Beastie Boys

A startlingly diverse effort, the Beasties' fifth LP saw the welcome addition of a new DJ, the abundantly skilled Mix Master Mike of the Invizibl Skratch Picklz. A quirky but effective combination of old school fundamentals ("Three MC's and One DJ") and futuristic trickery ("Intergalactic"), this album successfully conveys their energy, originality, and spark.

See all those stars up there? That means I can't walk down my block for a whole month. For
a black man, championing the Beasties is like being down with Madonna or rooting for the
Utah Jazz. Whether it's from a well-merited overprotectiveness of our precious culture or
from mildly sour grapes, we ain't supposed to like people who take black culture and
refract it through white lenses. Now, I hate the Salt Lake Celtics as much as the n... More >

Rap is their heritage, and having wasted years proving they can't play their instruments while enrapturing MTV fans who loved them for trying, they come home not an album too soon--flowing prose to cons and cons to pros, scheming rhymes against reason like flow against know. Old-school in their spare breakbeats, skilled back-scratching, and heavy-breathing beatbox, they also remember how to lay on the guitar, and dance like Juba through missteps from planet-rock Vocoder to Roy Ayers carioca to good old Hammond B-3. And of course they rhyme, wise and wiseass, humanitarian without ever getting sappy about it--and without mentioning the Dalai Lama once. (Grade - A)