dee_bee_76
06-14-2004, 08:15 AM
By JON PARELES
Published: June 14, 2004
'To the Five Boroughs'
Beastie Boys
If good intentions guaranteed musical pleasure, "To the Five Boroughs" (Capitol) would be a masterpiece. It's the first Beastie Boys album since 1998, and it's politically engaged and full of multicultural positive thinking alongside its boasts. With its lean, springy, analog-flavored grooves and its New York-centric references, "To the Five Boroughs" tries wholeheartedly to rewrite old-school rap with politically correct hindsight.
There are blunt partisan jabs — "We've got a president we didn't elect/The Kyoto Treaty he decided to neglect," MCA (Adam Yauch) raps — and endorsements of notions like "diversity unified whoever you are." The Beasties' final admonition on the album is, "Who got the power to make the difference/We got the we got we got the we got the . . . ."
But the sense of responsibility that gives the Beasties a clear conscience also inhibits them. Early rap was about shameless self-promotion, turning unknowns into heroes; the Beasties pulled a reverse move, inventing themselves as comic antiheroes who were just as shameless.
In 1986 the Beasties released "Licensed to Ill," griping about parents and celebrating booze and vandalism. MCA, Ad-Rock (Adam Horovitz) and Mike D (Mike Diamond) made themselves a hilarious cartoon of teenage obnoxiousness, with whiny, nasal voices that were a far cry from the stentorian shouts of contemporaries like Run-DMC. With "Licensed to Ill" they virtually invented Cypress Hill, Limp Bizkit and Eminem. It has been a long time since they were as thoroughly entertaining.
During the 1990's the change in the Beastie Boys was something like having the Three Stooges decide they wanted to become a panel of appellate judges instead. The Beasties jettisoned rock-guitar riffs and became connoisseurs of retro samples, particularly fond of 1970's funk and kitsch. They also started atoning verbally for their youthful outbursts of sexism and idle hostility; they no longer had the attitude that anything goes. Their audience shifted from high schoolers to college students, from rockers to hipsters. And their raps tried to pull off an unlikely merger of hip-hop braggadocio and modesty in the face of social concerns.
That combination grows more strained on "To the Five Boroughs," especially because it now comes with a strong supplement of nostalgia. That album's first single, "Ch-Check It Out," is built on a stark old-school combination of drumbeats and a sampled horn-section note, and throughout the raps on the album the slang is as vintage as the drum-machine sounds. MCA has no right to sneer, as he does in "Three the Hard Way," that "Your rhyme technique/It is antique"; for the Beastie Boys, that's now the point. Their television references, rudimentary similes ("I work magic like a magician") and simple rhyme cadences have been left in the dust by younger rappers, and all the Beastie Boys do to keep up is throw in some profanity.
This album's saving grace is in its tracks, which were produced for the first time by the Beastie Boys alone. There are bare-bones old-school homages, plenty of retro-chic electro riffs and samples of anything from a Brazilian berimbau to a barking dog. It's not all old-fashioned; every so often the Beasties pick up the minor-key brooding of current gangsta rap. The tracks crackle and swing with a wit that the lyrics rarely match.
Published: June 14, 2004
'To the Five Boroughs'
Beastie Boys
If good intentions guaranteed musical pleasure, "To the Five Boroughs" (Capitol) would be a masterpiece. It's the first Beastie Boys album since 1998, and it's politically engaged and full of multicultural positive thinking alongside its boasts. With its lean, springy, analog-flavored grooves and its New York-centric references, "To the Five Boroughs" tries wholeheartedly to rewrite old-school rap with politically correct hindsight.
There are blunt partisan jabs — "We've got a president we didn't elect/The Kyoto Treaty he decided to neglect," MCA (Adam Yauch) raps — and endorsements of notions like "diversity unified whoever you are." The Beasties' final admonition on the album is, "Who got the power to make the difference/We got the we got we got the we got the . . . ."
But the sense of responsibility that gives the Beasties a clear conscience also inhibits them. Early rap was about shameless self-promotion, turning unknowns into heroes; the Beasties pulled a reverse move, inventing themselves as comic antiheroes who were just as shameless.
In 1986 the Beasties released "Licensed to Ill," griping about parents and celebrating booze and vandalism. MCA, Ad-Rock (Adam Horovitz) and Mike D (Mike Diamond) made themselves a hilarious cartoon of teenage obnoxiousness, with whiny, nasal voices that were a far cry from the stentorian shouts of contemporaries like Run-DMC. With "Licensed to Ill" they virtually invented Cypress Hill, Limp Bizkit and Eminem. It has been a long time since they were as thoroughly entertaining.
During the 1990's the change in the Beastie Boys was something like having the Three Stooges decide they wanted to become a panel of appellate judges instead. The Beasties jettisoned rock-guitar riffs and became connoisseurs of retro samples, particularly fond of 1970's funk and kitsch. They also started atoning verbally for their youthful outbursts of sexism and idle hostility; they no longer had the attitude that anything goes. Their audience shifted from high schoolers to college students, from rockers to hipsters. And their raps tried to pull off an unlikely merger of hip-hop braggadocio and modesty in the face of social concerns.
That combination grows more strained on "To the Five Boroughs," especially because it now comes with a strong supplement of nostalgia. That album's first single, "Ch-Check It Out," is built on a stark old-school combination of drumbeats and a sampled horn-section note, and throughout the raps on the album the slang is as vintage as the drum-machine sounds. MCA has no right to sneer, as he does in "Three the Hard Way," that "Your rhyme technique/It is antique"; for the Beastie Boys, that's now the point. Their television references, rudimentary similes ("I work magic like a magician") and simple rhyme cadences have been left in the dust by younger rappers, and all the Beastie Boys do to keep up is throw in some profanity.
This album's saving grace is in its tracks, which were produced for the first time by the Beastie Boys alone. There are bare-bones old-school homages, plenty of retro-chic electro riffs and samples of anything from a Brazilian berimbau to a barking dog. It's not all old-fashioned; every so often the Beasties pick up the minor-key brooding of current gangsta rap. The tracks crackle and swing with a wit that the lyrics rarely match.