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Recently, when asked by Time magazine about the prevailing theme of his group’s first album in six years, To The 5 Boroughs, Beastie Boy Mike D responded thus: “We’ve got no mission statement. We’ve got no plan.” To which partner-in-rhyme MCA added, “Basically, we just went into the studio and made a lot of stuff. We’re really not that bright.”
Frankly, we’d love to believe them. After all, these are the very same Boys who brought us the veritable soundtrack to setting bags of poop aflame, the now-classic Licensed To Ill. But that was 18 years ago, a lifetime in the dog years of hip-hop. And as their current crop of publicity photos suggests, they’ve grown up. Way up. Hell, Adam Yauch (MCA) will be 40 in August, Mike Diamond (Mike D) is 38, and the baby of the bunch, Adam Horovitz (King Ad-Rock), is 37—and, to be honest, they’re beginning to show their years. Add to this the fact that in the time since their last release, 1998’s Hello Nasty, they’ve continued as champions of Tibetan freedom, organized two post-9/11 relief concerts, and generally put their celebrity behind any number of other social causes. By the looks of it, we might be persuaded to go so far as to call them hip-hop’s respected elder statesmen.
Oh, make no mistake—they’re still as dumb as they wanna be. But as one listen to To The 5 Boroughs reveals, The Beastie Boys of the new millennium are a surprisingly altered beast. Sure, the goofy boasts of old are still there: “I’ve got billions and billions of rhymes to flex/I’ve got more rhymes than Carl Sagan’s got turtlenecks.” But that’s where the comparisons end. Unlike your typical Beasties platter, To The 5 Boroughs is a lean, aerodynamic mother—15 tracks, each weighing in at ’round about three minutes. There are no guest spots, no bossa nova interludes, and no blasts of thrash. Just straight-up old-school hip-hop beats with some mean scratching courtesy of the indispensable Mix Master Mike.
And contrary to Mike D’s remark to Time, there is a mission statement—one writ large, like so much subway graffiti, all over the disc. To The 5 Boroughs is the Beasties’ ode to their hometown, a gift of praise and reassurance to a city still recovering from the tragic events of 9/11. Just look at the cover artwork—a pre-9/11 Manhattan skyline. Then listen to tracks like the album’s centerpiece, “An Open Letter To NYC,” in which Mike D raps, “Dear New York, I know a lot has changed/Two towers down but you’re still the same.” Which says nothing of the group’s political state of mind. Consider “Time To Build”: “Is the U.S. gonna keep breakin’ necks?” raps MCA, “Maybe it’s time we impeach Tex.” (Lyrical jabs at George W. abound throughout.) Elsewhere, the punks behind “Fight For Your Right (To Party)” have apparently given way to the drink-responsibly father figures of “Triple Trouble.” And so it goes . . .
So (as the kids were fond of saying way back when the Beasties dropped their first rhymes) whaddup? Well, B-boys and B-girls, what we have here is an older, wiser, more reflective Beastie Boys, a group that has matured gracefully as the years have worn on without losing the essential Three Stooges humor that made them our favorite pack of wiseacres. With To The 5 Boroughs, they’ve deftly combined social-political insight with a goofball undercurrent—setting it all off with some damn fine Golden Age beats—reminding us that while the grays are setting in, the boys are still very much there, reaching middle age on their own terms via one of the best albums of a simply astonishing career.
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| —Steven Chean |
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