Beastie Boys – Closing Thoughts

CHRIS

‘An Open Letter to the Beastie Boys’

Dear Ad-rock, MCA and Mike D,

Firstly, let it be noted that – as it seemed to be the sole intended learning outcome from your recorded output – that I was able to recall, without the aid of Wikipedia, all of your names. These names are so engrained on my mind that I am considering adopting a trio of rescue dogs just so I can name them after you. I am sure you will be pro this.

Secondly, I want to return to my original statement I made at the beginning of this month about what I was expecting from both you and your albums. To be fair, many of my comments centred on my ideas of who would listen to you, particularly that they might, to paraphrase, fall into the ‘jock’, or, to make a British reference, ‘ladz’ category. Sadly, I don’t think you really challenged that, at least not for about the first third of your albums. These albums were littered with dubious slurs, comments about women and more general attitudes that made for some uncomfortable listening, and this marred my listening of these. But, to give you a fair review, I know you have commented on these and the fact these were a long time again in your youth. For this, I salute you.

Now, I want it to be known that ‘Ill Communication’ is brilliant. This was, by far, the highlight of the month for me and I am sure it will receive many more listens in the future. Likewise, Five Boroughs and Hot Sauce were great. I think they are both testament that age was something that brought with it a great improvement in what you were doing.

My major gripe all month, though, has been your editing; namely, the lack of it. I know that creativity really shouldn’t be constrained, but I really think you should have had someone holding you back. In most of your albums there is hidden within it an incredible ep or mini album. In the way Raymond Carver had Gordon Lish, you needed someone who could cut away the fat from the meaty beats and rhymes. Also, much anger has been shed before, but I really think you should have reconsidered The Mix Up. Not got rid of it, but just thought about where, and how, you released it.

I want to finish with an apology. This has been an odd, tiring, and at times stressful month for me. Because of this, I am starting to think this might have blurred my reception to your albums. I think there might be albums – particularly Paul’s Boutique – that I didn’t give my fullest attention to. So, sorry. Be assured that I will revisit some of these albums in the future.

I don’t take back the editor comment, though.

Thanks for this month, Beasties, it has been an interesting one.

Yours sincerely,

C Whitby

ROB

The first thing about the Beastie Boys is that I didn’t really have any preconceptions, apart from writing them off as a novelty hip-hop act (which I guess is a pretty big preconception). But they were so far removed from my musical upbringing they were irrelevant to what I was listening to.

Do I feel like I’ve missed out? Yes and no. The biggest issue I’ve found with the Beastie Boys is that they have an inability to know a good song from a bad song, instead playing the percentages. On ‘… 5 Boroughs’ and ‘Hot Sauce…’ I’ve liked 8 or 9 songs on each, yet remarkably this constitutes only 50% of the output. For most bands, I’d be championing them to the heavens if I liked 8 or 9 songs on their albums, yet here it feels like a missed opportunity.

That said, I’ve actually really enjoyed this month. ‘Paul’s Boutique’ and the two previously discussed albums have absolutely shown me that there’s more to the Beastie Boys than ‘Intergalactic’, ‘Sabotage and ‘Fight For Your Right’. Sure, we got off to a shaky start, not least of all because of some truly awful, stereotypically (for hip-hop, at least) misogynistic lyrics, but there’s incredible scope on the group’s later output, and as they gained some much needed self-awareness the quality of their output, lyrically at least, skyrocketed.

I guess the beauty of this experiment is that it is opening my eyes (and ears) somewhat to the music outside of my closeted little emo scene. Would I have ever listened to the Beastie Boys on my own accord? No. Have I found enjoyment in debating the merits (or otherwise) of ‘The Mix Up’? Absolutely…

JAMIE

So. 8 albums in total, five of which I really, really like. That’s a pretty good return I guess.

To be honest, Beasties were on to a winner from day one. A Bananarama month would have been welcomed by me following the April Youth torturous endurance test which was frankly hellish for me.

Like many of the others, I only knew the hits prior to this. Now, I know them well and would consider myself a fan. I have been listening to certain albums again and again. Some I haven’t. Their debut was shite and 5 Boroughs (AKA The Dullening) bored me to tears.

I personally preferred the albums that the boys played live on. The Mix Master Mike albums bored me.

And that’s that. And now fur The Replacements. Who?

MICKEY

Listening to Check Your Head and Ill Communication I could really see what the hype was about. They started out quite immature and finished their careers being highly accomplished musicians.

I held them in high regard before this month and hold them in the same regard now. I don’t think they are the best rappers in the world. But it’s their music which really carried them the distance. Given that some of their albums were made in the 80s their stuff sounds pretty timeless.

I will prob only listen to Ill Communication and The Mix Up again. But there are tonnes of great tracks here.

Beastie Boys, I salute you. Thank you for the music. Thank you for making it ok for white people to rap. Thank you for taking Mix Master Mike off the streets. Thank you for making an instrumental album that only two people in this groups liked. Thanks x

MARTIN

44%. That’s my score for the Beastie Boys. It seems lower than it should be but who am I to argue with stone cold mathematics.

I think it seems lower because the songs I like are really great. I’ve been compiling a Best Of throughout the month and there’s 33 songs on it. All brilliant. That’s 3 albums worth of great material by most people’s standards. So I really think their inability to edit themselves and their compulsion to fill their albums with unnecessary guff has really affected whether I can really call myself a fan.

To The 5 Boroughs and Hot Sauce Committee Part Two are both brilliant albums, and I’m glad this month has brought them to my ears. I’ll be listening to them for years to come.

But sadly, the other 6 I just can’t call good records. They aren’t. They are fairly poor records with a clutch of brilliant songs scattered amongst them. The hit to miss ratio is far too weighted in the wrong direction. I keep saying that if their albums were shorter I’d have probably enjoyed them more but who really knows? The contrary bastards might just have cut out the songs I like best and kept the filler.

I am glad I’ve investigated them properly though. It turns out that although I already knew a lot of songs I liked, the ones I now like even better are ones I’d not heard until doing this.

So I think my summary is, they seem like a great live band and a bunch of sorted guys who I really want to get behind but the largest proportion of their whole recorded output is pretty dull. But man alive, what a belter of a Best Of collection!

RORY

After a challenging attempt to get Sonic Youth, this month has been exactly what I needed. I’m quite sad it’s over, which is dumb considering I can still access the Beastie Boys on my Spotify. That being said I’ve been dodging payment for a week so I could be cut off at any time.

I’ve gone from blindly liking them, to questioning them, to liking them again. Ill Communication, Paul’s Boutique, The Mix Up and Hot Sauce have been the highlights, to the 5 Boroughs and License to Ill the lowlights.

It’s a shame Hot Sauce is the end as they were hitting a period of late career form.

It’s been a good one.

LUKE

After the rigours of Sonic Youth month, our second Artist In Residence was a much more fun affair. In fact, I’ve used that word so much to describe them in the past four weeks that I’m bored of it. But what word fits better?

I started as a fan of the band and finish as something even more. I’ve found that if I can forgive the amount of filler, self-indulgent instrumental wank-fests and rampant misogyny of their early work and still find as much to love about them as I do, then they must be more than just one of my favourite bands, but one of my favourite things.

I’ve been able to properly assess their career and separate the killer from the filler. Their final two ‘regular’ albums – To The 5 Boroughs and Hot Sauce Committee Part Two are certainly up there with the best. They may even rank more highly than Paul’s Boutique, reliant as it was on the production of the Dust Brothers. The Best Of compilation, or ‘compy’, heaves with classics that I’ll be listening to forever.

The live performances have been a treasure trove. I’ve watched footage of certain songs – So Whatcha Want on Arsenio Hall and Sabotage on David Letterman in particular – more times than I could possibly remember. Then there’s Awesome, I Fucking Shot That, which stands in the pantheon of great concert films, windmilling its cock about and daring you with its eyes to question it. Anyone that’s even half interested in the band should watch it.

They have an energy and easy charisma unmatched by any other bands I’ve ever listened to. There’s a lot to be said for the fact that they spent so much time together and still genuinely looked as if they were enjoying themselves. Even when approaching their late forties they still looked effortlessly cool. They never looked like old men playing a young man’s game because they made you feel as if they were the only ones that knew the rules. This was a band that was built to last, so it’s particularly cruel that they were denied the possibility of a longer career.

As much as I like them, I think the one thing they were missing was a genuine mainstream masterpiece of an album that was all their own work. It was coming. But what we’re left with instead isn’t half bad.

Hot Sauce Committee Part Two (2011)

Spotify link

ROB

So this is it, the final Beastie Boys album. ‘Hot Sauce Committee Part Two’ is in many ways a fitting send off for the Beastie’s, in so much as it’s packed with character and is typically overlong. It’s a criticism that I think every member of Artist in Residence has thrown at the Beastie Boys at some point this month, and it stands true here.

It’s something of a shame, as for the first nine songs or so ‘Hot Sauce Committee Part Two’ is actually really enjoyable, and ‘OK’ would definitely make my all-time favourite Beastie Boys playlist. I was kind of expecting ‘Hot Sauce…’ to feel like an anti-climax, but it’s a fitting swansong – especially after the trip to dullsville that was ‘The Mix Up’. I’d say that ‘Make Some Noise’, ‘Too Many Rappers’ and ‘The Larry Routine’ all excel, showing that even after an extended break the Beastie Boys could still rap and rhyme with the best of them.

One thing this month has shown is that there’s much more to the Beastie Boys than novelty songs or goofy videos, and I’ll discuss this more in my closing remarks. Of course, it doesn’t help that even this far into their career they still have songs like car crash ‘Funky Donkey’, but I guess you can’t accuse them of abandoning their roots.

Anyway, with ‘The 5 Boroughs’ and ‘Hot Sauce’ I’d say that, although I don’t love the Beastie Boys, they’ve managed to (largely) win me over with a couple of decent efforts. Shame they could never quite nail the run time of their albums…

LUKE

In many ways, Hot Sauce Committee Part Two, or ‘Hot Sauce’ to its mother, is the Beastie Boys in microcosm. We begin with Make Some Noise, an infectious, irresistible classic up there with their very best. We end with The Lisa Lisa/Full Force Routine, a pointless fragment of a song that might sound pleasing but essentially has no place on an album. They died as they lived.

I use such a crass phrase to draw attention to the unavoidable. This was of course their final album due to the untimely death of Adam Yauch. It seems a particular shame that this album seemed especially focussed on simply being fun (a step away from the political angst of To The 5 Boroughs), but will always be imbued with the inevitable weight of sadness.

It will always seem like an unfortunate swansong for that reason, coupled with the tragic sense of incompletion of the album’s convoluted name. The band had planned to release this album in two parts, before deciding that the songs on Part Two were nearer completion than those on Part One. I’m honestly not sure whether this is just some spectacularly obtuse logic on the part of the Beasties, or just a ridiculous in-joke. Either way, the band end on an ellipsis rather than a full stop, which is a frustrating end to an incredible career.

That being said, this is still one of their best albums. It gets better with every listen, and even the weaker tracks still bring something to the party. And they just knew how to churn out quality singles. Make Some Noise, Too Many Rappers and even Don’t Play No Game That I Can’t Win featuring Santigold – which I originally loathed upon the album’s release – are all fantastic, almost effortless. Here’s A Little Something For Ya is a hidden classic too.

The AiR team have spent much of the past month yearning for better editing on these albums, but it seems as if they were eventually getting the hang of it. This is the album with the least fat, and even the silly, throwaway tracks (The Larry Routine, The Bill Harper Collection) are nothing more than skits, refused the breathing space and longer running time they might have been given previously. There’s a lot to be said for the fact that Tadlock’s Glasses was the original working title for the album. It just so happens to be one of the weaker tracks – if not the weakest – so I think this represents a renewed sense of editorial prudence. Who knows how things may have improved further if they’d had more time?

CHRIS

The first thing to say about this album is that the title – ‘Hot Sauce Committee Part Two” – is terrible. More than that, for me anyway, it reasserted some of the prejudices that I had about this band before we started this month. A title like that is so heavily soaked with – and please excuse the use of this overused word – ‘banter’ that I thought I was going to be met with some more of their early ‘lad rhymes’. Following the disappointment of ‘The Mix Up’, this didn’t seem like a good start.

Luckily, this is now what I was met with. This album has easily two of my favourite songs from them: ‘Make Some Noise’ and ‘Too Many Rappers’. Whilst there is a bit more space and air on this album compared to their last album ‘5 Boroughs’ – I have forever placed ‘The Mix Up’ in a different lineage of albums – still the focus and tighter beats are there. I really love the vibe on it, particularly on the first half. It really reminds me of what the band ‘Run The Jewels’ would go on to do. Apart from Ill Communication, I think that this is the album that I enjoyed most on the first listen.

But, even with all this positivity, don’t worry the same problem still exists: overwriting, and no editing. Again, about two thirds of the way in – as with most of their albums – we get the first instrumental or ‘skit’ type song which is the gateway to when they start ‘experimenting’, or, more specifically in their case, forget to edit the songs down. I am all for bands trying things out – and this band are great at that e.g. Paul’s Boutique – but their ideas are a burden. Or, more destructively, their attachment to their ideas hold them back.

They have loads of bits on the albums that could be developed just a little bit more, or edited down a little bit, and they would have some great tracks. But, due to the ‘we have written it, so it must be good’ approach we get left with these bloated track lists. I read on Wikipedia that they scrapped the original album – the reason this was renamed part 2 – as they had too many, not good enough, songs and wanted to streamline it. The idea of this scares me. If this is what they see as edited down, what unholy hell would the original have been? Maybe we will see a release of this on a gargantuan box set in the future?

I don’t want to be too over negative, though, as overall I do like this album. It In fact, I really like it until track 7-ish and then it became a bit more of a chore. I would place this as my third favourite album of what we have heard, after ‘Ill Communication’ and ‘Five Boroughs’. There are some really great moments, and some really great beats. I also prefer the lyrics at this point. Apart from the name checking. I really wish they would check this out.

Following on from The Mix Up, this is a welcome return to form. For me, their age lent them a bit more direction and in the last few albums I have been happy to see the back of all the ‘jackass’ type stuff. Strangely, I am kind of sad to hear the last album from them. It really felt like they were getting into the swing, as was I, but it was all cut short. I will speak more of this in my final thoughts, but, after some musical wailing and gnashing of teeth, I think they might have just won me over.

RORY

This is a worthy finisher for the Beastie Boys. With this and The Mix Up they have made up for the 5 Boroughs, an album that is the audio equivalent of shitting in your own hand.

If I had to liken it to a Christopher Nolan film I would say it is the bands Inception – its good, but not as good as Interstellar. Interstellar was a fine piece of film making, nay an incredible piece of film making. If The Mix Up is Interstellar then The 5 Boroughs is Big Momma’s House 2.

But that’s enough context.

For 8-ish tracks this album is a powerhouse. OK is my favourite track. ‘I’m Mike D from New York City’ is for no real reason my favourite line.

I’m glad the band felt the need to be creative with this album and not bore everyone like they did with the Big Momma’s House 2 soundtrack.

8/10

MARTIN

Well, we’re ending on a high at least. This album is really good. It’s not quite as good as To The 5 Boroughs, but it’s close.

There’s only really Tadlock’s Glasses that’s a bit sub par and dull. The rest I like. Even the instrumental Multilateral Nuclear Disarmament is great and, used in this way, makes sense on the album. It’s a little change of pace and style, which makes for variety but doesn’t bog the album down by being the first of many tedious jams.

At 16 tracks it’s almost EP length in Beasties terms. I don’t really feel that any songs were overkill though, aside from maybe the 30 second tracks, which I’ve never seen the point of on any album, not just the Beastie Boys. I can forgive The Larry Routine cos it is pretty funny.

There’s a lot of tracks on here for my Best Of. I agree with my fellow bloggers that Make Some Noise and Too Many Rappers are a couple of my favourite songs by the Beasties. OK and Don’t Play No Game That I Can’t Win are both catchy gems and Come Again Lee Majors manages to hark back to their hardcore days without being generic or throwaway.

I don’t know what happened post Hello Nasty but there was obviously a decision to make their albums less all over the place and scattershot. I keep banging on about focus but they are just much more focused albums. (The Mix Up focused on being shit unfortunately, but at least it was consistent).

It’s a shame this was their last album because on the strength of the songs on this, and on 5 Boroughs, they probably had it in them to carry on making albums I would’ve liked. Sadly, as it was their last, this album is just one great record out of a batch of 8 which are wildly inconsistent.

MICKEY

Make Some Noise – Hip Hop for toddlers. Sounds like the theme tune for a Nickleodeon show.

Non-Stop Disco Power Pack – Get some new batteries lads.

OK – Quite a tune.

Too Many Rappers – Tune.

Say It – I like this. It’s going back to their roots.

Bill Harper Collection – I digress.

Don’t Play No Game That I Can’t Win – Sort of song they stick on FIFA video game soundtrack.

Long Burn the Fire – Sounds like Mix Master Mike’s been released from prison.

Funky Donkey – I swear this was a game on SM TV live.

Larry Routine – Yes.

Tadlocks Glasses – Tadlock should’ve gone to Specsavers.

Lee Majors Comes Again – Sonic Youth… Is that you?

MND – something quite cool about this track…. Just can’t be bothered to put my finger on it.

Here’s A Little Something For Ya – I’m ok thank you, you can keep it.

Crazy Ass Shit – Great use of Toms and Hi Hats.

The Lisa Lisa – Good use of the Tempo Warp function.

JAMIE

The boys bust out the swearies on this album. It’s more obscene than a novel by Polly Clarke.

This is the first Beastie Boys album that gets the live instrumentation to Mix Master Mike ratio right. It works well and is probably their best hip hop album since Ill Communication. It’s so much better than 5 Boroughs, an album I actually didn’t blog about as I fell asleep while listening to it due to its potent levels of dullery.

This album is so sharper, more in your face, more alive – it just sounds like they’re enjoying themselves a lot more.

I loved that they dropped in a few Robert Zimmerman lines including
“Twenty years of schooling and they put you on the day shift.” Big Zimmy, fan me.

This is their finale. I just wish Mr. Yauch played even more bass guitar over their discography. He’s top class, man. Listen to Nonstop Disco Powerpack. What a funky bastard.

This had the potential to be up there with their best albums. If it was 9 songs long it would have been incredible. It’s too long though which unfortunately weakens it as a record.

It’s a nice touch getting their weans to contribute to Crazy Ass Shit. I liked that.

I’m sad it’s over. Great band. Some shitey records (mostly early on) but I’d say that overall that I’m a fan.

To The 5 Boroughs (2004)

Spotify link

CHRIS

I was very apprehensive about this album. I couldn’t deal with another ‘Hello Nasty’. Another album at nearly an hour long and pushing twenty tracks. So, imagine my amazement when I looked at the track listing and it clocked in at only 43-ish minutes! What a find, eh? I was still worried about 15 tracks, but I let this slip.

I set off on a morning walk – luckily long enough to hear the album in one sitting – and it was ok. Nothing special. But, not bad. This, under the circumstances, was a relief. Up until now, apart from ‘Ill Communication’, had always been more towards negative. A disappointment. (That being said, I was 100% sure that ‘Ch-Check It Out’ has one of the clumsiest sounding choruses in recent pop history)

I finished the album and intended to return the next morning.

Throughout the idea I just kept thinking about New York – something I am sure they intend – and specifically my first visit whilst travelling round the States in 2009. In the planning stages of my trip I was positive that I wasn’t going to visit New York. The main focus of my journey was to visit the southern states as had been covered in my dissertation. Like the archetypal civil war soldier, I saw New York as brash. Simple. Somewhere you don’t get the ‘real America’. But, I discovered my friend lived there and a visit to see them was on the cards (in the end, even though I stayed in her flat she was actually away).

It would be the first of three visits to New York (including my honeymoon). I loved that city. Not the glitz and glamour of the films, but the grime, the sounds and pace of it. The billboards, the mix of voices, and the hustle and bustle.

That evening, with these memories swirling around, I was drawn back to the album. I heard a different album. No longer a collection of random songs it all felt coherent, like a map of the city. This is a guide to the city, but the city of the locals. Yes, the famous sites are mentioned, but they are a backdrop to life rather than the focus. Finally, the coherence lacking on the previous albums is finally evident. And, more importantly, it wasn’t a chore getting through the album. I think, overall, there is maybe only one song I don’t like (on a side note, i really think the album should have ended on An Open Letter To NYC).

This is the sound I wanted from the band. Tight, punchy drum kicks and interwoven with great rhymes. The album reminds me of more recent albums by Das Racist and the Cool Kids. Real driving rhythms. Great songs. The perfect formula. The songs used on the album, particularly Rappers Delight and Sonic Reducer, sound incredible.

It would be easy to call this their ‘9/11’ album, what with the lyrics on Open Letter. One could make a comment about how the overall lack of jokier lyrics, or the close, sometimes claustrophobic sounding beats, are a mirror of a city – three years later – still in mourning. But, more importantly, this album is a love letter to a city. A love for its people and of the streets. It is clear that yes it was a horrific event that destroyed two buildings. But what the Beastie Boys want to make clear is that buildings don’t make a city. People do. In doing that they have made an album that a city, and myself, can get behind.

MARTIN

Yes! Finally a Beastie Boys album I can fully appreciate and get behind.

I had high hopes for this one. I liked all the singles from it already, and I’d enjoyed all the live performances I’d seen of songs from it on various US chat shows etc. Thankfully these weren’t anomalies. This album delivers. Two listens on Spotify was enough to convince me to hand over the cash and buy the album.

As a collection of songs it’s just so much more focused than any album that came before it. Every album had it’s great moments but they all suffered from the “chuck enough shit at the wall and see what sticks” approach. This resulted in overlong albums trying to be everything all at once and actually ending up being not much as a whole.

To The 5 Boroughs dumps all the things that made me switch off or gaze at the clock during the other albums. It’s just 15 tracks of concise hip hop, each with its own hooks and individual feel. I’m surprised that the album has been described as boring by some of my fellow AiR alumni. It’s far and away the least boring to me.

Before this record, the Beastie Boys had a 32 percent score on the Hickey scale. Yes I worked it out with actual maths. A 1:2 shineola to shit ratio. One third wheat to two thirds chaff. This album raises that score considerably. There’s not a single song on it I don’t like. I did not expect this. I thought I had the Beasties figured out. So thanks Beastie Boys for making me question everything I thought I knew! Thanks for that!

I don’t think the album is as overtly “New York” as I was expecting, aside from Open Letter To Nyc obviously. But I wouldn’t have minded if it was. Like Chris, I love that city. I don’t think that has much effect on my appreciation of the album though. I just really think they’ve stepped it up with the songs. None of them feel like filler. They all keep the album moving forward. Right Right Now Now, Open Letter, The Brouhaha, Hey Fuck You and 3 The Hard Way all make it onto my ‘Best Of’. But really I could stick most of the album on there.

Adrock seems to have diversified his delivery too. There were times when I really didn’t know whose vocals I was hearing. Thankfully he tells you so often who he is, that it’s not a mystery for long.

With only two albums to go (one of which is instrumental so I doubt it’s as good as this one) it seems unlikely that they have enough time and material left to improve their overall score much more. It’s a shame they didn’t hit this stride earlier. Or at least trim off a lot of the unnecessary stuff which dragged previous albums down. Put a quarter in your ass boys cos you played yourself.

ROB

‘To The 5 Boroughs’ is the first Beastie Boys album that I can remember being released and paying attention to in some small way. But it’s odd listening back that the singles aren’t all that familiar. Yet, by the same token, they’re clearly the best songs on offer.

‘Ch-Check It Out’, ‘Right Right Now Now’, ‘Triple Trouble’ and in particular ‘An Open Letter to NYC’ are the Beastie Boys at their rhyme slinging best and having a strong set of singles certainly ensures there’s a good ebb and flow about ‘To The 5 Boroughs’ from the off.

Also, I think it’s important to stress that it is considerably – and I do mean considerably – more focussed than their previous efforts. In fact, I’d say it’s almost up there with ‘Paul’s Boutique’ as being my favourite Beasties effort. The main reason for this is simply because it’s an enjoyable listen and doesn’t concern itself with nonsense instrumentals. It loses momentum after ‘An Open Letter To NYC’ – but by then we’re an album’s worth of material in, which feels like real progress. It’s still perhaps a couple of songs too long, but this is something I think I’ve come to terms with regarding the Beastie Boys – they’re always gonna play the numbers game when it comes to album length. Like 8 songs on a 16 song album – it’s a high percentage of misses, but still gives you loads to play with on your ultimate Beasties playlist.

As we approach the end, listening to the Beastie Boys has also made me revaluate last month’s Sonic Youth trial. I guess the one thing I never appreciated at the time was the variety of Sonic Youth’s music. It does feel the Beastie Boys re-tread a lot of old ground. Which is fine, but having gone through 5 albums in a month (so far) it’s beginning to feel slightly monotonous. As an aside, I hated the swirling electronica backbeat to ‘An Open Letter to NYC’ on first listen, but was actually relieved on subsequent listens as it adds something different to their sound. And it’s these little flashes which I find I’m enjoying more than I expected.

Anyway, ‘To The 5 Boroughs’ is decent. Actually, it’s more than decent. It’s actually pretty bloody good, enjoyable and covers a broad spectrum of topics. It feels like it’s their most considered record yet and is a world away from the fratboy crap of their dim and distant past…

RORY

To The 5 Boroughs is The Beastie Boys with the handbrake on. I guess the redeeming feature is the lyrical content of this album, but when you put that on top of some of the blandest music they’ve ever created then I struggle to care. Ch-Check It Out and Triple Trouble are phenomenal, but the rest is boring.

REALLY BORING.

I like the Beastie Boys because musically they were taking risks and sure it didn’t all work, but it was exciting. This is dross. It is uniform I give them that, but it’s boring.

REALLY BORING.

I’m genuinely a bit offended at how safe this album is. I remember being disappointed when this came out and nothing has changed.

Beastie Boys I want you to release 29 track albums full of instrumentals and weird and wonderful hip hop. I don’t want you to release albums that feel like an old man gently muttering before he gives up and accepts death.

This feels like a band at the end of their life line.

You are better than this Boys.

LUKE

This is the album we all wanted, right? The Beasties took six years out and seemed to decide – at last – that they would benefit from cutting out the instrumental jazz-funk tracks and deliver some on-point hip-hop. Sounds great.

Or not. Some conversation among the AiR group has seen this album labelled as boring and dry. But why? It’s an underrated album. It’s been unfairly maligned as mawkish and overly serious due to the 9/11 connotations. Never known to rush things, it took the band three years to devise their tribute to New York City. It says a lot for the band as unofficial spokespeople for the city that it seemed people were anticipating their response. In truth, only three things have anything much to do with the city directly – the pencil sketch of the city skyline, Twin Towers intact, on the cover; an Open Letter To NYC; and this performance on David Letterman.

Given Big Dave’s recent retirement, it seems opportune to discuss that performance for a minute. The Boys had been quiet for six years, and emerged from the primordial sludge of the Noo Yoik subway to rap their way down the streets – their streets – into the studio to formally announce their return. There’s something iconic about it, which adds to the false mythology of the album as some sort of tragic paean to a broken city. True, an Open Letter to NYC is a defiant, at times touching rallying cry (“Dear New York, I hope you’re doing well/I know a lot’s happened and you’ve been through hell”), but there’s more going on here then a group therapy session.

The lyrics are much more serious, more political, more mature. This is no bad thing, especially since it was only a few weeks ago that we listened to Licensed To Ill. Right Right Now Now references the Columbine High School shootings, It Takes Time To Build blasts George W Bush for neglecting the Kyoto Treaty. On Hey Fuck You the band sound as angry as it’s likely they could ever get, criticising hack musicians (“I’m walkin’ on water while you’re stepping in shit/so put your sewer boots on before your ass gets lit”).

This all implies that the album is far too serious, but there’s a lot of fun here too. There’s Ad-Rocks’s cockney intro to the Rapper’s Delight-cribbing Triple Trouble, there’s the brief snippet of Jerry Seinfeld at the end of Hey Fuck You (“Wow, what a loser!”). Aside from the album MCA (as his Nathaniel Hornblower alter-ego) sent a great letter to the New York Times in response to a negative review for Ch-Check It Out, suggesting their sense of fun was not necessarily diminishing just because they were adopting greater responsibility with their music.

The album’s final words capture the band’s agenda at this time, telling the listener that they’ve got the power to make a difference. To put it another way, they were fighting for more than our right to party by this point in their careers. It’s a shame they only had one ‘proper’ album left.

Licensed To Ill (1986)

Spotify link

LUKE

What were you doing with your life when you were 18? Unless the answer is signing to Def Jam and recording a debut album that has balls the size of my balls, you’re probably not one of the Beastie Boys.

That being said, this is not a great album. It’s just not. Some of the Rick Rubin production has dated more badly than the jeering idiot contestants on Take Me Out. This leaves most of the tracks mired in the 80s, never to transcend, like Max Headroom, plastic football pitches and whatever was happening with Michael Jackson’s face at the time. The beats are so sparse and dry at times (see: Paul Revere) but the Beasties sound better when their voices complement the music and help it to flow, rather than being brought to the fore.

Mike D once described it as “just a collection of songs, really – it didn’t really work together as an album”. This is true. The two best tracks – Fight For Your Right and No Sleep To Brooklyn – are spoofs, far removed from the hip-hop stylings of the rest of the album (and, ultimately, the rest of their career). But what captures the essence of teen rebellion better than doing what you want and to heck with the consequences? This was Never Mind The Bollocks for those who didn’t mind paying a decent amount of money for a nice pair of trainers every now and again. Not necessarily an extraordinary artistic statement, but a statement nonetheless.

As a primer for what to expect on the album, you could do worse than watch their appearance on The Joan Rivers Show in 1987, at the time of its release. They’re snotty, brash and confident, and that’s exactly what Licensed To Ill sounds like. The performance of Fight For Your Right is utterly ridiculous, fun and stupid.

Ad-Rock’s voice is something I can imagine splitting opinion. The delivery at points seems to be set to maximum on the obnoxiousness setting. At times it works – there’s a flippancy to it that reflects their youthful bravado. Others, it can be distracting (see: the delivery of “Jocking Mike D to my dismay” on Girls). Speaking of which, the misogyny on display on this particular track is something the band would later disavow themselves of, notably on Sure Shot.

Def Jam were so keen on playing up to the image that Fight For Your Right (and more importantly the accompanying video) created, that president Russell Simmons once handed Mike D a can of beer to take on stage as he hadn’t drunk one the previous night. Seeking emancipation and a move away from such pigeonholing, the band would move to Capitol Records, and record a second album that would surprise everyone.

How does Licensed To Ill fare today? Brass Monkey sums the album up for me. It’s named for a drink that combines beer with orange juice. Just as I love OJ but hate beer, there are elements of this album which are great, and others that sound just terrible. But it sure sounds cool.

As debuts go, this stands up if only as a testament to the sheer brass balls of three teenage punk Jews kicking open the doors of hip-hop. Iconic album cover or no, this should be nobody’s favourite Beastie Boys album. It sure is some place to start though.

MARTIN

My finger hovers over the play button with really no idea how this is gonna go. My fellow bloggers with much more Beastie Boys experience than me, have suggested that this album will not be the one to get me on board the train. But of course I already know Fight For Your Right, No Sleep Til Brooklyn and Brass Monkey so if the whole album resembles those tracks then it should be a fairly easy ride.

My first impressions are “Shit the bed those beats are massive.” Almost overpoweringly massive in places. Something else that’s impossible to ignore, are all the sounds across the album that are so familiar from 80s hip hop, despite the fact that I’ve never heard this record. I’ve not heard a massive amount of 80s hip hop either really if I’m honest but I keep expecting a lot of the first half of the album to break into Walk This Way (the Run DMC version) and the scratching sounds are almost identical to Straight Outta Compton.

Because of my ignorance of Licensed To Ill, listening to it now it almost sounds like a parody album of that time period because my brain doesn’t acknowledge that it actually came before a lot of the other famous stuff. Another thing I never knew is that the “mmmmm drop” bit from Intergalactic was actually on this album first and it turns out it’s been sampled by loads of people.

Ok, the actual songs. The second half is better than the first. I listened to it twice all the way through before writing this, to give it a fair crack of the whip. On first go, by Posse In Effect I was starting to get bored. That’s only track 4 so I thought I was in for a very long further half hour. By the time Girls was halfway through, I thought the album had passed the point of no return. How awful is that song?! I’m not even talking lyrically.

After Girls comes Fight For Your Right and it sounds like sweet relief. Not just the familiarity, although I’m sure that helps but also, at least it sounds fully formed. Hold It Now, Hit It, I actually really like and the album ends fairly strong with Slow And Low and Time To Get Ill.

The second time through I found some merit in The New Style but there’s not really anything that will make me come back to this album for another listen. I don’t know if I was more of a general hip hop fan it would leave more of an impression on me but it has the unfortunate position of being the first Beastie Boys album to be played to an untrained hip hop ear.

I know they were only 21/22 when they made this and were stylistically and mentally very different to the band they would become. I watched the music videos on YouTube from this album to get some visual perspective on it and I ended up in a hip-hop clip-hop that took me to a performance of Right Right Now Now from To The 5 Boroughs on Conan O’Brien. It was brilliant. I watched a few interviews too and they seem like a bunch of good guys. I know there will be albums I like. But although this record has a couple of moments, it isn’t one of them.

JAMIE

I’ve listened to this album. Once. And that’s plenty. It’s pretty fucking terrible overall. The first five songs blend into one long earache-inducing episode that I thoroughly disapprove of.

I quite like Fight For Your Right and No Sleep Till Brooklyn but I fear that this is simply due to nostalgia (sitting in my mum and dads house smoking a big spliff watching lots of mtv2).

This album is sodden with samples but they certainly don’t salvage the songs (try saying that with a lisp). The lyrics (rhymes? Colour me caucasian) are so juvenile and really throw away. Like this:

I saw a toad,
near his abode,
he crossed the road,
he called me a choad,
it was frankly quite an upsetting episode.

My good friend Luke likens the progression from this album to Paul’s Boutique to Radiohead following The Bends with OK Computer. I’ll be the judge of that, fuckface.

CHRIS

Researchers have shown that 64% of white British men between the ages of 18 – 45 have at some point, even if only once, pretended to be a rapper (this number increases to 80% when considering only financially prosperous areas of East and South London). This impersonation can take on many forms: the use of slang acquired from hip hop songs, pretending to ‘raise the roof’, or simply through the the choice of their clothes. There is nothing wrong with this. It is just some research and life continues.

So, you may ask, how does this link to this blog? Well, on closer inspection of the data, what unified a large majority of these people was the fact that they owned, or some point had owned, ‘Licensed to Ill’ (about 85%). This was an interesting, but maybe not surprising discovery. This album, particularly the cover, are fairly ubiquitous in the album run downs of the last thirty years.

Nevertheless, I’d never heard this album. Obviously I’d heard some songs off it, but never the whole thing. I was apprehensive. Firstly, Rick Rubin was involved. Rick Rubin, whilst incredibly influential, has a recording style that doesn’t appeal to me. It is all too dry, and, for me, a bit cold. Yes, it at times sounds ‘big’, but I find I can only handle, usually, about two songs of it.

I listened to it a few times and thought back to our original test subjects; it became immediately obvious why this album was so popular. This album is like a manifesto. Like a political party telling you how to live your life. In the course of this track list we have political advice (about rights to fight for), gender discussions (particularly what to look for in women, and even some history lessons). And those beats. There is no one who can avoid making some ill advised hip hop shapes listening to this. Whilst walking along the street I had to regularly resist the urge to bend my knees and raise my hands above my head. I also nearly bought some Adidas classics.

But, did I enjoy it? Sort of.

There are some nice beats on here, and some really catchy lyrics (I am still singing Rhymin’ and Stealin’ as I write). But there are some real low points; Fight For Your Right, Slow Ride and Girls really standing out. It feels unfair to pick on them, though. This is a band in flux and I think they suffer from both unformed ideas, and, more importantly, voices that can’t handle what they are trying to achieve. The voices really are a problem, though. The nasal tone was really something that nearly ended my investigation of this album.

Will I be signing up to the Beasties Boys party? Not quite, but I do like some of their ideas. The bests are big and bold, the tunes catchy. They could do with working on their vocal presentation, and they might also want to reflect on their policies regarding women (mainly the second). But, with a few changes they might secure my vote, and I too could be one of the 85%.

ROB

In what I hope will be a last for Artist in Residence, for me at least, I failed to make it all the way through a record. Not even Sonic Youth pushed me that far, which will give you some indication regarding my feelings about Licensed to Ill.

It is a nasty, misogynistic album, filled with easy raps for cheap laughs. It’s fratboy crap aimed at numbskulls and it is frankly horrid. Four songs was enough for me to know I’d much rather start at Paul’s Boutique, with the Beasties Boys (hopefully) a lot less odious and a little more self-aware.

In its defence, it is very much of its time, and I hear the band largely disowned much of it, or changed the lyrics, to reflect their shifting views. Which is great. But the utter nastiness of it is still immortalised digitally. I hope it’s just a blemish on their legacy…

MICKEY

It’s crazy to think that when this album dropped there was nothing out there quite like it. Run DMC had sampled rock riffs within their tracks. But to me, the rock element to Run DMC’S work didn’t go beyond the sample. The Beastie Boys have a raw element to their vocals which lends itself well to the rock theme consistent throughout this album.

I really enjoyed working out the samples, which were used in the tracks on this record. The first track is called ‘Rhymin’ and Stealin’’. The song title perfectly sums up that era of hip-hop. Spitting rhymes over music they had created, by stealing segments of other people’s music. This time, it was a Black Sabbath guitar riff looped over a drum sample lifted from a Led Zeppelin record.

The singles No Sleep Till Brooklyn and Fight for your Right will always be classics. These two tracks will always find themselves onto my party or running playlists. The rest of the album was a pleasure to listen to. But, I probably wouldn’t rush to listen to it again. Its great a record, but maybe slightly dated and maybe not as high in sound quality as modern hip hop.

May ’15 – Beastie Boys

Kick of ya shoes and relax ya socks – it’s this month’s Artist In Residence

LUKE

It was Sabotage. I recall a BBC Two series of brief, 10-minute interviews with footballers, and those distinctive, pounding drums and energetic bass were used as the theme tune. It formed one of my first memories of hearing something and realising – all by myself – that I liked listening to it and would want to hear it again. That was my first exposure to the Beastie Boys.

After that, it took a while. It’s not indicative of their overall sound, so I imagine it’s as far as some people may get with them. When I first started discovering music, I was only as interested as looking for more of what I knew I liked up to that point – indie, rock, stuff with guitars. That’s what my friends with the cool taste listened to. That’s the path I had to follow to maintain the pace set by the twin gits of peer pressure and desire for acceptance.

Eventually I would buy The Sounds of Science, a double-disc anthology that contained, among other tracks, Sabotage. Even if I didn’t like the whole thing, I would at least have a copy of that song I liked. Surely there would be more songs like that for me to enjoy.

As it turned out, I’d find several songs that I loved, despite sounding nothing like Sabotage: Intergalactic, Alive, Three MCs and One DJ. There was still enough content to alienate me though, such as the incongruous early punk stylings of Egg Raid On Mojo. And who is this Country Mike guy, and why does he need a theme tune anyway? My music taste at the time was tending towards emo and pop-punk, so there seemed to be no place for more of the Beastie Boys.

This was to overestimate my capacity for angst, as I emerged blinking and dazed from the abject horrors of puberty to realise that I had a personality after all. As such, I found that I needed more music to fit the other moods that swirled within the shambling chaos of a man I was apparently becoming. My sister’s then-boyfriend played a mixed CD at a party which included An Open Letter To NYC. What more did these guys have to do to convince me to pay them more attention?

Years of hesitance meant that Hot Sauce Committee Part 2 was the only Beasties album released after I became a fan. While I had to catch up with everything else, Hot Sauce was something I had the joy of anticipating. The Beasties were never prolific, opting to slave over every beat dropped, so the release of a new LP felt like an event. Though it saddens me to know I’ll never feel that again, at least it was something I felt at all. The memories, like all happy ones, are still keen and fresh; the epic, self-referential video for Make Some Noise; the dripfeed of singles; the premature Soundcloud stream swiftly adorned by rapturous listener comments.

I had been listening to that album on the day that Adam Yauch had died. I was in the Tate Modern, one of those peculiar details that changes nothing yet is somehow burdened with the weight of importance. I felt immediately certain that it would mean no more Beastie Boys. Nothing has changed that opinion. The surviving members – Adam ‘Ad-Rock’ Horovitz and Mike ‘Mike D’ Diamond – have confirmed as much themselves. It wouldn’t be the same, how could it be?

Nowadays they’re a band in regular rotation, and I listen to at least one of their tracks at least once every week or so. They’re my default party music band. Sometimes I might inwardly curse myself for taking so long to get it, for never getting an opportunity to see them perform live. While I still feel the inevitable frustration that comes with wondering what else an artist taken too soon may have gone on to achieve, I’m ultimately very happy that I ever got them at all. I’m still reappraising tracks that didn’t connect with me initially. I’m still connecting the dots with certain pop culture references and in-jokes. They’re the gift that keeps on giving.

RORY

Let me take you back to a time from the past.

A past time if you will.

Its 2007, I’ve just started an American Studies degree at the University of Plymouth.

I’ve made it.

Instead of consuming water and solids all I consume are bongs (this is only vaguely true if you’re reading mum, it’s important to also note that a bong is slang for a burrito, love you xx), instead of the faux hipster haircut I sport now, I have an afro. I am also overweight, my thighs rub and my confidence is low.

I join a group of stoners and drop outs (stoners is slang for stone masons ma x) and it is swiftly decided that we should start a comedy rap group. The whole thing is short lived and only vaguely funny.

Why am I telling you this story?

No clue, but I hold the Beastie Boys slightly responsible for this. They are a phenomenal group. From the sample heavy Paul’s Boutique to the instrumental The Mix Up, this band are great. There is little more to add. I refuse to try and qualify that statement.

They also contributed one of my favourite lyrics of all time:

“You see, I walk like Jabba The Hutt With the style so new y’all be like, What?”

S’gunna be a good month.

MARTIN

Today I leave the cosy familiarity of Sonic Youth month for the strange alien landscape of Beastie Boys month. I am pretty much a blank slate. My knowledge of the Beastie Boys music is Hello Nasty plus most of the singles. The singles just made their way passively to me as they were released, but my actual attention was gained a little by the heavy play of Sabotage and Sure Shot around the time I started to frequent indie discos. Still not enough to actual listen to a full album.

Until 1998 when I bought Hello Nasty on the strength of Intergalactic, which you couldn’t help but hear everywhere. It had a few tracks which I liked but the rest passed me by with little consequence. It was long and fairly boring. I think I only listened to it in full twice.

This is my fear for this month. My ignorance of them leads me to believe that I’ll like the odd song but find the rest a bit monotonous and I may suffer from Beasties fatigue. I saw their headline set at Reading 98 and it seemed to last an ice age with only the odd moment to catch my ear. That was a long time ago and my tastes have evolved, but my main worry can be summed up like this:

How many times can I listen to a SONG.
That does this again and AGAIN.
Then the next ones the same with a different BEAT.
And the vocals either go raspy whiny OR SQUEAK.

I hope I’m way off and will be pleasantly surprised. They’ve always seemed a band I want to like a lot more than I actually do based on what I’ve heard. I do like most of the singles a lot though. I’m looking forward to finding out either way.

CHRIS

During the summer of 2006 I spent a large percentage of my time thinking about hip hop; more specifically I spent about 33.3 percent of my time thinking about hip hop. My dissertation – African American identity from jazz to gangsta rap – was all consuming. I read about hip hop. I watched documentaries about hip hop. Sometimes, I even listened to hip hop. But, due to the focus of my work the Beastie Boys never passed my ears. No considerations of re-appropriation of black identity. No talk of the ‘notions’ of authenticity in white rap. Not a single glimpse of them.

As a result, one of the only ways the Beastie Boys and I really crossed paths with indie/rock discos. They were the perennial ‘floor filler’. Songs like ‘Intergalactic’, ‘Body Movin” and, most importantly, ‘Sabotage’ had the potential to get people dancing at the mere mention of their name. Whilst I got involved in this, I never listened to anything else by them. I would see their iconic covers – Hello Nasty and Licensed To Ill – everywhere, but I never crossed the record shop guy’s palm with silver to see what was within (I wonder whether I would have listed to them if I’d had the luxury of Spotify, like now).

Over the years, I have built a pretty negative image of the band and, more specifically, their fans. I see them as a band loved by the classic ‘jock’. The guy downing a can he has just pierced with a knife. The guy who loves Steve-O from Jackass and loves it when someone throws up on a night out. I don’t really know where this has come from, and deep down I think I know this is unfair. Nevertheless, this has been a massive barrier in listening to their music more deeply.

So, I look forward to this month. I look forward to being challenged, and I definitely look forward to the opportunity to be proven wrong.

MICKEY

I remember buying the Beastie’s ‘Sound of Science’ CD when it first came out around 1999/2000. I absolutely loved it. I bought the CD believing it was their best of… album. But it’s just a mish mash of songs from their career, both good and bad. I remember being really impressed by the CD inlay booklet, which explained each of the songs. I read it so many times. It was great addition to the listening experience. I also loved how they had some new tracks made especially for the compilation. It gave the compilation its own individual feel. It felt like the celebration of their identity as a group, rather than just a money-spinner for their record label.

Apart from this compilation, I do not know too much about this band.

It does seem that some people view this group as a bit of a joke. I did think that they were a bit of a novelty act at first. Three white men, almost old enough to be my dad, bopping around the stage, dropping mad rhymes! It was not until I saw one of their live shows on YouTube that I realized how amazingly talented they really were. It’s not that they are a joke, its just that they transcend genre stereotypes. Its hard to imagine the likes of NWA or D12 all picking up instruments half way through a show and transforming into a rock band. I think they were able to be so successful for so long because they mixed things up.

My only critique is that they are probably not the best rappers. I can’t imagine them pulling off solo efforts. But as a group they made it work. They made it sound good. Apart from RUN DMC I can’t really think of any other groups like them who rhyme back to back and over each other. I really like that style of rapping.

My prediction for this month is that I will start off as a Beasties fan, and find myself questioning how much of a fan I am at the end. I don’t know for sure, but for all their well-known hits, I sense there may be a lot of filler tracks. I also imagine some of their stuff will sound dated now. However, it is worth me remembering that when they dropped their early stuff it was during a period of time when most the world had never heard anything like hip hop before. Some of the genres being created in different American cities around that time really did end up changing the music forever.

Bring it on!

OUR LISTENING THIS MONTH

May 4 – Licensed to Ill (1986)

May 8 – Paul’s Boutique (1989)

May 12 – Check Your Head (1992)

May 15 – Ill Communication (1994)

May 19 – Hello Nasty (1998)

May 22 – To the 5 Boroughs (2004)

May 25 – The Mix-Up (2007)

May 27 – Hot Sauce Committee Part Two (2011)