Review: Beastie Boys
Leafing through the new deluxe edition of 2004’s To the 5 Boroughs.
We’ve been living without the Beastie Boys for a while now. Since the death of Adam Yauch, aka MCA, in 2012, the two remaining members, Ad-Rock and Mike D, have remained relatively quiet. But a new track from Mike D surfaced last week—the first new music from the Beastie Boys camp since the trio’s final album, 2011’s Hot Sauce Committee Part Two.
Mike D performed a show last night at Sid the Cat Auditorium in South Pasadena, the second in a mini-tour of small Los Angeles-area and New York venues, making it feel like this is the opening volley of a larger project—possibly an album and full-scale tour. What’s interesting is that, to me, this track sounds nothing at all like the Beastie Boys, coming across more like an art-damaged, forward-looking dance track.
Why mention all this in a newsletter about vinyl reissues? Well, it comes hot on the heels of the April release of a deluxe edition of the group’s penultimate album, 2004’s To the 5 Boroughs, making it an ideal time to revisit what’s possibly the Beasties’ most misunderstood and neglected album.
Before you scroll down to get to the goods, then, I’ll just leave a quick reminder about our paid tier, which gets you weekly playlists, commenting abilities, entry to our monthly vinyl giveaways, and full access to our complete archives. If upgrading to the paid tier is something you’ve been meaning to do but just haven’t gotten around to yet, well, there’s no time like the present.
Beastie Boys: To the 5 Boroughs Deluxe Edition
There’s a telling moment 30 seconds into the opening track of the Beastie Boys’ sixth album, To the 5 Boroughs, when Mike Diamond stifles a laugh delivering a line about Bonanza actor Lorne Greene. It’s a moment of lightness in what would turn out to be the New York hip-hop group’s most serious record, made in the wake of 9/11, Columbine, and the first phases of the second Iraq War. Although it wouldn’t be finished until nearly three years after the destruction of the Twin Towers, the 2004 album is imbued with the events of that day as well as its aftermath, as the trio of Diamond (Mike D), Adam Yauch (MCA), and Adam Horovitz (Ad-Rock) rap about global conflict, racism, US military policy, homophobia, school shootings, and all the other heavy things that were on their minds—with the occasional joke about Sanford and Son to keep themselves from going off the deep end.
In fact, one of Horovitz’s retrospective criticisms of To the 5 Boroughs is about that uneasy balance, as he writes in 2018’s Beastie Boys Book: “We got caught in kind of this middle ground/gray area of This is a ‘serious’ song and This is a ‘funny’ one. The serious ones feel a little forced, and the funny ones are a little flat.” To me, it sounds like the three MCs—Yauch in particular—had a lot of big issues they wanted to talk about, and there’s something humanizing about them needing to also release steam by cracking each other up. Revisiting To the 5 Boroughs via its new deluxe edition, a 3-LP set with bonus tracks and keepsake packaging, reveals it as a fascinating document of a group that, after years of artistic breakthroughs, came up against an unexpected wall. At this point in their career, they had essentially succeeded in making good on their first big hit, “(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Party!)” by bringing a riotous celebration to the entire world, only to find that the world was now more messed up than ever.
In some ways the three were starting from scratch, as a period of reflection and closure had preceded To the 5 Boroughs. Following a hugely successful tour for 1998’s Hello Nasty, the group released The Sounds of Science, a 1999 double-disc compilation of their past work whose dizzying mixture of hip-hop, punk rock, funk, and countless other styles showed how much the group had accomplished in the previous 18 years. They followed it with an extended phase of down time, and as a result, there was an eventual gap of six years between Hello Nasty and 5 Boroughs. As the trio began work on fresh material at their newly opened recording space on Canal Street just weeks before 9/11, Yauch insisted that the new album be all rap—no live instruments, no funk jams, no punk rock slamdowns. And as it happened, this limitation tied in perfectly with what eventually became the album’s theme, unforeseen at the start of the sessions: a celebration of their beleaguered hometown by way of a throwback to the city’s old-school hip-hop sounds.
That through line has real potential, but the end result is not as effervescent as the Beastie Boys’ best work, coming off as something that would be more suited to a Columbia lecture hall than an after-hours club in the back room of a Chinatown restaurant. The dense cauldron of samples on Paul’s Boutique is replaced with a similarly sample-forward but starker and more severe sound, and the production, done entirely by the Beasties without their usual collaborator Mario Caldato Jr., has a sleekness that’s at odds with the humor and humanity in their raps. The end result, and its lack of sonic chaos, is an album that sounds like the three—among the most inventive sonic creators of the ’80s and ’90s—have chosen to perform with an arm tied behind their collective back.
The album crests thematically with “An Open Letter to NYC,” driven by a Dead Boys guitar sample and a gang-chanted refrain. A tough yawp of a track meant to laud the survival instincts and ethnic diversity of America’s biggest city, it’s in many ways the emotional high point of 5 Boroughs. But it also exposes the fact that earnestness was never the Beasties’ strong suit. The goofier songs that precede it, including “Oh Word?” and “Shazam,” feel more comfortable and less strained; the trio was operating in a place where they were getting more artistic dividends from their inside jokes than from broad proclamations about everything going on outside their Tribeca studio.
The digital and sample-dominated sound of To the 5 Boroughs doesn’t wow the listener the way that the wild gear-shifting of the group’s classic trilogy does (1989’s Paul’s Boutique, 1992’s Check Your Head, and 1994’s Ill Communication). But this new pressing makes the album sound better, fuller, and more involving than I thought possible. For starters, the discs are flawlessly pressed—perfectly flat and centered, with silent backgrounds and no ticks, pops, or other flaws. The album’s precise, computer-generated sound is massaged by the transposition to vinyl, with the beats sounding more natural and less mechanical and the samples sounding more spontaneous and less rigid than they do on my 2004 CD copy. The bass reaches down to appropriate depths, and the soundstage is wide but not unnaturally so, especially considering the spare production on some of the tracks.
The album’s 45 minutes are spread across two discs, matching the original vinyl release. This makes for very short sides, which does interrupt the flow—think of how a big part of the appeal of Check Your Head or Hello Nasty is the stream-of-consciousness musical tapestry, where the barrage of ideas never lets up. (Paul’s Boutique’s closing medley “B-Boy Bouillabaisse” is the urtext of this approach.) As such, To the 5 Boroughs can’t help but end up feeling a bit chopped up in this format, and I would have liked to have seen whether a talented lacquer cutter could have made it work on a single piece of wax. (To that end, I am not sure who cut the lacquer for this new edition, although they have done very good work here. There are hand-etched numbers in the deadwax but no signature or initials. I’m also not able to tell where this excellently pressed vinyl was manufactured. A sticker on the shrinkwrap says “Made in Italy,” but it’s possible that is referring to the printed material and not the actual discs.) Another option would have been to cut the album at 45 RPM, as the four sides are short enough. All told, with the bonus disc included, we’re talking less than 80 minutes on three pieces of vinyl; with the album’s premium price tag of $125, it might have been nice to add a little more value here.
Much of that price went into the packaging, which matches earlier deluxe vinyl editions of Beasties albums. Inside a hard outer slipcase is a beautifully designed, enhanced gatefold—essentially two gatefolds connected together at the spine, making for a sort of eight-page book. The lyrics and original album illustrations of New York City are reproduced throughout the panels, with one of the two-page spreads featuring a pop-up drawing of the city skyline. The continuously unfurling images on the multi-foldout panels of the original CD—reminiscent of the endless street scene from Paul’s Boutique’s cover photo—are not reproduced here; rather, the city images are contained within each two-page spread. There’s also a fun insert of a map of downtown Manhattan marked with spots relevant to Beasties history (like Yauch and Diamond’s 1985 apartment on Chrystie Street, or the site of the legendary Flatiron District nightclub Danceteria, or a spot in the East Village ominously designated “Butthole Surfer corner”). The map first appeared in Beastie Boys Book and makes a welcome reappearance here.
The bonus disc has some essential tracks, particularly “Brrrr Stick Em,” a B-side that would have fit splendidly on the album, and “And Then I,” which features some of the most adventurous production on the set. Additionally, a fleshed-out remix of “Ch-Check It Out” puts the track’s sonics in line with Paul’s Boutique, although the four consecutive remixes of “Triple Trouble” and three of “Right Right Now Now” wear out their welcome.
This deluxe edition of To the 5 Boroughs emphasizes the album’s simplicity and also exposes the paradox at its heart. This is a band that had perhaps more to say than ever before, and was acutely aware of their audience reach and the responsibility that came with it. At the same time they had accomplished more on a musical level than anyone who heard Licensed to Ill in 1986 could have ever imagined. But the Beasties deliberately reduced their scope by adhering to Yauch’s all-rap directive, restricting the music to a series of short, quickly repeated loops and building off cleverly cropped samples rather than spontaneous musical interplay. Their raps were still as whip-smart and hilarious as ever, but the party vibes were gone.
At the time, we all thought the Beastie Boys would have plenty of time to figure out their next phase. But in fact they were nearing the home stretch, and that retrospective poignancy lends an urgency and essentiality to the album, not to mention the focus that comes from its inherent cohesion, something lacking in the scattered charm of their previous work. Flawed as it is, To the 5 Boroughs is sounding more and more like the Beasties’ last major statement, and this excessively dressed but exceptional-sounding set drives that point home.
Capitol 3-LP 33 RPM 180g black vinyl
• Remaster of the Beastie Boys’ 2004 album with an added disc of B-sides, remixes, and rarities; bonus disc follows the tracklist of the 2019 digital deluxe edition
• Jacket: Hard outer slipcase housing an eight-panel book-style gatefold jacket; a two-panel spread features a pop-up of the album art
• Inner sleeve: White poly-lined
• Liner notes, insert, or booklet: Single-sided insert containing reproduction of the map of Lower Manhattan that appeared in Beastie Boys Book
• Source: Digital
• Mastering credit: “Mastered by Evren Goknar,” Capitol Studios, Hollywood, CA; the original mastering credit from 2004 also appears on the back of the slipcase: “Mastered by Chris Athens at Sterling Sound”
• Lacquer cut by: Unknown; matrices are hand-etched
• Pressed at: Unknown
• Vinyl pressing quality (visual): A- (minor dimpling on Side 5)
• Vinyl pressing quality (audio): A
• Additional notes: Limited edition.
Listening equipment:
Table: Technics SL-1200MK2
Cart: Audio-Technica VM540ML
Amp: Luxman L-509X
Speakers: ADS L980
