Re-listened to the TT5B

[pesto pizza]

Originally Posted by Jiberish

The Last Jedi is probably the second best SW movie. To me.

Just like the Last Jedi l rather the Beastie boys had made the TT5B than not.
The mix up was the phantom menace very disappointing at the time but ive grown to think its ok.

[pesto pizza]

Some great rapping on TT5B

[pesto pizza]

Just listened to the mix up, its taken me 10 years to get its genius
My older brain must be more willing to hear different concepts and styles than it did in the past.

[Bradleystp]

Originally Posted by pesto pizza

Just like the Last Jedi l rather the Beastie boys had made the TT5B than not.
The mix up was the phantom menace very disappointing at the time but ive grown to think its ok.

I was disappointed at the time too, not that TMU was bad, quite the opposite. But it had been so long, I just wanted a rap album from them at that time.

For a while I was taking my favs from TT5B and TMU and mixing them up, to make a more diverse album.

[pm0ney]

I think TT5B is clearly the weakest link in their discography. It doesn’t break down to one simple reason, but more like a confluence of aspects which all break down, to me, into laziness.

The rhyming, particularly rhyme schemes fell off drastically in their complexity on this record compared to Hello Nasty. Hello Nasty was the pinnacle of trading off lines, to the point where they almost came up with a new instrument based solely off the incredible trading back and forth of rhymes. On TT5B it was so boring and formulaic. Four bars, four bars, four bars, sometimes eight, eight, eight, wash rinse repeat. Lazy. Not a throwback to their old ways, just lazy.

The production was lazy as well. It clearly was made using dated computer programs, lacks that deep, grainy, boom-bap that timeless hip hop records have. Those sounds are products of drum machines and sampled loops that are worlds removed from the programmed beats on TT5B. They all sound like GarageBand demonstrations. If they wanted to make a record that sounded like it came from the 80’s, they should have used an 808. Again, laziness.

Finally, the political stuff. I’m of the opinion that if you aren’t a supremely gifted writer or public orator, keep your political opinions to yourself. Their political chops, so to speak leave much to be desired. Chuck D they are not.

So yeah, it’s a decent album by normal album standards I guess. Some tracks are really dope like Ch Check It Out, Three the Hard Way and Open Letter. But you can’t listen to Hot Sauce Committee and then take TT5B seriously. It’s a gigantic let down from by far my favorite group of all time. I hope people on here remember the hype leading up to that release after six years off. Thankfully, they returned to form on HSC and also the tour to promote TT5B was incredible. I saw them at both the Garden and the Coliseum.

[ClarenceAlabama]

Originally Posted by pm0ney

I think TT5B is clearly the weakest link in their discography. It doesn’t break down to one simple reason, but more like a confluence of aspects which all break down, to me, into laziness.

The rhyming, particularly rhyme schemes fell off drastically in their complexity on this record compared to Hello Nasty. Hello Nasty was the pinnacle of trading off lines, to the point where they almost came up with a new instrument based solely off the incredible trading back and forth of rhymes. On TT5B it was so boring and formulaic. Four bars, four bars, four bars, sometimes eight, eight, eight, wash rinse repeat. Lazy. Not a throwback to their old ways, just lazy.

The production was lazy as well. It clearly was made using dated computer programs, lacks that deep, grainy, boom-bap that timeless hip hop records have. Those sounds are products of drum machines and sampled loops that are worlds removed from the programmed beats on TT5B. They all sound like GarageBand demonstrations. If they wanted to make a record that sounded like it came from the 80’s, they should have used an 808. Again, laziness.

Finally, the political stuff. I’m of the opinion that if you aren’t a supremely gifted writer or public orator, keep your political opinions to yourself. Their political chops, so to speak leave much to be desired. Chuck D they are not.

So yeah, it’s a decent album by normal album standards I guess. Some tracks are really dope like Ch Check It Out, Three the Hard Way and Open Letter. But you can’t listen to Hot Sauce Committee and then take TT5B seriously. It’s a gigantic let down from by far my favorite group of all time. I hope people on here remember the hype leading up to that release after six years off. Thankfully, they returned to form on HSC and also the tour to promote TT5B was incredible. I saw them at both the Garden and the Coliseum.

I agree, the hype leading up to the release is what made a lot of people disappointed when they finally heard it, but I disagree that it's the weakest link in their discography... that goes to The Mix Up! (the worst idea of their careers).

TT5B is a pretty fun album when you take out the political tracks. I think re-arranging the track listing would have made a huge difference.

[dave790]

Loved it then, love it now.

Admittedly, away from the music itself I remember it being such a great time. I was mid-teens and it was the first B-Boys record released that I could actually look forward to, having discovered the band at the turn of the millennium. I remember the interview that Mike and Yauch gave with Zane Lowe in early 2004, and I think that was the first one they'd given for some time. When Yauch said 'this one's all hip hop,' I just couldn't wait. Ill Communication was probably already my favourite album by then - and I loved the mix of styles - but ultimately I wanted to hear them rhyme. I also remember a lot of chat / interviews in the build up where they clearly said they wanted to strip it back a bit more and keep it simple. I found it strange, then and now, that people complained that it was lazy or too simplistic or that they didn't know what they were doing without Mario C. I think TT5B is exactly the album they wanted to make, but I appreciate its comparatively minimalist sound may have still been underwhelming for some.

I thought C-CIO was a brilliant comeback single, and that the rapping was amazing. It was obviously very old school, but it somehow sounded like the freshest thing in a long time. There was some basic excitement at hearing them rhyme again, but the song still stands up for me, and it got a lot of airplay here in the UK. There was also a sense of relief that it was a million miles better than IAWGM. I suppose C-CIO was slightly unrepresentative of TT5B, only in that the drum samples and horn stabs are samples of actual playing, as opposed to the more computer-generated beats that dominated the rest of the album. The album I envisaged on the strength of C-CIO was probably better in my mind than the final release (if that makes sense). In any case, I remember RRNN, TT and AOLTNYC being played on Radio 1 on the eve of the album's release and thinking that they were as strong as anything in the band's back catalog. Aside from TT, which I find a little poppy and contrived, I still feel the same way.

My first listen to the album as a whole was slightly underwhelming, as it often is when there is so much anticipation. I loved it from the moment I played it on the headphones the second time though. I personally love the focus present throughout, the four bar verses, the fact the vocals are actually at the front of the mix (first time really since LTI), the stripped back approach that still incorporated some interesting sounds... But ultimately I just loved that there were so many good hip hop songs on there. I love the rhyming - me and a few friends spent years reciting things back various couplets and verses to one another. I remember the lyrics to Rhyme The Rhyme Well were posted on here before the album's release and it was obvious, to me at least, that this was a major step up from HN. Obviously some people love HN, and fair enough, but for all its inventiveness I think it falls way short of the standard of Ill Communication. It sounds like a cartoon Beastie Boys, and there are worse things than that, but it remains my least favourite album of theirs. So I suppose I was coming into TT5B pleased that the new record was going to be, well, almost back to basics. I prefer actual versus as well, as opposed to the tag-team style. A lot of it is just down to personal preference. But like someone said on here at the time, I felt that TT5B 'pisses all over HN' despite having none of its variation.

Having said all that, TT5B is not flawless. For the most part, I think the beats sound fine - Time to Build is one of their most underrated cuts! - but I think something like AOLTNYC would have been more effective with some sort of drum machine or live rhythm sample to go with the Dead Boys riff. As it is, it sounds very processed. I also agree with the general consensus here that some of the b-sides would have made stronger album cuts. Certainly, Brrr Stick 'Em, TGNATU and possibly And Then I would have been better selections than Crawlspace (sorry), All Lifestyles (nice sentiment but ultimately lightweight for me) and We Got The, which is an absolutely forgettable conclusion to what is otherwise an excellent record.

And, as also outlined here, this was a great late era for the band. The pageant shows were arguably their best ever, and the preceding club (and all hip-hop) tour was also very strong. I remember watching them play RRNN at the first Hip Hop Honors thing, and thinking that they were still clearly the coolest band on the planet. It's a shame the other singles didn't do much. Throughout HN, the band just seemed to get bigger and bigger, and they were probably at their peak of worldwide popularity then. It was always going to be hard to recapture that six years later, but I remember being slightly disappointed that the album didn't do better overall. Coming on here it was obvious that I was in a minority of people who genuinely loved it, so that's fair enough I suppose. In any case, thanks for letting me reminisce

[pesto pizza]

I agree with all of that apart from all lifestyles.
Esp that bit about the cartoon version of the Beasties

[Late-Night Lion]

Originally Posted by pm0ney

I think TT5B is clearly the weakest link in their discography. It doesn’t break down to one simple reason, but more like a confluence of aspects which all break down, to me, into laziness.

The rhyming, particularly rhyme schemes fell off drastically in their complexity on this record compared to Hello Nasty. Hello Nasty was the pinnacle of trading off lines, to the point where they almost came up with a new instrument based solely off the incredible trading back and forth of rhymes. On TT5B it was so boring and formulaic. Four bars, four bars, four bars, sometimes eight, eight, eight, wash rinse repeat. Lazy. Not a throwback to their old ways, just lazy.

The production was lazy as well. It clearly was made using dated computer programs, lacks that deep, grainy, boom-bap that timeless hip hop records have. Those sounds are products of drum machines and sampled loops that are worlds removed from the programmed beats on TT5B. They all sound like GarageBand demonstrations. If they wanted to make a record that sounded like it came from the 80’s, they should have used an 808. Again, laziness.

Finally, the political stuff. I’m of the opinion that if you aren’t a supremely gifted writer or public orator, keep your political opinions to yourself. Their political chops, so to speak leave much to be desired. Chuck D they are not.

So yeah, it’s a decent album by normal album standards I guess. Some tracks are really dope like Ch Check It Out, Three the Hard Way and Open Letter. But you can’t listen to Hot Sauce Committee and then take TT5B seriously. It’s a gigantic let down from by far my favorite group of all time. I hope people on here remember the hype leading up to that release after six years off. Thankfully, they returned to form on HSC and also the tour to promote TT5B was incredible. I saw them at both the Garden and the Coliseum.

I agree. I'll always look back fondly on this era but I remember the hype building up to the release and it just couldn't live up to it. I got into them around the release of Hello Nasty and they quickly became my favorite band. In the years after HN I absorbed everything Beastie related I possibly could, all albums, EP's, imports, etc. Then the break was so long I started to get into other groups, punk, more hip-hop, stuff like that. Then when there were rumblings of a new album in early '04 my hype started early.

I remember hearing a crappy quality recording of That's It That's All and thinking it was a little sparse. Repetitive rhyming and simple beat, but I thought it's probably a rough draft and it'll sound better on the finished album. Then Ch-Check It Out premiered on The O.C. I think? At the same as on the local alternative radio station and I recorded it on tape. I LOVED that one though. Unique and funny rhymes, a nice old school hip-hop beat. I was super excited again.

Then the album came out and it was summer so I was off from college and rushed to my local Borders Books and couldn't wait to pop it in the player. I started it and it was over before I knew it. All that hype and it was over so quick. I was used to BB albums being super dense with samples and beats all over the place. I thought it would take me all summer to pour over the album. This one seemed so simple in comparison. I still enjoyed it for what it was, but it definitely felt like a bit of a let down after 6 years of waiting after what was arguably their densest album, HN.

It'll always hold a place for me since it was the first BB album I was anticipating the release of, and I'm glad it exists. I agreed with their political views and still do, but it's a little strange to hear now. It does date the album, for sure.

They definitely made up for the simplicity of TT5B with HSCP2 though. That will forever be one of my favorite BB albums. It truly was a return to form that I can feel them having fun and just being their weird selves creating.

[Brother McDuff]

Originally Posted by pm0ney

Hello Nasty was the pinnacle of trading off lines, to the point where they almost came up with a new instrument based solely off the incredible trading back and forth of rhymes.

eloquently put. couldnt agree more