georgie girl
07-25-2004, 11:43 AM
The smartest dumb band in the land, the Beastie Boys' mix of heady grooves, smart samples, pissant punkery, and lowest-common denominator-partying lets their songs function equally as moshpit anthems and intense dancefloor gut-punches. That many of their best licks are stolen (OK, sampled) from an impressive genre-hopping list just adds to the visceral impact of such immortal shoutalongs as "(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party)," "Sabotage," "Finger Lickin' Good," or "Ch-Check It Out." As a guitar-noise edge teases the Boys' insistent funkiness, the band comes off simultaneously as super-dunces and world-class dance machines.
Such was not always the case. The high point of the Beasties' early-'80s years as lame New York hardcore screamboys was "Cookie Puss," which, despite a cranking pulse, plays like an homage to phone pranks. Def Jam producer Rick Rubin changed all that. He morphed the trio--guitarist Adrock (Adam Horowitz), drummer Mike D (Michael Diamond), and bassist MCA (Adam Yauch)--into parental-advisory, rock-brat hip-hoppers who produced rap's first number one album, 1986's Licensed To Ill. After moving to California and hooking up with the Dust Brothers, the Beasties followed with 1989's Paul's Boutique, an ahead-of-its-time, sampledelic CD flush with energized confusion and East Coast-West Coast contradictions. Though that album was viewed at the time as a bit of a commercial disappoint, 1992's Check Your Head once again remodeled the band, this time as Memphis soul-groovers, New Orleans funk masters and Isaac Hayes loverboys. Subsequent releases Ill Communication (featuring "Sabotage," which spawned one of the funniest music videos ever made) and Hello Nasty were also massive hits. The Beasties took a six-year break after Nasty, but made a triumphant return in 2004 with To The 5 Boroughs; a straightahead old-school hip-hop album with political overtones, it paid homage to the trio's hometown of New York while taking open potshots at President Bush.
With their sonic collages, the Beasties have made high art of cultural plagiarism--no style or sound is too absurd or removed to exclude it from the list of borrowable sound bits. Subsequently, the Beasties are occasionally more dopey than dope, especially live, where they sometimes emulate bad rap shows by substituting vocal bravado for musical beef. But when they're on, the high is as fierce as it gets.
This Biography was written by Tristram Lozaw
Such was not always the case. The high point of the Beasties' early-'80s years as lame New York hardcore screamboys was "Cookie Puss," which, despite a cranking pulse, plays like an homage to phone pranks. Def Jam producer Rick Rubin changed all that. He morphed the trio--guitarist Adrock (Adam Horowitz), drummer Mike D (Michael Diamond), and bassist MCA (Adam Yauch)--into parental-advisory, rock-brat hip-hoppers who produced rap's first number one album, 1986's Licensed To Ill. After moving to California and hooking up with the Dust Brothers, the Beasties followed with 1989's Paul's Boutique, an ahead-of-its-time, sampledelic CD flush with energized confusion and East Coast-West Coast contradictions. Though that album was viewed at the time as a bit of a commercial disappoint, 1992's Check Your Head once again remodeled the band, this time as Memphis soul-groovers, New Orleans funk masters and Isaac Hayes loverboys. Subsequent releases Ill Communication (featuring "Sabotage," which spawned one of the funniest music videos ever made) and Hello Nasty were also massive hits. The Beasties took a six-year break after Nasty, but made a triumphant return in 2004 with To The 5 Boroughs; a straightahead old-school hip-hop album with political overtones, it paid homage to the trio's hometown of New York while taking open potshots at President Bush.
With their sonic collages, the Beasties have made high art of cultural plagiarism--no style or sound is too absurd or removed to exclude it from the list of borrowable sound bits. Subsequently, the Beasties are occasionally more dopey than dope, especially live, where they sometimes emulate bad rap shows by substituting vocal bravado for musical beef. But when they're on, the high is as fierce as it gets.
This Biography was written by Tristram Lozaw