Beastie Boys Album: “Hello Nasty”

22 tracks, 67 minutes of pure eclectic genius. On-the-spot rapping, wacky but wonderful collaborations, excellent music: this album is one of the best of the 90s for me. Every listen is a great trip into another galaxy of fun sounds and thoughtful lyrics. It's a long way from the misogyny of "Licensed to Ill" but this album is well worth the time. Rap, bossa nova, old skool hip-hop, jazz, rock: they all come together for this huge party. Dance along!

While I have always liked the Beastie Boys I was never what you would call a rabid fan. I only owned one other album when I bought Hello Nasty and all I was expecting was something kind of fun for the morning drive or weekend road trip. This is one of those albums that I love more and more with each successive listening. It's so mercurial in its mix of styles, from one song to the next only the humor, wit and infectious rhythm and beat seem to be the common threads. The seemless blending of rap, techno and old-school funk makes this album energetic with a playful feel. I can see myself still listening to this regularly 10 years from now and honestly think that it is one of the best albums ever recorded. It's not often that I find a CD where I love every single track, but I have to look no further than Hello Nasty for that now.

'Hello Nasty' by the Beastie Boys is one of their best offerings ever put down. With this album the Beasties felt like they were as solid as they ever were and you could just get the general feel that they really enjoyed making this album. Even the commercially friendly tracks such as 'Intergalactic' and 'Body Movin' could be enjoyed by the alternative masses, and there are plenty of other tracks here ~20 in total with all sorts of different styles that many a fans will appreciate the smooth sounds coming out of their speakers.

If you like Rap and/or alternative hip-hop you owe it to yourself to pick up 'Hello Nasty' and enjoy one of the most unique bands in the genre.

***** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

You really have to respect the Beastie Boys. Since 1986, they've been releasing music that explores ground from whiny rap-rock to Dr. Seuss cut-and-paste insanity to jam-band-that-raps, and now to the old-school yet very new-school sound of "Hello Nasty". They've also kept the quality remarkably high; "Hello Nasty" is either the Beastie's second-best or third-best album (behind "Paul's Boutique" and possibly "Check Your Head"). The rap tracks are consistently great, with highlights like "Super Disco Breakin'", "The Move", "Three MCs and One DJ", "Unite", and the monster crossover singles "Intergalactic" and "Body Movin'". They even find time to travel into the worlds of techno ("And Me"), dub ("Dr. Lee, PhD"), and acoustic guitar songs ("I Don't Know"). It's always nice to see people continue to experiment, and it's even nicer to see the experiments succeed so well.

Hello Nasty, the Beastie Boys' fifth album, is a head-spinning listen loaded with analog synthesizers, old drum machines, call-and-response vocals, freestyle rhyming, futuristic sound effects, and virtuoso turntable scratching. The Beasties have long been notorious for their dense, multi-layered explosions, but Hello Nasty is their first record to build on the multi-ethnic junk culture breakthrough of Check Your Head, instead of merely replicating it.

Moving from electro-funk breakdowns to Latin-soul jams to spacey pop, Hello Nasty covers as much ground as Check Your Head or Ill Communication, but the flow is natural, like Paul's Boutique, even if the finish is retro-stylized. Hiring DJ Mixmaster Mike (one of the Invisibl Skratch Piklz) turned out to be a masterstroke; he and the Beasties created a sound that strongly recalls the spare electronic funk of the early '80s, but spiked with the samples and post-modern absurdist wit that have become their trademarks. On the surface, the sonic collages of Hello Nasty don't appear as dense as Paul's Boutique, nor is there a single as grabbing as "Sabotage," but given time, little details emerge, and each song forms its own identity.

A few stray from the course, and the ending is a little anticlimactic, but that doesn't erase the riches of Hello Nasty - the old-school kick of "Super Disco Breakin'" and "The Move"; Adam Yauch's crooning on "I Don't Know"; Lee "Scratch" Perry's cameo; and the recurring video game samples, to name just a few. The sonic adventures alone make the album noteworthy, but what makes it remarkable is how it looks to the future by looking to the past. There's no question that Hello Nasty is saturated in old-school sounds and styles, but by reviving the future-shock rock of the early '80s, the Beasties have shrewdly set themselves up for the new millennium.