dee_bee_76
06-15-2004, 08:05 AM
Posted on Tue, Jun. 15, 2004
The Beastie Boys return to the hip-hop scene after a six-year silence with “To the 5 Boroughs.”
Beastie Boys return with music, message
The hip-hop trio is still proclaiming you have to fight for your rights - but not just to party.
By Tom Moon
Inquirer Music Critic
On the last track of the Beastie Boys' To the 5 Boroughs, after the three brash white rappers have dispensed the inevitable "we're so crazy" rhymes, shouted out to the city that "blends and mends and tests," and revived '70s ad slogans, there comes a moment of undisguised idealism.
The song is a little empowerment chant called "We Got the." MCA, the rapper Adam Yauch, begins: "If you want it, be the change." Then Mike D takes the spotlight: "Gotta spread love or the world goes ..." the last word of his sentence supplied, right on the beat, by the sound a cuckoo clock.
And with that, the floodgates open. The multiplatinum New Yorkers, back after a six-year silence, call for an international ban on weapons of mass destruction and, over an infectious chitter-chatter stutter-beat, visit several other items on the liberal to-do list.
Much of the blazing Boroughs (Capitol, **** out of four stars) is like that: genius juxtapositions of music and message, calls to consciousness disguised as playground taunts and bubblegum-grabby refrains. If you come to the Beasties looking to obliterate reality - after all, they're authors of that enduring call to fight for the right to party - you leave Boroughs galvanized, thinking maybe it's time to fight the power.
Unlike on 1998's Hello Nasty, the current-events references are less outraged diatribes than passing glances. It's the first time the group has found the balance between the bratty me-first obsessions that drive most hip-hop and loftier ideals.
The secret, it seems, is to keep everything moving at a caterwauling, nearly out-of-control pace. No narrative thread lasts long on these terse tracks, most of which clock in at under three minutes. Many of the best pieces are essentially short-attention-span scene changes filled with delirious asides and what-the-heck-was-that observations destined to give the "rewind" button a workout.
There's a hymn to post-Sept. 11 resilience ("An Open Letter to NYC" that includes the couplet "we're looking pretty and gritty 'cause in the city we trust") and several cuts that embrace diversity. (The most obvious, the rumbling "All Lifestyles," is an overdue attempt to redress hip-hop's intolerance of homosexuality.)
Sprinkled throughout these songs are indications that the Beasties, who will headline Friday's Y100 Feztival at the Tweeter Center, have been reading the papers. They're not out to do away with hip-hop's default narcissism; they just want to replace some of its Escalade-driving, champagne-swilling excess with realities that rarely crop up in radio-accessible hip-hop: childhoods cut short by gun violence, the thirsty gas tanks of SUVs "strung out on OPEC," the country's bullying foreign policy, the need for "a little shift on over to the left." (Memo to John Kerry: Put this one in heavy rotation on the campaign bus.)
Most of the time, those ideas come in isolated bursts. But on several pieces, "We Got the" and especially the furious "Time to Build," they're gathered into the Beasties' equivalent of a position paper. "Time to Build" turns on a common-sense chorus as true of the Twin Towers (which stand tall in the pen-and-ink drawing on Boroughs' cover) as it is to downtown Baghdad: "It takes a second to wreck it, it takes time to build."
In "Time's" verses, the gruff MCA pulls no punches as he assesses the problem: "We got a president we didn't elect, the Kyoto treaty [on global warming] he decided to neglect." Later, Ad-Roc taunts the commander in chief: "Why you hating people that you never met? Didn't your mama teach you 'show some respect'?"
The Beasties - Adam Horovitz (Ad-Roc), 36; Mike Diamond (Mike D), 37, and Yauch (MCA), 38 - know that if they want to mobilize people, they have to get them on their feet first. The MCs and amazing DJ Mix Master Mike drop beats and mangle samples into a crisp instrumental attack that's far from the gaudiness of mainstream hip-hop. Boroughs is elemental, a symphony of ice-pick snare drums and thundering kicks with virtually no distracting adornment.
These austere, wondrously agitated backdrops put the emphasis on the punch lines, shouted refrains and slogans ("please pass the Reunite on ice"), and make clear that, no matter how much rhetoric they drop, the Beastie Boys know the core competency of any hip-hop act is its ability to keep the party moving. The trio that bills itself as "the crew that put the crew in Cruex" is as quick as ever to celebrate its chemistry, that rare ability to "Rhyme the Rhyme Well." And it still delights in disparaging less-gifted MCs: One withering appraisal goes "you're taking out the trash when you pull out the pen." Only now, the Beasties are inclined to follow that with an indignant aside about the military complex.
How far this crew has come. Back when they were young, the Beastie Boys were the comic relief on Def Jam's roster. Other acts on the label, particularly Public Enemy, provided the enlightenment and provocation. The three white boys were a novelty, cracking wise as they chased a blotto buzz, their irreverence magnified by the dense, testosterone-charged sound of landmarks including 1986's Licensed to Ill and 1989's Paul's Boutique.
Now Def Jam is a shell of its former self, politically charged rap is in the deep freeze, and the Beastie Boys, of all acts, are still shouting. Unlikely survivors of the rap wars, they're dishing out the mojo that feeds heads and moves hips, building coalitions and galvanizing souls under the cover of relentlessly funky party music.
Beastie Boys:
"To the 5 Boroughs"
**** (out of four stars). In stores today.
The Beastie Boys return to the hip-hop scene after a six-year silence with “To the 5 Boroughs.”
Beastie Boys return with music, message
The hip-hop trio is still proclaiming you have to fight for your rights - but not just to party.
By Tom Moon
Inquirer Music Critic
On the last track of the Beastie Boys' To the 5 Boroughs, after the three brash white rappers have dispensed the inevitable "we're so crazy" rhymes, shouted out to the city that "blends and mends and tests," and revived '70s ad slogans, there comes a moment of undisguised idealism.
The song is a little empowerment chant called "We Got the." MCA, the rapper Adam Yauch, begins: "If you want it, be the change." Then Mike D takes the spotlight: "Gotta spread love or the world goes ..." the last word of his sentence supplied, right on the beat, by the sound a cuckoo clock.
And with that, the floodgates open. The multiplatinum New Yorkers, back after a six-year silence, call for an international ban on weapons of mass destruction and, over an infectious chitter-chatter stutter-beat, visit several other items on the liberal to-do list.
Much of the blazing Boroughs (Capitol, **** out of four stars) is like that: genius juxtapositions of music and message, calls to consciousness disguised as playground taunts and bubblegum-grabby refrains. If you come to the Beasties looking to obliterate reality - after all, they're authors of that enduring call to fight for the right to party - you leave Boroughs galvanized, thinking maybe it's time to fight the power.
Unlike on 1998's Hello Nasty, the current-events references are less outraged diatribes than passing glances. It's the first time the group has found the balance between the bratty me-first obsessions that drive most hip-hop and loftier ideals.
The secret, it seems, is to keep everything moving at a caterwauling, nearly out-of-control pace. No narrative thread lasts long on these terse tracks, most of which clock in at under three minutes. Many of the best pieces are essentially short-attention-span scene changes filled with delirious asides and what-the-heck-was-that observations destined to give the "rewind" button a workout.
There's a hymn to post-Sept. 11 resilience ("An Open Letter to NYC" that includes the couplet "we're looking pretty and gritty 'cause in the city we trust") and several cuts that embrace diversity. (The most obvious, the rumbling "All Lifestyles," is an overdue attempt to redress hip-hop's intolerance of homosexuality.)
Sprinkled throughout these songs are indications that the Beasties, who will headline Friday's Y100 Feztival at the Tweeter Center, have been reading the papers. They're not out to do away with hip-hop's default narcissism; they just want to replace some of its Escalade-driving, champagne-swilling excess with realities that rarely crop up in radio-accessible hip-hop: childhoods cut short by gun violence, the thirsty gas tanks of SUVs "strung out on OPEC," the country's bullying foreign policy, the need for "a little shift on over to the left." (Memo to John Kerry: Put this one in heavy rotation on the campaign bus.)
Most of the time, those ideas come in isolated bursts. But on several pieces, "We Got the" and especially the furious "Time to Build," they're gathered into the Beasties' equivalent of a position paper. "Time to Build" turns on a common-sense chorus as true of the Twin Towers (which stand tall in the pen-and-ink drawing on Boroughs' cover) as it is to downtown Baghdad: "It takes a second to wreck it, it takes time to build."
In "Time's" verses, the gruff MCA pulls no punches as he assesses the problem: "We got a president we didn't elect, the Kyoto treaty [on global warming] he decided to neglect." Later, Ad-Roc taunts the commander in chief: "Why you hating people that you never met? Didn't your mama teach you 'show some respect'?"
The Beasties - Adam Horovitz (Ad-Roc), 36; Mike Diamond (Mike D), 37, and Yauch (MCA), 38 - know that if they want to mobilize people, they have to get them on their feet first. The MCs and amazing DJ Mix Master Mike drop beats and mangle samples into a crisp instrumental attack that's far from the gaudiness of mainstream hip-hop. Boroughs is elemental, a symphony of ice-pick snare drums and thundering kicks with virtually no distracting adornment.
These austere, wondrously agitated backdrops put the emphasis on the punch lines, shouted refrains and slogans ("please pass the Reunite on ice"), and make clear that, no matter how much rhetoric they drop, the Beastie Boys know the core competency of any hip-hop act is its ability to keep the party moving. The trio that bills itself as "the crew that put the crew in Cruex" is as quick as ever to celebrate its chemistry, that rare ability to "Rhyme the Rhyme Well." And it still delights in disparaging less-gifted MCs: One withering appraisal goes "you're taking out the trash when you pull out the pen." Only now, the Beasties are inclined to follow that with an indignant aside about the military complex.
How far this crew has come. Back when they were young, the Beastie Boys were the comic relief on Def Jam's roster. Other acts on the label, particularly Public Enemy, provided the enlightenment and provocation. The three white boys were a novelty, cracking wise as they chased a blotto buzz, their irreverence magnified by the dense, testosterone-charged sound of landmarks including 1986's Licensed to Ill and 1989's Paul's Boutique.
Now Def Jam is a shell of its former self, politically charged rap is in the deep freeze, and the Beastie Boys, of all acts, are still shouting. Unlikely survivors of the rap wars, they're dishing out the mojo that feeds heads and moves hips, building coalitions and galvanizing souls under the cover of relentlessly funky party music.
Beastie Boys:
"To the 5 Boroughs"
**** (out of four stars). In stores today.