Beastie Boys- Hot Sauce Committee Part Two

You all know the story about this album. You all know the original intention of releasing this album in two parts. You all know about MCA’s cancer and the scrapping of the original idea. You have all seen the video to ‘Make Some Noise’ starring Frodo Baggins, that unfunny guy who is in all those rubbish movies and the other guy who you cannot work out who it is. You know all of this and it just reinforces why the Beastie Boys are the most longstanding potent force outlasting the likes of Public Enemy and fending off newcomers like Eminem in the early 00s and the likes of Odd Future in the present day.

The great thing about the Beastie Boys is that they are music fans. Not music fans as in Clams Casino only listening to music so that he may be able to sample it for his next production credit, but proper music fans. This allows the production on this album to be dense and cover up the fact that 40-year-old men who have been releasing music for nearly 30 years may have used up their best rhymes. But you do not need great rhymes when you have excellent production and a delivery style that appears to never get old.

The album follows the same path that the Beastie Boys have been following since Hello Nasty. Their ranks are boosted by guest performers by Nas (on the excellent ‘Too Many Rappers’) and Santigold who both improve the song they are on. There is also a fast paced Punk song for the Rock fans on ‘Lee Majors Come Again’. It is hard to see how this consistency would have stretched over two albums. It is all the better for being one concise excellent album.