All Back To '87 (To The 5 Boroughs - Beastie Boys)

Member Name: basil40

Product:	To The 5 Boroughs - Beastie Boys
Date:	23/02/05 (180 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Back to their old style, Clever interplay, 15 tracks over 40 mins

Disadvantages: One stinker

At the tail end of 1986 three white boys from Staten Island, New York hooked up with the now-legendary producer Rick Rubin and recorded the first ever rap album by a white act: Licensed To Ill. It's mixture of big beats, rock samples and very clever lyrical interplay between the three band members (MCA, Mike D and Ad-Rock) ensured a winning, unique combination that would sell millions of records worldwide. The singles, released in 1987, from that album (Fight For Your Right To Party, No Sleep Til Brooklyn and She's Crafty) were catchy, heavy on the wit and guitar and made stealing VW badges from suburban Golfs the chav pastime of that year. In short, the Beastie Boys were about fun, rowdiness and parent-baiting.

Subsequent albums would see them going more experiemental, incorporating jazz, instrumentals and weird samples into their sound. This move never really caught on with their original "b-boy" audience and, as such, subsequent albums sold fewer and fewer until 1998's Hello Nasty signalled a small change in their thinking. The singles "Intergalactic" and "Body Movin" were typically "old school" but other tracks on the album were still quite experimental and noodly.

If only they could recapture the spirit of 1987 in a whole album.....

....well, they have!

It's taken a stolen election and 9/11 to do it but the Beastie Boys seem to have recaptured that old spirit on this new album - released last autumn, my favourite season - and it's to their credit that three men approaching 40 years old can still look and sound so fresh.

To The 5 Boroughs features all the old trademarks of 1980s hip hop. There's scratching, crazy but soulful samples and the typical Beasties vocal interplay. First track and single, Ch Check It Out sets the scene for the album with it's old school beats and rhyming. The Boys are quite clearly enjoying themselves as one of the lines in the opening verse ends in a whispered giggle as the words peter out. It made me smile to see a bit of humour re-injected into rap.

The following tracks such as Right Right Now Now follow in the same vein but there's also a message in the lyrics that lacked the Beasties of the late 80s:

"I applied for a loan it asked for race
So I wrote down "human" inside the space"

I think this line perfectly highlights the mixture of maturity and the appreciation of their past on this album. Each song is perfectly performed and very simple in execution. There are a couple of duff tracks. For example I don't think An Open Letter To NYC (the longest here at 4 minutes) works particularly well as a reappraisal of life after 9/11.

Crawlspace is a great track showing that Beastie Boys do not have to shout to be heard. Each member of the band whispers a verse each and it's this track that stands out as the best on the album and the best thing they've done since Hey Ladies back in '89. 3 The Hard Way takes an old LL Cool J Lyric from '85 and attaches it to some fine beats and bass and delivers the third classic track on album. And so it continues pretty much thoughout the next eleven tracks. This album is refreshing and a real blast of fresh air in the face in the current sea of millionaire rappers and bling.

Overall, they've taken maturity and dignity and mixed it together with their musical styles of the 80s to create an album that's not afraid to say something new and different whilst being unmistakably the work on The Beastie Boys.

Tracklisting:

1. Ch-Check It Out
2. Right Right Now Now
3. 3 The Hard Way
4. Time To Build
5. Rhyme The Rhyme Well
6. Triple Trouble
7. Hey Fuck You
8. Oh Word?
9. That's It That's All
10. All Life Styles
11. Shazam!
12. An Open Letter To NYC
13. Crawlspace
14. The Brouhaha
15. We Got The

Fans of quickfire rap will be pleased. The Boys manage to fit fifteen tracks into around 41 minutes of CD running time meaning that very few songs on here actually outsstay their welcome. The downside, of course, is that the truly great songs like the lurching Shazam! and the laidback aforementioned Crawlspace and jerking All Lifestyles are over too quickly and leave the listener gagging for more. Is this a good thing? Well yes and no, there's certainly no excess fat on this ablum and the quality is high but an extra minute and verse on some of the better tracks wouldn't go amiss.

The packaging intrigued me. There was a sticker on the front saying that the CD is copyright controlled and could not be copied. This disappointed me because I was looking forward to listening to it on my MP3 player. I needn't have worried, a prompt comes upp asking you to install software to your machine in order to listen to it: YOU DO NOT HAVE TO DO THIS! I clicked "cancel" and proceeded to burn it my MP3 player normally.

Little monkeys.

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