After eight years the Beastie Boys return to the top of the Billboard 200 with their fourth effort, distributed by Capitol and their Grand Royal: in the rap chart it's preceded by a soundtrack, but in any case it's a global success driven by numerous hits like "Sabotage", "Get It Together" and "Sure Shot", and blessed by the critics, who for some obscure reason decides that white rap must not die, even if it's not rap, as in this case. Vanilla Ice is musically dead and also nearly physically dead, going close to suicide around the same time, 3rd Bass have disbanded, Everlast has been jumping around like a fool for years, only the Beastie Boys can still handle the game.
After the great success of the previous album, the group doesn't change their winning formula and makes a record that's very similar to "Check Your Head", making music with live instruments rather than doing beats in the "traditional way", and varying between punk, indie rock, funk and sometimes even hip-hop. It's a forgettable effort from a lyrical point of view, musically disordered: the choice to use the vocoder in different cuts it's unfortunate, the rest of the lyrics are delivered with a cumbersome, slow, shouted, feeble rap style. In this hour of listening divided into twenty tracks, the instrumentals stand out along with "Sabotage", where the music video clearly surpasses the song itself. The fluctuating, hopping and deeply irregular nature of the entire project is also reflected in the charts: sales in fits and starts allow it to reach triple platinum many years later, while it ends strangely far from the top among the best-selling albums of the year (60 in hip-hop/rnb, 33 among rap releases). Anyway, listening isn't essential.
Rating: 6/10.
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