Joshua Stephenson - 9/21/2011

The Beastie Boys have been going along time now, hell its been 25 years since 'Licensed To Ill' hit stores, and in those intervening years the Beastie Boys carved themselves a niche in Hip-Hop that only they can fill. Now with the release of 'Hot Sauce Committee Part Two', delayed following a cancer scare for MCA, the Beastie Boys have managed to prove their relevance to the 21st Century Hip-Hop scene whilst making an album that may be the most fun you'll have with a record all year.

Let's start off with the production on this record because it is insane. There is so much going on in each track that it can be hard to keep up, from deep, bass-y synthesizers to distortion ridden guitar lines, it is constantly mixing itself up. In one track the vocals could have heavy distortion and the guitars squealing around as in the fantastic 'Say It', and then in the next track you could have bizarre electronics buzzing around a crisp beat as in 'Here's A Little Something For Ya'. 'Hot Sauce Committee' really is an album you need to play through some high quality speakers so that you can get the full effect of every little bit of distortion, reverb and a strange fondness for the cowbell. It's like experiencing colour for the ears and is that trademark Beastie Boys sound that no other Hip-Hop group can pull off.

As for individual standouts 'Make Some Noise', the lead single, manages to be a throw down of relevancy whilst evoking nostalgia and keeping the track fun at the same time. Built off a thick synth beat, a crisp drumbeat, some strange samples and that ever-present cowbell the Beastie Boys roll back the years by saying 'We got a party on the left/A party on the right/We gotta party for our right to fight'. We even get a guest appearance from Nas on the track 'Too Many Rappers', which has all four men exchanging verses whilst a stuttering synth line bounces back and forth. It's a testament to Nas that he manages to hold his own on this track, not because he's not a technically gifted rapper, but because the Beastie Boys have such a distinct sound and delivery it can be incredibly hard to keep up with them yet Nas does an admirable job.

An area where a collaboration didn't work out so well was on the Santigold featuring track 'Don't Play No Game That I Can't Win', which although it is an incredibly funky, reggae inspired track doesn't really fit in with the tone of the album or the Beastie Boys style to a lesser extent. Don't get me wrong on its own it's a solid track, but in the context of this album it didn't really work for me. Other tracks that I didn't feel worked particularly well were 'Tadlock's Glasses' and 'Multilateral Nuclear Disarmament', which came across as filler tracks to pad out the album.

Whilst lyrically this album doesn't go for any particularly high-brow moments, what we do have is a lot of witty one liners and amusing disses that the Beastie Boys have been putting out with ease for years, but yet still manage to get a laugh from me. This is really apparent on tracks like 'Funky Donkey', which is funny enough in that it has men in their mid-40's talking about a funky donkey, but when you throw in absurd lines like 'Stop sweating me about the weather/Go shave a sheep and knit yourself a sweater' you've got me rolling on the floor! To top it off this track is built of an incredibly groovy bass line that makes it a great track to dance too as well. Speaking of hilarious moments everytime I hear 'The Larry Routine' with the fantastic line 'Well my name's Mike D but I got a new name/ And that new name is Larry' I will without fail burst out laughing!

That right there encapsulate everything that is great about 'Hot Sauce Committee Part Two' it's an album that is almost impossible to not fall in love with. From the great one-liners to the sublime production on every single track, it's an album that demands to be played loud at parties across the world and as we all know no one gets a party going better than the Beastie Boys.