Sunday, April 27, 2014

#1241 Beastie Boys - To the 5 Boroughs

I recently called Hello Nasty an instrumental hip hop album that happened to have rapping on it and I meant it as a compliment: the dense, twisty, funky instrumentation was its brilliant center.

This a complete retreat, a straight-up hiphop album, like the Boys were concerned that they weren't being taken seriously as actual rappers. The production's old-school, dead simple, one beat with some drops, one or two core loops looping onandon and rap rap rapping. Even the subject matter's a call back to hiphop proper, about where you're from, how you're a good rapper, how the 2nd person sucks at rapping, about politics and important stuff, shout out to your deli and your inspirations. And zero songs about robots.

It's fine: loose, playful, occasionally charmingly clumsy, occasionally distractingly clumsy, a perfectly enjoyable listen, but it's no match for the wild invention of its predecessor. It was the Beasties' wild genre-smashing and rampant hookiness that won me over, take that away and you've got 3 pretty good MC's and one pretty good DJ and 3/5

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