My wife made the comment the other day — after having endured my playing this album non-stop for the first week of its release — that she doesn’t see what’s so special about the Beastie Boys. This may very well be the first thing she’s said in our 5 years together that I found offensive. No kidding.
Thing is, I guess I can’t really tell you what’s so special about them. I’ve never really had to, for one thing — just mention the Boys to anyone of a certain age (late 20s to mid 30s) and you get an almost universal nod of acceptance. For me personally, the Beastie Boys have been there for me at several major junctions in my life.
Licensed to Ill was released just as I was becoming aware of popular music, and it served as a gateway beyond Phil Collins and Huey Lewis into Yo, MTV Raps! territory.
Then there’s 1989’s Paul’s Boutique. There’s nothing I can say about this masterpiece that I haven’t said already, ad nauseum. It is, to my ears, the pinnacle of musical perfection, and the only album that feels just as fresh (in more than one meaning of the word) today as it did 15 years ago.
Check Your Head came in 1992, the year I graduated high school. As I entered what is, for most people, an age of experimentation, my favorite musicians were putting out an entire album of experimentation, daring to pick up instruments and actually play music in addition to rapping over samples.
Ill Communication, released an uncharacteristic two years later, felt like more of a continuation of its predecessor. It was just as great as all the others, just not quite as groundbreaking.
1998 brought Hello Nasty, an amalgam of their previous styles and a fully realized grown-up sensibility that somehow didn’t conflict with their long-established goofy image. It was, quite simply, a blueprint for being simultaneously cool and funny, but also relevant and responsible. I was 24 when this came out, and once again it was exactly what I needed.
It’s been six years since the last Beastie Boys album — probably the longest six years in my entire life. My job became a career. I got married and moved into a real house. We had an impeachment, a suspicious election and a terrorist attack on American soil. The world feels scary now, and I could use nothing more than the reassuring voices of Mike D, Adrock and MCA to make me laugh and feel like everything’s going to be okay. And hey look — here they are!
To the 5 Boroughs is decidedly old school — it’s 14 tracks of nothing but rapping over basic samples. Take the musical sensibility of Licensed to Ill and mix it with the mentality behind Hello Nasty and you come pretty close to the tone of this new release.
“An Open Letter to NYC” is exactly what it looks like — a tribute to the city that the Beasties have always called home. “Triple Trouble” borrows a sample from the Sugar Hill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” and a lyrical hook from Double Trouble, one of the original Krush Groove groups from back in the day. “Time to Build” encapsulates the group’s staunch anti-Bush stance into one track, though remnants of it creep into others. And while I agree with 90% of what they’re saying, the political stuff does get overwhelming at times.
For the most part though, the lyrics are as goofy and brilliant as ever. “Yo, what the falafel/you gotta get up awful/early/to fool Mr. Furley” from “Oh Word?” cracked me up the first time I heard it, as did this line from “All Lifestyles”: “don’t mess with the crack or the baking soda/whether in a high rise and you live like Rhoda/or in a shack and you live like Yoda.”
At the end of the day though, I suppose my wife is right. I can’t tell you what exactly makes the Beasties so special — but I can’t deny that they are. This album continues a proud tradition started 18 (holy crap) years ago: a tradition of making me smile. That’s all I’ve ever asked from them, and they’ve managed to do it for over half my life.