Hot Sauce Committee Part Two
Beastie Boys
Capitol Records
“This is MC Dan, takin’ charge of the house,
With the verbal funk of Thompson and the class of Richard Strauss.
Gonna talk about the B-Boys’ new record today
And I’m inclined to say, it’s just okay.”
Sorry.
The boys are back in town — the Beastie Boys, that is — with a 16 track callback to their earlier, wackier days. Hot Sauce Committee Part Two is the pseudo sequel to the much-promoted but never-released Part One, which was shelved due to Adam “MCA” Yauch’s brief cancer scare. And how do emcees Mike D, MCA and Ad-Rock fare on their latest outing? In brief: fun at times, weary at others, and paradoxical overall.
“Make Some Noise,” the album’s opening track, is both the most accessible and most downright fun tune on the record, the Boys calling out their NYC roots while channeling the bravado circa Ill Communication and Hello Nasty. But the song seems muted in spite of its self-referential joviality. Ad-Rock and Mike D have toned down the edgy yells that made their voices so distinct in the rap scene, and MCA’s deeper tone is now just hoarse. It’s entertaining, not so much in and of itself but in the way it reminds me how awesome “Intergalactic” was.
In this vein, the album is dotted with brief but unmistakable aural callbacks: a record scratch here might sound like the signature screechy hook from “Sabotage,” an echoed lyric there might strike a nostalgic chord.
The album has its sporadic high points. “Nonstop Disco Powerpack,” a low-key, percussive rap that, as the second track, is the total opposite of its predecessor on the album. MCA’s verse straces the rap’s construction from mind to mic: “Construct a rhyme with specific intent / Flowin’ from the brain cells right through the pen. / And then I put the book down grab ahold the mic, / Words flowin’ so cold turn water into ice.” It’s tight, mature, and exemplifies a style the Boys from Brooklyn should adopt.
Others, like “Lee Majors Come Again” and “Long Burn the Fire,” propel the album forward with bottom-heavy instrumentation and, in the case of the former, a punk rock feel. Like “Nonstop Disco Powerpack,” these two songs demonstrate how tight construction and production can trump verbal goofing off any day of the week.
Hot Sauce Committee Part Two is fun at times, and some may praise the three emcees for their return to form, but listening to three men in their mid-40s rap like they’re still rebellious B-Boys in their early 20s is disingenuous at best and a little bit awkward at worst.
