1992: Album of the Year – Check Your Head by Beastie Boys.
So, I’m a little bit behind on these album reviews. Sorry for that. Anyways, let’s get right to it. Generally, combining rap and rock (or even worse, rap and metal) does not result in something listenable. The same goes for white guys that try to rap about… being white? Who knows. But somehow, the Beastie Boys pull off white-boy-rap-rock pretty damn smoothly. This album in particular is pretty funky and I’ve seen it featured on many “famous” greatest albums of the 90’s lists. But what do *I* think about it?
I love it. Musically, this album jumps all over the place. The Boys went back to their punk-ier rock roots for this album, providing live instrumentation in addition to all the samples in each song. Speaking of samples, I think this album deserves the award for most random-ass sampling ever. There are samples from Cheap Trick to The Turtles to Jimi Hendrix to Funkadelic to Bob Dylan to Aquarius by 5th Dimension to Ted Nugent to Kool & the Gang to some dialogue taken from films, too. Basically, it’s a bunch of crap you’d never expect to hear… But when you do, it sounds awesome.
In my head, this album has a clear “winner” – So What’cha Want. This song is quite possibly the best Beastie Boys track I’ve ever heard. The beat is really basic but cool, the main riff is heavy, and the guitar lick in the chorus is an instant classic. The track also features some great scratching and rapping, with lyrics going from bad-ass to absurd (“as cool as a cucumber in a bowl of hot sauce”) to geeky (“I’m Dr. Spock, I’m here to rock”) and I love it. But there’s also some other great tunes on the record – Funky Boss is another favorite of mine, and Pass the Mic has a damn good beat and some loungier, funky instrumentals break up the monotony of the heavy rap material.
All-in-all, a great album with lots of variety. Best track: So What’cha Want.
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So that covers all my old album reviews posted on Facebook. Look out for new installments here!
-BPSstephen.
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