Ned Flanders
Banned
..after a first-in-ages spin of Check Your Head, I dare say it is just as praise-worthy an LP as the Beastie Boys had ever crafted. PB had the "golden age" hip-hop, free-sampling breakbeat-fest thing down to a science, with some great lyrical creativity in terms of wordplay as well as subject matter. CYH is a much more nuanced affair, but no less daring or free-spirited. It's just a beautiful funk/punk/hip-hop fusion, seemingly without a mistep. Every song has a perfect intro, the skits are quality, and the B-boys seemed at their rawest in terms of the energy of their delivery. You can tell that these aren't the goofballs that made their first 2 albums, but they're not yet the twerpy geezers who made their last 2 either.
Some of the funk on this album is absolute gold, and although I'm sure many people consider the instrumentals the only flaws on the album, to me they do a great job of setting the mood and adding another layer of depth to the typical "breaks and rhymes" Beastie Boy formula. "In 3's" is on-par with some of the best funk jam sessions in history. There is also the punk/fuzz-rock element to the album which again only makes for a more nuanced affair that no amount of obscurely discernable disco breaks could duplicate. They made twinges of bossa nova style percussion and metal riffs sound built for each other, and overall the album just has a musical depth that most albums lack.
Lyrically I liked the Beasties at this point because they had graduated from some of their more nonsensical tendencies. Songs like "Gratitude" managed to hit you with a dose of reality with out coming off as pretentious as some of their newer more politicized stuff, but there was still plenty of more traditional Beastie wordplay on stuff like "Professor Booty" & "So What'cha Want" etc.
I practically grew up on this record, listening to it while cruising around or chilling with friends etc, and in all honesty, it is still as listenable an album as ever. It has a great party vibe..plenty of moods and tempos to be had, but is uninvasive and appealing at every turn (which can't be said of PB's cornier moments). I feel bad for leaving it buried so deep in my CD case, and even worse for letting it get trashed in favor of PB in the many discussions I've read over the years regarding Beastie albums. Check Your Head is now my new-old-favorite Beasties album (in '99 it was PB after years of ignoring that record), and it should be yours too. Perhaps the only Beasties album you could justify owning without having to be into the group. Buy your copies now!!
Next weeks new-old-favorite album:
Chef Raekwon- Only Built 4 Cuban Lynx
Some of the funk on this album is absolute gold, and although I'm sure many people consider the instrumentals the only flaws on the album, to me they do a great job of setting the mood and adding another layer of depth to the typical "breaks and rhymes" Beastie Boy formula. "In 3's" is on-par with some of the best funk jam sessions in history. There is also the punk/fuzz-rock element to the album which again only makes for a more nuanced affair that no amount of obscurely discernable disco breaks could duplicate. They made twinges of bossa nova style percussion and metal riffs sound built for each other, and overall the album just has a musical depth that most albums lack.
Lyrically I liked the Beasties at this point because they had graduated from some of their more nonsensical tendencies. Songs like "Gratitude" managed to hit you with a dose of reality with out coming off as pretentious as some of their newer more politicized stuff, but there was still plenty of more traditional Beastie wordplay on stuff like "Professor Booty" & "So What'cha Want" etc.
I practically grew up on this record, listening to it while cruising around or chilling with friends etc, and in all honesty, it is still as listenable an album as ever. It has a great party vibe..plenty of moods and tempos to be had, but is uninvasive and appealing at every turn (which can't be said of PB's cornier moments). I feel bad for leaving it buried so deep in my CD case, and even worse for letting it get trashed in favor of PB in the many discussions I've read over the years regarding Beastie albums. Check Your Head is now my new-old-favorite Beasties album (in '99 it was PB after years of ignoring that record), and it should be yours too. Perhaps the only Beasties album you could justify owning without having to be into the group. Buy your copies now!!
Next weeks new-old-favorite album:
Chef Raekwon- Only Built 4 Cuban Lynx