Beastie Boys -- Hipster Music

Check Your Head

You know from the opening track, "Jimmy James," that this ain't gonna be your typical Beasties release. Of course, after the masterpiece that was Paul's Boutique blew the old skool style of Licensed to Ill out of the water, we really didn't know what to expect. I literally cut the shit out of my hands trying to get the CD packaging open on this one, and after the first three tracks I was about to declare it the best album ever. The beats! The loops and bass of "Pass the Mic"--holy crap! Are those live instruments? Man, these guys are brilliant and angry and whoa. We even used "Lighten Up" in the closing credits of a college film project. I interned at Capitol Records over the summer this album was out and couldn't believe I was working in the home of The Beastie Boys... and Richard Marx... and MC Hammer... Anyway, "So What'cha Want" is to this day my ultimate drunk dancing song--hands down. There are definitely a few throw-aways mixed in here, but for my money, this is one of the best, genre-busting albums of the decade.

Hello Nasty

I couldn't help but think after first listening to this album that these guys had taken a step backward. Granted, it had been four years since Ill Communication--an album that was in itself a step backward from the brilliant Check Your Head--but this felt like some weird attempt to recapture the "fun" Beastie Boys of old. Instead it comes off as old guys trying to act like funky youngins. The rhymes are monochromatic and the melodies are flat. Yeah, there is some cool layering (as is their trademark), but overall the mood is too similar from track to track. The vocal harmonies--if you can really call them that--are also remarkably similar in most of the songs. There are a few real stinkers on here as well (including some awful Beck wannabe song, "Flowin' Prose") that must have made the cut because the guys felt they needed some quantity after a four year absence. If this is the direction they're headed, I fear their follow up (six years in the making) is gonna stink it up to high heaven.

Ill Communication

This album starts with such promise. "Sure Shot" is such a nice dose of Beastie spaziness, and then they follow it up with a strange minute-long spurt of punk rock? Face it guys, you ain't much in terms of a rock band. Watching and listening to Yauch try that bass scale on "Sabotage" is a painful experience--although it is a fun song. It's almost as if these guys received too much praise for Check Your Head's stylistic switch-ups and have taken it to an extreme on this album--an extreme we could do without. It's disjointed and thus not very memorable. I guarantee there are a bunch of people out there who own this album and have never listened to it past track seven--there doesn't really seem to be a need.

Licensed to Ill

I had to hide my love for this album back in the day. My SST-listening friends just didn't get it. They chastised me for liking the silliness that was fratboy rap. How could I not like three middle-class Jewish kids rhyming about beer and chicks? It was the life I wanted. Like the Beasties themselves, I'm apologetic and just a little bit embarrassed for having liked this album. It's ridiculously sophomoric, misogynistic and hedonistic--unlike most of today's hip-hop albums (wink). So, the guys can't seem to figure out that Miller and Budweiser are two separate beers, but it's tough to rhyme Bud with "killer." At this point, this album is great for nostalgia, but little else in terms of artistic value. It's just shocking that a mere three years later these brats put out Paul's Boutique--an album so many light years ahead of this rock/rap mash-up that we're hard pressed to believe these are the same guys. Perhaps Def Jam used their special shit wand to con these guys into making a Spring Break record instead of what could have been a brilliant Paul's Boutique prequel?

Paul's Boutique

And to think the assholes at my local record store in LA told me not to buy this thing the day it came out. I stood there with the CD in my hand as they told me about its muddled production, nonsensical lyrics and bizarro track sequencing. I blew them off and never looked back. Thank God, as this turned out to be one of the best albums of all time. Made back in the day when stealing samples of people's music wasn't illegal (sorta), this album is so multi-layered and deep in sounds, samples, beats and entertaining lyrics that it makes one's head spin. I guess I could understand the record shop guys' confusion over the whole thing, but to not recognize the Dust Brothers production as revolutionary and insane is grounds for being fired. "Car Thief" is probably my favorite cut on the album, but "Hey Ladies" and "Shake Your Rump" were the tracks that got the party going back in the good old days.

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