a number of songs near the end of the record, like “Shazam!” and “Crawlspace,” fail to provide enough entertaining moments to make me care), but most of this album is, well, pleasantly nice, thank you. I don’t even know what song to nominate as best track, because nothing jumps out as even very good, let alone “great” (I nominated “Triple Trouble” because of the super-catchy sample, but if you politely asked me single out any of a half-dozen other tracks, I’d gladly oblige). Excellent rappers dropping good, but not excellent rhymes over musical backings that alternate between interesting but unexciting and just plain unexciting. Christ, the most exciting musical moment is the totally random sample of the Flaming Lips’ “They Punctured My Yolk” (from Clouds Taste Metallic!!! That album RULES!) at the end of the closing “We Got The” (why the hell is it there? Who knows?). I’m still not sure that this album has any good songs on it, but it’s perfectly nice anyway.
The Mix-Up (2007)
Rating: 7
Best Song: “Off The Grid”
The Beastie Boys have recorded an album of incidental porn music. If you want to know why the Beastie Boys have recorded an album of incidental porn music, well, that’s really not my job, and quite frankly I don’t want to speculate. Sure, it’s quite possible that the three of them have started some sort of barely legal “Vag-tastic Voyage”-esque amateur pornography site, but that’s not for me to know. Suffice to say that, were the Beastie Boys to decide to undertake such an endeavor, and were they inclined to make it “classic seventies”-themed, this record would serve as a very good soundtrack. I can almost picture a hairy guy with a greasy mustache just giving it to a mildly attractive chick without fake tits (we’re still a decade away from that, remember) as “Freaky Hijiki” plays in the background. Or possibly “Electric Worm.” Or “Double Penetration Theme.” I only made one of those titles up. Can you guess which one?
Many people seem to be hating on this album because, outside of the total awesomeness and triumphant, kick-butt synth lines of “Off the Grid,” absolutely nothing happens. Many people do have a point, but since when does stuff have to “happen” for an album to be enjoyable? I’m serious! This is incidental porn music, is it not? Key word: “incidental.” If this is playing in the background of your favorite girl-on-guy-on-girl-on-goat scene, do you want your focus to be drawn to the music or to the hot girl-on-guy-on-girl-on-goat action? The latter, right? So maybe you’re reading something or surfing the internet or choking the chicken to some low-budget musically-deficient internet porn and you just need some nice background music. You need something like this, something “incidental.” You don’t need “Sabotage.”
“Sabotage” is awesome, by the way.
And yes, some stuff does happen on here, but it’s clearly the smallest amount of stuff that has yet happened on a Beasties record. The whole thing sounds a lot like the semi-nutsoid “let’s play our own instruments and be a pot-smoking soul-funk-jazz jam band!” period of Check Your Head and Ill Communication, only minus all the diversity, much of the energy, and all the, you know, “rapping” (since this is still technically a “rap” group). It sounds like they just said to themselves one day “Hey, you know all that random jamming we do for shits? Maybe we should try to record some of that!” And then they like took a weekend and hammered out twelve tracks, most of which sound the same. And yes, I’m not doing much to “sell” this album to you right now, but most of this shit actually does sound pretty good. In a background, “incidental” way, sure, but good nonetheless. Perhaps it’s just that I do so much of my listening now while reading or translating something (Thanks, grad school!), but I actually get a lot of enjoyment out of these laid back, porn tribute jams. It’s such a relaxing record, and everything is so inoffensively nice and pleasant and not at all bad that I actually like it more than their supposed “comeback” To the 5 Boroughs. To describe its sound beyond “jazz-funk instrumental jams that mostly just sit there, sound relatively cool, and then go away” is utterly useless. It’s an album of incidental porn music that sounds kinda like Check Your Head, sorta, but more relaxed. Maybe this is your bag, I don’t know. I find it distinctly fine, occasionally super-neat, and not worth writing any more on.
It’s
a trip, it’s got a funky beat, and I can bug
out to it!