Hello Nasty [CD]

On their previous album, Ill Communication, the Beastie Boys expanded their parameters yet again, melding cutting-edge hip-hop with slinky jazz, butt-wiggling funk, weepy classical, and combustive punk rock. Four years down the line, the group's music isn't nearly as organic. They've all but abandoned the guitars and returned to the kind of old-school beats and rhythms that defined their groundbreaking 1989 disc, Paul's Boutique. But Hello Nasty isn't a regression, and it's anything but a cop-out: in addition to resurrecting the best elements from their past, the Beastie Boys have embraced the dopest high tech gizmos of the computer age. Hello Nasty gurgles like galactic sulfur pools, whizzes like a Sega game, and slurps and thumps like the best backward Hendrix loops. Add in a cavalcade of Latin percussion, calliope keyboards, and exotic samples (Stravinsky, Stephen Sondheim, Jazz Crusaders, Rachmaninoff), and you're left with one of the most creative and jubilant hip-hop records to date, even if you exclude witty lyrics like, "I'm the king of Boggle / There is none higher / I get 11 points off the word quagmire" ("Putting Shame in Your Game"). To paraphrase über-critic Robert Christgau, Paul's Boutique may have been the band's Pet Sounds, but Hello Nasty is the Beasties' Sgt. Pepper's. --Jon Wiederhorn

Four albums into their genre-straddling career, Ad-Rock, MCA and Mike D had simultaneously laid to rest the damaging idea that they were sexist clowns (propagated by their debut, Licensed To Ill) and expanded their white b-boy image to include hardcore punk and a multi-ethnic smorgasbord. However their last album, Ill Communication had only extended Check Your Head's raw diversity without really managing the trick of blending the mixture as an organic whole. Hello Nasty was to correct that, and then some...

Hello...was where the Beasties finally showed the world that they could dazzle if the fancy took them. With the genius move of recruiting Mixmaster Mike, the album is stuffed with old skool sparseness, latino grooviness, street noise, retro funk stylings, jaw-dropping turntablism and much, much more. They took head-spinning detours, sometimes several times in one song making the 22-tracks seem like at least double that amount. And while the frat-boy fun is still in attendance, the album has a maturity and coherence that belied their aging. The 'Boys' had grown up. Adam Yauch's vocal on "I Don''t Know" even pushed the band into unknown territories labelled 'sensitive'. Who'd have thought it?

Paradoxically, while game console bleeps ("Dedication") and samples of Flash and Run DMC throw your mind back to the 80s New York that gave birth to the trio, it's a resolutely post modern mix that still sounds utterly futuristic. Even a guest spot from maverick dub giant, Lee Perry can't stop "Dr Lee PhD" being a psychedelic ride all the way from what now sounds like nascent folktronica to a rinsing D 'n' B epiphany (and back again). Throw in Stravinsky, Tito Puente and Iron Butterfly, and you have a record that is pure New York from head to toes. --Chris Jones

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BEASTIE BOYS Hello Nasty (Deleted 1998 UK 22-track PICTURE DISC CD including Super Disco Breakin Remote Control & Body Movin housed in a superb fold-out digipak picture sleeve)