Twenty-five years ago, the Beastie Boys set a template for downtown cool that remains intact to this day. Loud, New York-accented, amoral, ravenous for every tier of pop culture, from the high to the low, and resolutely fascinated with the hard rock of the ’70s and primordial rap of the early ’80s, their first record, “Licensed to Ill,” remains Def Jam’s fastest-selling debut. To date, “Licensed to Ill” has sold more than nine million copies, but that figure probably underestimates the record’s influence. The Beastie Boys’ prescient combination of the disparate strains of punk, hip-hop and gallery culture underpins much of music’s avant-garde, even today. Neither Kanye West’s art-damaged, ’70s rock-pillaging “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” nor the unhinged, often offensive Los Angeles rap collective Odd Future — to name just two of hip-hop’s brighter achievements lately — would exist without the Beastie Boys.
From the outset, the Beastie Boys’ contemporaries rhymed better, dressed better and quietly innovated much of what the group would later popularize. What the Beastie Boys pioneered instead was an attitude — sneering, playful, raucous — and a near-hermetic loyalty to their own taste, from the crate-digging masterpiece that is “Paul’s Boutique” to 2007’s disposable all-instrumental lite-funk LP “The Mix-Up.” They’ve long since transcended the rap genre they first carpetbagged their way into more than three decades ago, and though the group’s grip on the imagination of aspiring cool guys and girls everywhere hasn’t waned much, their musical efforts, starting somewhere around 1998’s “Hello Nasty,” have felt increasingly without context, dispatches from a world we all know and revere but, these days, spend less time in than we used to.
But then again, what other kind of records are the Beastie Boys ever going to make? “Hot Sauce Committee Part Two,” the trio’s first non-instrumental record since 2004’s self-serious “To the 5 Boroughs,” is a lighthearted affair, and a self-aware one, too. “My rhymes age like wine as I get older,” MCA raps on “Make Some Noise,” but all three of these 40-something MCs know that’s not really the case. Leave it to Ad-Rock, the group’s irreverent linchpin, to put things in a more honest light: “Oh my God, just look at me / Grandpa been rapping since ’83!”
At least they can laugh about it. Later, an ever-gruffer MCA — whose bout with cancer delayed the release of “Hot Sauce Committee” by a couple years — will boast proudly: “Got rhymes about antihistamines and analgesics / Rhymes about expectorants, y’all don’t see us.” Their references remain frozen in time: Nutter Butters, the Lambada, Kenny Rogers, Afrika Bambaataa, Ted Danson. The non-sequitur couplet remains their method of choice: “You tried to play to win but now you lost / Like clams with no tartar sauce.” Any hint of novelty here is sonic, not lyrical: “Make Some Noise” is an absurdly effective slice of keyboard funk, while “Say It” ingeniously samples guitar feedback in lieu of a traditional beat.
“Hot Sauce Committee” is the opposite of essential, really, but there’s a relief in the group’s refusal to modernize much. Middle age in rap is still an unsolved dilemma — awkward exertions await those who try to hang on to relevance as they grow older. But by giving up any claims on the moment, the Beastie Boys have, in a modest, fleeting way, made it once again their own.
From the outset, the Beastie Boys’ contemporaries rhymed better, dressed better and quietly innovated much of what the group would later popularize. What the Beastie Boys pioneered instead was an attitude — sneering, playful, raucous — and a near-hermetic loyalty to their own taste, from the crate-digging masterpiece that is “Paul’s Boutique” to 2007’s disposable all-instrumental lite-funk LP “The Mix-Up.” They’ve long since transcended the rap genre they first carpetbagged their way into more than three decades ago, and though the group’s grip on the imagination of aspiring cool guys and girls everywhere hasn’t waned much, their musical efforts, starting somewhere around 1998’s “Hello Nasty,” have felt increasingly without context, dispatches from a world we all know and revere but, these days, spend less time in than we used to.
But then again, what other kind of records are the Beastie Boys ever going to make? “Hot Sauce Committee Part Two,” the trio’s first non-instrumental record since 2004’s self-serious “To the 5 Boroughs,” is a lighthearted affair, and a self-aware one, too. “My rhymes age like wine as I get older,” MCA raps on “Make Some Noise,” but all three of these 40-something MCs know that’s not really the case. Leave it to Ad-Rock, the group’s irreverent linchpin, to put things in a more honest light: “Oh my God, just look at me / Grandpa been rapping since ’83!”
At least they can laugh about it. Later, an ever-gruffer MCA — whose bout with cancer delayed the release of “Hot Sauce Committee” by a couple years — will boast proudly: “Got rhymes about antihistamines and analgesics / Rhymes about expectorants, y’all don’t see us.” Their references remain frozen in time: Nutter Butters, the Lambada, Kenny Rogers, Afrika Bambaataa, Ted Danson. The non-sequitur couplet remains their method of choice: “You tried to play to win but now you lost / Like clams with no tartar sauce.” Any hint of novelty here is sonic, not lyrical: “Make Some Noise” is an absurdly effective slice of keyboard funk, while “Say It” ingeniously samples guitar feedback in lieu of a traditional beat.
“Hot Sauce Committee” is the opposite of essential, really, but there’s a relief in the group’s refusal to modernize much. Middle age in rap is still an unsolved dilemma — awkward exertions await those who try to hang on to relevance as they grow older. But by giving up any claims on the moment, the Beastie Boys have, in a modest, fleeting way, made it once again their own.
