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Beastie boys kick it sound wave8/15/2023 ![]() But it’s how they’re saying it, with dense pop-culture asides and atop a luscious Dust Brothers beat, that makes all the difference. The Beasties aren’t exactly saying anything here that they weren’t on Licensed to Ill-they still want your daughter in the backseat. This single, both sonically and in its accompanying video, recast America’s favorite frat boy lunkheads as a bunch of psychedelic space pimps with a disco fetish. Yeah, no wonder Paul’s Boutique tanked commercially. Quotable: “I’m as cool as a cucumber in a bowl of hot sauce.” It’s distorted, spiky, and perfect for young moshers. But one can see why this jam took off in ’92, amidst the grunge explosion. (The vowel sounds in the song title don’t help). The Beasties at their most nasal, which is saying something. ![]() Quotable: “If I had a penny for my thoughts I’d be a millionaire.” Biblical allusions, tight tag-team wordplay, and “equinox symmetry.” And lyrically, this was like a quantum leap for the three Beasties. Quotable: “I wanna say a little something that’s long overdue / The disrespect to women has got to be through.”įor all the inspired beat tapestries they sewed together on Paul’s Boutique, the Dust Brothers’ greatest decision might have been handing the reins to Sly & The Family Stone on this cut. Who cared if the guys had gray hairs at this point? Quotable: “Everybody rapping like it’s a commercial / Acting like life is a big commercial.”Īn inescapable banger in ’94. ![]() The exotic flute and MCA verse that open this track signal a new direction for the trio: a bit more introspection, but still plenty of bump to the beats. Quotable: “Buy my cheeba from the cop down the street / The only cop with the rope chain when he’s walking the beat.” We easily could have packed another two or three Paul’s Boutique deep cuts onto this list, but this track wins for its sheer, spaced-out L.A. Quotable: “Like a bottle of Chateauneuf du Pape / I’m fine like wine when I start to rap.” Quotable: “People how ya doing there’s a new day dawning.” And it became the namesake for an excellent NewsRadio character. Quotable: “The girl is crafty like ice is cold.”ĭoes anyone else get a Public Enemy vibe from this beat? What a statement to open Check Your Head. Who could top this cautionary tale of a scheming party girl? Quotable: “‘Cos she’s the cheese and I’m the macaroni!” Quotable: “I don’t mean to brag / I don’t mean to boast / But I’m intercontinental when I eat French toast.”Ī gem tossed off between two-on-two basketball games, “Get It Together” features a freestyling Q-Tip at the peak of his powers and the Beasties riding his verse’s coattails. That harpsichord interlude is such a double-take moment for first-time listeners. Quotable: “Professor… what’s another word for pirate treasure?”Ī live favorite. Adrock riles up the crowd, Mike D plays the easygoing philosopher, and MCA absolutely grinds rival MC Serch down to the cuticles. Quotable: “I’ve got money and juice, twin sisters in my bed / Their father had envy so I shot him in the head.”īecause they have such beautiful chemistry collectively-and such interchangeable flows individually - there aren’t a lot of Beastie Boys songs like this one: each guy gets a verse all to himself. Give me this instead, any day: a hard, skeletal beat, with each Beastie jockeying to out-schlock the others. It’s like listening to three junior high school boys grunt over bad hair metal. Maybe it’s because MTV played them to death, but I have little love for the big singles on Licensed To Ill. Quotable: “I’m selling sex rhymes by the pound.” Here’s the Beasties doing that three-headed braggadocio thing we all love so much on this non-album track. ![]() Quotable: “Dear New York, / I know a lot has changed / Two Towers down / But you’re still in the game.” But it’s more a portrait of the Big Apple as three men once knew it, and the ideals that the city still represents. Ostensibly, the song is a post-9/11 pep talk. But “An Open Letter” works as a passionate aural collage and tribute to the Beasties’ hometown. Well, except to Rolling Stone’s editors, who apparently appreciated all of the jabs at good ol’ Dubya. The limp To The 5 Boroughs was a big letdown when it came out. 2, Paste presents our 20 favorite Beastie Boys tunes of all time. So, in honor of both the Boys hitting the quarter-century mark and this week’s release of Hot Sauce Committee, Pt. For the Beasties, their first mega-smash hit used to occupy the same cultural dead zone as the Star Wars Christmas Special: Yes, of course it existed, but you weren’t going to get them to admit it.īut now, with an increasingly long lag time between albums and Adam “MCA” Yauch’s health issues throwing the group’s future into doubt, maybe it’s time to settle old scores. What with all of this “Fight For Your Right Revisited” hoo-ha, it appears as if the Beastie Boys are coming to terms with the full arc of their career.
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