Rich Cheney
07-20-2004, 08:32 AM
Beastie Boys: "Ch-Check It Out (Just Blaze Remix)"
Twilight of your career? Meet a supernova amongst producers. Grasping at relevance? Meet a man at the top of his game. Buddhists, meet the Temple of the Blunt. Wisely ditching trendier DJs (i.e. Fatboy Slim on Hello Nasty's "Body Movin'"), The Beastie Boys have chosen someone with a little more hip-hop on his resume for the remix B-side to their new album's first single: Just Blaze, longtime beatmaker (and hitmaker) for Snoop, DMX, Fabolous, and Jay-Z's entire Rocafella stable. It was their best hire since Spike Jonze: Blaze re-imagines "Ch-Check It Out" as the old-school soundbomb it should have been.
Riding the wave of hip-hop cowbell revivalism that Rick Rubin begat on "99 Problems", Blaze peels away the horn lines and stale beats that excited no one but the Beasties' moms, and fills the blanks with judicious percussion, well-placed synthesizers during the chorus, and the kind of background party noise that seemingly graced every Brooklyn 12-inch in 1980. He also erased the Beasties' original vocals. This is not a complaint; MCA, Mike D and Ad-Rock sound at least three times as hyped here as they did on the album cut. More a retry than a remix, the Beasties actually nail their delivery-- I'm talking on the beat and everything-- in spite of their excruciating lyrical clunkers.
Blaze's participation notwithstanding, this take's potential for rap radio crossover seems like a long shot at best. Still, the track holds too much infectious fun to not appeal to anyone who ever threw down to Paul's Boutique. Which all just lends certainty to what I said before 5 Boroughs hit: The Boys should've ripped a page from the Jay-Z handbook and enlisted rap's top producers to tackle each track-- and then just fucking quit, already. [Jason Crock; July 20th, 2004]
Twilight of your career? Meet a supernova amongst producers. Grasping at relevance? Meet a man at the top of his game. Buddhists, meet the Temple of the Blunt. Wisely ditching trendier DJs (i.e. Fatboy Slim on Hello Nasty's "Body Movin'"), The Beastie Boys have chosen someone with a little more hip-hop on his resume for the remix B-side to their new album's first single: Just Blaze, longtime beatmaker (and hitmaker) for Snoop, DMX, Fabolous, and Jay-Z's entire Rocafella stable. It was their best hire since Spike Jonze: Blaze re-imagines "Ch-Check It Out" as the old-school soundbomb it should have been.
Riding the wave of hip-hop cowbell revivalism that Rick Rubin begat on "99 Problems", Blaze peels away the horn lines and stale beats that excited no one but the Beasties' moms, and fills the blanks with judicious percussion, well-placed synthesizers during the chorus, and the kind of background party noise that seemingly graced every Brooklyn 12-inch in 1980. He also erased the Beasties' original vocals. This is not a complaint; MCA, Mike D and Ad-Rock sound at least three times as hyped here as they did on the album cut. More a retry than a remix, the Beasties actually nail their delivery-- I'm talking on the beat and everything-- in spite of their excruciating lyrical clunkers.
Blaze's participation notwithstanding, this take's potential for rap radio crossover seems like a long shot at best. Still, the track holds too much infectious fun to not appeal to anyone who ever threw down to Paul's Boutique. Which all just lends certainty to what I said before 5 Boroughs hit: The Boys should've ripped a page from the Jay-Z handbook and enlisted rap's top producers to tackle each track-- and then just fucking quit, already. [Jason Crock; July 20th, 2004]