Beastie Boys: Classic or Dud?

CYH made me a college-age fan after the Beasties (briefly) stopped being cool, but it's not very good. I'd rate them:

PB
LTI
Hello Nasty
Ill Communication
Check Your Head

Hello Nasty sounds very, very good, and is an extremely fun record, but it's the album where their lyrics started to fall off a little for me.

I can't rank them, but Check Your Head is my favorite.

Check Your Head is maybe a bit of a shaggy dog album, but that's part of what makes it endearing. Ill Communication and Hello Nasty came off as more polished and refined versions of this, but it all started to feel a bit formulaic.

Each of the first five sound like the best to me when they’re spinning

I actually never liked Licensed to Ill much but yes to the other four

funny enough the version of Ill Communication I had I bought from WalMart which at the time sold censored versions of CDs without labeling them as such. I thought that was pretty dumb because of all their albums I think that's the one where you can't really understand the lyrics anyway. at least I couldn't when I got it at the age of 13 or 14 or whatever. all I heard was a lot of random backmasking. but that's the version I really came to memorize. "Get it Together" in particular was such a hilarious mess, they don't just censor the swears but also all the drug innuendo as well

Nah, I'm not into LTI much at all. It's not just the content, but the sound of those snares really hurt my brain

It's impressive, to me, that the BBs were some of the first to get into 70s revivalism as early as the late 80s, and they were doing it again talking-up 80s fashion aesthetics in 1998 well before anyone was really thinking of that

Paul's Boutique was wildly ahead of its time in that respect. As a young teen with only a vague memory of the late 70s at that point, my impression of the decade was that people generally wanted to forget it completely.

Jumping in here to say that I, too, bought Hello Nasty as a teenager and felt weirdly disappointed by it at the time, but after PB, it's the one I go back to the most in part because I feel like it captures this energy of dorkily enthusiastic guys who are starting to age but insist on continuing to try new things even when they're demonstrably just okay at them. I mean, I know that Check Your Head and IC were that, too, but they felt - and still feel - so incredibly cool to me even in their left turns (leaving New York, picking up the drums, etc.), where Hello Nasty verges on corny in ways I find inspiring, or at least that puts a little gas in my family-trip-planning / grocery-getting / householding tank.

xp Yep, I was still a kid but my recollection is that seventies culture and fashion were largely deemed a punchline at that point in time, all chest-wigs and nylon and pointing at things for no reason. BBs did play on all that a bit, but it was done with playfulness and love, not snark. I know I'm old now and time seems to go by a lot quicker and I find those Insta-reels about 2024 vs 2009 fashion perplexing, but imagine a young band today playing off late-2000s tropes and doing it well. The GAPDY Boys if you will

Hello Nasty is definitely corny in ways that CYH and IC are not. They were definitely Beastie Men by HN and the intervening four years between that and IC were palpable. Still, they knew how to work it on their own terms

I never listen to anything post-PB anymore (and have never heard Hello Nasty or To the 5 Boroughs in full; I may not have heard anything from the last album at all, in fact) but entire songs from PB will pop into my head unbidden at times. That album came out when I was 17, and is one of the greatest albums of the 80s for me, in any genre. Just life-defining.

Check Your Head is still it for me, it still sounds cool and raw and inspiring.

"Intergalactic" was for me THE Beasties single: I was 23, going out a lot, and this retronuevo rap track at the height of summer 1998 seemed to gather all related threads: lounge pop, post-Beck ramshackle, etc.

This old post really hit on something for me re: the 90s beastie albums

CYH and, to a lesser extent, IC both seemed like they were about joining the Beasties' gang; like by buying, listening, and getting into those records you became a Beastie Boy friend by proxy, one of the guys they were hanging out with on the back of IC, or one of the people in the photos in the sleeve of CYH.

Hello Nasty seemed like the gang had gone, and they were ready to be friendly with the whole world. Or something.

― Sick Mouthy (Scik Mouthy), Thursday, 10 May 2012 14:54 (eleven years ago) link

I love the first half of check your head, but i find myself kind of getting bored by its second half. By ill communication they are so much better at crafting the instrumental interludes, and everything is just so much more noisy/dubby/jazzy to me, such that I kind of disagree with the idea that IC is basically "check your head, pt. 2"

which i feel was the conventional critical take back in the 90s

"Intergalactic" was for me THE Beasties single: I was 23, going out a lot, and this retronuevo rap track at the height of summer 1998 seemed to gather all related threads: lounge pop, post-Beck ramshackle, etc.

otm, this is the peak of the "recombinant pop" era, Hello Nasty is definitely on that train

Huh it's the opposite for me, IC has some indelible hits but the funk & instrumentals on CYH are much sharper and more distinct.

xp

IC was the first album where it felt like they weren't putting out something totally new and innovative. It's a strong album, but it's similarities to CYH was a sign that the creativity was starting to wane.

CYH > IC for the longest time until maybe 5 years ago when my opinion flipped. similar feeling of getting bored more at the halfway mark of CYH whereas IC ends on a real high note.

i would rank them PB>CYH>HN>IC>L2I

Licensed to Ill was such a massive album and nowadays PB is so ingrained in the cultural consciousness that it's sometimes easy to forget it was enough of a commercial disappointment that the B Boys felt like maybe they were an '80s thing, and the world of 1992 was vastly different. so for them to come back with something like CYH that sounded so fresh and cool was an eye-opener for many who slept on PB. i hadn't really paid attention to them after 1986 tbh, too busy listening to metal and hard rock, but at a time when everyone was listening to everything (maybe 1991-1993 was the peak era for this), they fit right in so well and suddenly everyone loved them again. they were so loose and funky and it was a sick sound. i think the first five are classics overall, i think IC only losing points for being a little less inspired than the top 3 and the funk instrumentals feeling like vv solid outtakes from CYH (though the peaks rank with their best), and L2I for being a little dated.

CYH has more edge and is just a great messy splattergun collage of ideas hitting you in the face whereas I agree that IC still has a bit of that feel but seems slightly more considered and fully-formed. They're both great

Also, did I ever tell you guys my annoying pet theory:

LTI : S+E
PB : CRCR
CYH : WZ
IC : BTC
HN : TT

This checks out for me in so many ways

otm, this is the peak of the "recombinant pop" era, Hello Nasty is definitely on that train

― intheblanks, Wednesday, February 28, 2024 11:06 AM (forty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

what made that song so cool is that everyone seemed to have a different favorite part, just so much going on at once. I had one friend who wasn't really into the Beasties or hip-hop at all but still loved this song because of all the crazy noises on it. and yeah all of Hello Nasty is kind of like that, so many wild sounds and insane production effects, even the minor tracks like "Dedication" are a trip

IC feels like an expansion of CYH to me, it feels more "out" for lack of a better term...guys who are listening to "on the corner" a lot v. guys who are listening to the meters a lot

Obviously the meters are geniuses, i'm not saying that the meters are in any way worse than "on the corner"--just that the vibe of IC feels different enough to me that I've never viewed it as a slightly inferior version of their previous album

like some have said upthread, stuff that seemed like filler to me on HN when it came out sounds pretty damn awesome to me when i put the record on nowadays--it's a front-to-back great record imo

also wanna shout out this B-side which I'm guessing was jettisoned in favor of "And Me" - gotta be one of the weirdest songs a hip-hop group ever came up with

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IA60LH0Phko

that is cool, never heard it! thanks

You know what's an odd little tune? "I Don't Know." It's almost a bad song. Their goofiness redeems it.

I truly love that one

Me, too. The lyrics are pretty on the nose, but if you ever wondered how Buddhist thought - such as it could be said to exist - played into MCA's process on a conscious level, it's there. (I like hearing Miho Hatori, too.)

yeah great tune. "Twenty Questions" (which didn't make the cut but was vying for that spot) is even odder

can't be remotely rational about this because really I think pb is the 'best', but I spent a week at butlins holiday park when I was 12 and lic. 2 ill was the only tape I had for my walkman so i listened to it for maybe 10 hrs a day every day that whole week. thus it will always be my favourite. many years later I queued overnight to get u2 tickets and for some stupid reason the only tape I had with me was check yr head, it was too cold to sleep so I spent about 15 hrs straight with that one so I think of it fondly as well.

Ill Communication > Hello Nasty > Paul's Boutique > License to Ill > Check Your Head is my personal rrank

Honestly I even enjoy the last three records but they are so comically below the opening run that it feels silly to include them

the only interesting thing about the post-HN records is how Mike D becomes by far the best rapper in the group in their old man phase

though now that i typed it, that's actually not that interesting

blows my mind that To the 5 Boroughs is 20 this year

"License" might be the one I play the most these days, followed by bits and pieces of "Paul's" and "Check," though I never make it through the entirety of each in one sitting. I have noticed, anecdotally, that young people (under 20? under 30?) don't seem to get this group. See also: Beck. Even me, I was in the car the other day, and "Where It's At" came on, and I thought to myself, huh, this song is a little bit like being yelled at by a crazy person on the train for three minutes.

Anyway, Beasties, gotta love 'em, but sometimes their more ... adenoidal qualities are not what the moment calls for. When I do put them on, I never listen to anything past "Check," but maybe I will play "Ill Communication" at dinner.

out of all the groups from the last several decades i've played for my kid, the ones he's connected with most enthusiastically are Gorillaz, Beastie Boys, and Orbital (specifically Snivilisation for some reason.)

why does every beasties revive devolve into ranking their albums within 4 or 5 posts, frogbs was doing good work here

My kids like the Beasties but only know what comes on the radio in the car, which is the Licensed to Ill singles plus "Intergalactic." But I think their general sense of them is that they're cool. Their favorite is "Brass Monkey."

They also LOVE Gorillaz, one of just a few artists where their tastes overlap. I took them to see the last tour, it was a great family outing.

The incredible thing to me about hello nasty is that they pulled it off at all, really speaks to their talents as a group. Waiting more than four years between albums, over the great alt-rock kill-off of the mid-90s----then doing a record where they're doing cheesy early-80s rhyme routine pastiche for most of it....and it was actually awesome and a big hit! truly incredible

"I have all three of your albums!"

"pffft that was 1000 years ago. Now we have seven!"

maybe Fry said "four", I forget

He said four, because Futurama was post-Hello Nasty.

ah thx, wouldn't that be five?

Oops, yeah five

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yhvv0WubJSs

xps The under-20 crowd seem to love that Olivia Rodrigo song that sounds just like Beck!

"I Don't Know" is the 'eye of the duck' of Hello Nasty. Take it out and the whole thing doesn't loom quite the same. I love it

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