Release Date: May 3, 2011
Genre(s): Rap, Underground Rap, East Coast Rap
Record label: Capitol
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Could Beastie Boys possibly give less of a fuck about trying to sound young? In a word, no. As Ad-Rock proudly declares on their excellent new Hot Sauce Committee Part Two, "Oh, my God, just look at me/Grandpa been rapping since '83!" The Beasties revel in their older-than-old-school references ("Be kind, rewind") and cultural touchstones ("braggadocio" rhymes with "I'll make you sick like a Kenny Rogers Roaster"). Where they used to boast about rocking Adidas instead of Fila, now MCA has different footwear issues: "I don't wear Crocs, and I don't wear sandals/The pump don't work 'cause the vandals took the handles.
Once Adam Yauch discovered he had cancer in 2009, the Beastie Boys shelved their forthcoming The Hot Sauce Committee, Pt. 1 and its companion volume, gradually reviving and revising the project once Yauch went into remission. At this point, they scrapped their convoluted plans to release concurrent complementary volumes of THSC and simply went forth with The Hot Sauce Committee, Pt.
Even when all is right in the world, when the scourge of cancer isn’t darkening their self-contained doorstep, Beastie Boys have never been terribly prolific. The shortest stretch between studio albums over the past two-and-a-half decades was the two years and one month between the releases of Check Your Head and Ill Communication. Beastie Boys albums arrive so infrequently, they’re treated like gala events.
It’s only a matter of time before the Beasties become the third group of hip-hoppers to be inducted into the Rock Hall. But Grandmaster Flash only ever put out two studio records, and Run DMC petered out years before Jam Master Jay was murdered, which makes Beastie Boys the first group with a catalog thick enough and a fanbase large enough to risk their becoming rap’s premiere dinosaur act. Hot Sauce Committee not only confirms the Beasties to be as essential now as they were in their twenties, but it suggests that hip-hop—that young man’s swagger—can be made just as vital in middle-age as it is in youth.
In the ’80s and ’90s, hip-hop’s premier party advocates built a cache of seemingly infinite cool. But for the past 10 years, the Beasties have been in limbo, turning out sleepy albums like 2004’s To the 5 Boroughs and dealing with Adam ”MCA” Yauch’s cancer diagnosis. The spark of classic joints like 1992’s Check Your Head seemed like it might be gone forever.
P.O.S. :: Chill, dummyDoomtree RecordsAuthor: Patrick TaylorI've been a fan of Stefon "P.O.S." Alexander since his debut nearly 10 years ago. On "Audition" and 2009's "Never Better," he proved himself to be one of the few artists who could successfully meld punk rock and hip-hop. Fellow Minnesotans Atmosphere are sometimes called emo rap, but P.O.S.
Those of us who cherish the Beastie Boys have come to expect a lot from them. When a group reinvents itself with each of its first three albums, it’s setting the bar high, and long gaps between albums only serve to heighten expectations. The longest such gap for Ad-Rock, MCA, and Mike D was the six years before the release of 2004’s To the 5 Boroughs.
Beastie Boys' eighth album is a rap record without sonic equal in 2011. It arrives like a time capsule of the squelching funk, hardcore distortion and furious lyrical one-upmanship heard in the early 90s. Like their best albums, it's bursting with energy and self-confidence but utterly devoid of self-importance. Though the Brooklyn trio may look like the geriatric characters they used to play in their videos, they certainly don't sound like them.
Now in their fourth decade of working together, the Beasties' eighth studio album revisits their old-skool roots. The tracks urge us to Make Some Noise, threaten to "rock da house" and even suggest a "party on the left." However, their wit and invention transforms such tired cliches into their freshest offering in years. A tapestry-cum-rollercoaster of sound, the confusingly titled album (Part One remains unreleased) mixes obscure samples, live playing, electronic squiggles and hardcore thrash.
While the Beastie Boys’ 2004 offering To The 5 Boroughs was by no means a flimsy love letter to their hometown, it felt like one written on expensive stock with a Cross Pen and checked twice for spelling. Despite all the NYC references, it felt too much like “new” New York – the place where the race to be on the cusp of all things contemporary, while still remaining safe just makes everything (including the Beasties for the first time) sound downright old. Five years and one missing “Hot Sauce Committee” later comes Hot Sauce Committee Part 2.
Given the erratic nature of every musical climate they’ve had to endure, the Beastie Boys’ unprecedented longevity is a testament to the enduring quality of their work. The trio has remained relevant by virtue of their complete disregard for doing so, making music and penning rhymes that seemingly exist only to impress each other and conforming to no set style other than their own. Their long-delayed new album, Hot Sauce Committee Part Two, is no exception, stuffed with the same inimitable exuberance that imparted cast-iron classic status to the lion’s share of the group’s back catalogue.
It’s a fact: Since the mid-’80s, Michael Diamond (Mike D), Adam Yauch (MCA), and Adam Horovitz (Ad-Rock) — you know, the Beastie Boys — have played an integral-yet-intricate role in New York’s hip-hop scene. Originally a burgeoning act in underground punk circles, the loud-mouthed, Jewish-born rappers eventually became renowned for their expert use of sampling techniques (1989’s Paul’s Boutique), landmark party records (1986’s License to Ill, 1992’s Check Your Head), and unwavering hometown appreciation (2004’s To the 5 Boroughs). Over three decades later, the Beastie Boys remain ever vigilant.
It's hard to imagine pop culture in the 1990s without Ad-Rock, MCA, and Mike D. During those years, the Beastie Boys didn't sell the most records or grace the most magazine covers, but they brilliantly articulated how a constellation of obsessions-- early hip-hop, hardcore, trash culture, 70s TV, vintage sneakers, skateboarding, vinyl records-- could be pulled together into not just a coherent aesthetic but a way of life. Looking at their arc from a purely musical perspective, you could divide their career in half at the midpoint of that decade-- at some point between 1994's Ill Communication and 1998's Hello Nasty.
If there is a reason why you should love The Beastie Boys, it is personified in the fact that they can take a line like "Here's a little something for you...If you're feeling chilly I'm a get you a shawl" and make it work as the most improbable of rap taunts. It takes real men to rap about shoulder warmers instead of gats. As anyone who follows hip-hop will know, there is more the make-up of a great rapper than the sum of fingers and toes that belong to the averagely endowed human, and on any specific you can pull out of the air the Beasties pale next to the competition.
Much like the squelchy, retro-cop-show-theme waddle that welcomes in [b]‘Make Some Noise’[/b] – the first song on the trio’s first rap release since 2004’s [b]‘To The 5 Boroughs’[/b] – talking about the [a]Beastie Boys[/a] in 2011 feels faintly ridiculous. Formed in 1979, the band have now existed for over three decades, which makes pondering their new record feel a bit like it might have done waxing lyrical about the Charleston after the advent of rock’n’roll.After all that time, and eight studio releases in, it must be perplexing being a Beastie Boy. For one thing you’re not a boy, you’re a 45-year-old man wearing cargo shorts and shouting.
It's finally here and a must-have for all fans. Hurrah! It might sound like a sequel but were it not for Adam Yauch’s cancer diagnosis, the Beasties would have released ‘Hot Sauce Committee: Part Two’ some 18 months back. Now that they’ve finally given up the goods, it’s easy to understand why they decided to go with what they already had because their eighth album is rooted firmly in hip-hop’s old-school.
White rappers, pioneers, punks, proto-hipster hippies…There are a lot of ways to describe the Beastie Boys, but perhaps none as fitting as “scientists of sound”—the moniker that has been placed on them since dropping their 1989 track “The Sounds of Science. ” In their 20-plus years as recording artists, the trio of Ad Rock, MCA and Mike D have seen both critical acclaim and extraordinary commercial success, all while experimenting with genres ranging from punk rock to Jamaican dub yet still maintaining a decidedly old-school-rap aesthetic. However, on Hot Sauce Committee Part Two, their eighth studio album (and first with lyrics since 2004’s To the 5 Boroughs), it seems that their experimentation has plateaued.
The Beasties’ seventh LP is catnip for fans of their classic early-90s output. Stevie Chick 2011 Even the Beasties themselves would agree they don’t figure in the upper echelons of the pantheon of great rappers, though several of their LPs – specifically 1989’s Paul’s Boutique, 1992’s Check Your Head and 1994’s Ill Communication – remain epochal joints, especially to "heads" of a certain age. The Beasties’ genius lies in compensating for their less-than-finessed flows by juggling an ineffable sense of cool that makes a virtue of their terminally-uncool nerdiness, their samples and references and goofy jokes cooking up a world of their own any dweeb would love to dwell in.
The Beastie Boys are back. Not just in the sense that it's been seven years since we've heard a proper album from them (2007's The Mix-Up was all instrumental), but on Hot Sauce Committee Part 2, they're back back. While '04's by-the-numbers hip-hop disc, To The 5 Boroughs, was a solid effort, Hot Sauce has the Boys (well, men) playing with their instruments again.
BEASTIE BOYS “Hot Sauce Committee Part Two”(Capitol) Retro and proud of it, Beastie Boys give their hip-hop time machine another ride into the 1980s on “Hot Sauce Committee Part Two,” their eighth studio album. Analog synthesizers burble and snort, rock guitars fuzz out, and the cadence and slang of the three rappers — Adrock (Adam Horovitz) and Mike D (Mike Diamond), both high and nasal, and the hoarse, scratchy MCA (Adam Yauch) — are strictly old school. “I start to reminisce and I miss/the real hip-hop with which I persist,” Mike D raps in “Too Many Rappers (New Reactionaries Version),” shortly after Adrock calls himself a “grandpa” who’s “been rapping since ’83” in the same song.
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