MUSIC REVIEW: THE BEASTIE BOYS - 'HOT SAUCE COMMITTEE PART TWO'
Looking Back, Feeling Forward; A True Hip-Hop Anti-Depressant
“Yes, here we go again, give you more, nothing lesser
Back on the mic is the anti-depressor...”
From the first lines of “Make Some Noise,” -- the first track of 2011’s Hot Sauce Committee Part Two -- The Beastie Boys lay down the constitution they’ve upheld since 1983, when they put in a call for “Cookie Puss” at Carvel Ice Cream and set every party on full tilt for a near thirty years and counting.
“We got a party on the left, a party on the right
We gonna party for the motherf-cking right to fight
Make some noise if you’re with me...”
God knows we needed this. Following the more sincere To the 5 Boroughs (2004) and the experimental turn of The Mix Up (2007), it seems that Adam Yauch, Mike Diamond, and Adam Horowitz have diagnosed the current state of the American psychosis and written their prescription. If “you gotta fight for your right,” Hot Sauce Committee Part Two IS the anti-depressant you’re gonna have to have obliterating your speakers when you're pumping gas at more than $5 to the gallon this summer.
Where 1998’s Hello Nasty first introduced the kinetic spin of Mix Master Mike to the Beastie Boys' canon and rocketed them into a whole new stratosphere, Hot Sauce Committee Part Two is the return of The Beastie Boys to the anarchic lyrical onslaughts that shattered the windows at Def Jam Records. This time around, Yauch, Diamond, and Horowitz put together a perfect balance of original instrumentation and sampling to the tables of Mix Master Mike, and concocted a hip-hop record that plays like the soundtrack of an obscure ‘70s grindhouse flick with a bass track that’ll be rattling license plates off from Venice Beach to Jamaica Avenue.
The record (originally slated to be Hot Sauce Committee Part One* prior to Yauch’s bout with cancer in 2009) holds remnants of the early thrash punk mayhem of 1994’s Ill Communication, with the rattling distortion of “Lee Majors Come Again,” and mixes it with the pure funk of “Funky Donkey,” during which Mike D haphazardly slides Bob Dylan’s “...the pump don’t work cuz the vandals took the handle” from “Subterranean Homesick Blue” over the chime of a steel drum. The result is a stew pot of every essential ingredient that put “three white Jewish boys from Brooklyn” on top of the game.
The pace of the album is nearly flawless. The initial tracks, such as the menacing “Ok” and the hydrogen-bomb of “Too Many Rappers” featuring Nas (a track for which one commenter tweeted, “This album is gonna cost a fortune in blown speakers”), demand to be played LOUD and will be kicking down doors at every party in the western hemisphere starting May 3rd. The intermission piece, “Bill Harper’s Collection,” marks a major transition in the album and is directly followed by the brass vibrations of “Don’t Play No Game That I Can’t Win” -- a reggae-dub mix that resonates as poignant as an obscure “Scratch” Perry track, and features a haunting vocal cameo by Santogold. Other standouts include the trippy loops of the original title track, “Tadlock’s Glasses,” the organ-driven chorus of “Long Burn the Fire,”, and the album climax of “Crazy Ass Shit” that has some kid telling us to keep this party going “on and on 'til the break of dawn.” Why not?
For whatever it's worth, this album is well worth the fortune it's gonna cost to replace your speakers. The Beastie Boys are on a mission. After “clean” versions of the album were leaked over cyberspace, the Boys responded by streaming the entire “dirty” version at http://www.hotsaucecommittee.
"Good people, unfortunately due to circumstances beyond our control, the "clean" version of our new album, The Hot Sauce Committee pt 2 has leaked. So as a hostile and retaliatory measure with great hubris we are making the full explicit aka filthy dirty nasty version available for streaming on our site. We hope this brings much happiness, hugs, and harmony. Enjoy Kikoos for life!"
For whatever it is that you think is ailing the airwaves these days, Hot Sauce Committee Part Two is the antibiotic. You can pick up your prescription in stores on May 3rd, including a 30-minute short film entitled You Gotta Fight For Your Right (Revisited), featuring Will Ferrell, Jack Black, John C. Reilly, Elijah Wood, Seth Rogen, and Danny McBride, among a host of others.
The Beastie Boys are back and seemingly riding a wave of immortality, despite the drawbacks. In their near thirty-year career, they’ve come full circle, true, and as good now as they were then.
In their own words...
“Because I'm back with a bang boogie, oogie oogie
Strawberry letter 23 like Shuggie
Oh, my God, just look at me
Grandpa been rappin' since '83.”
(If you’re worried you might have somehow missed Hot Sauce Committee Part One, The Beastie Boys have mentioned that the material originally recorded as the follow-up to Hot Sauce Committee Part One, now released as Hot Sauce Committee Part Two, will be released at a later date as Hot Sauce Committee Part One.)
Standout Tracks: "Make Some Noise," "Bill Harper's Collection"
For Fans Of: De La Soul, Beck, Run DMC
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