"To The 5 Boroughs" - anti-smirk - is number one on the charts

[donsu]

http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/album?id=6040857&pageid=rs.Home&pageregion=triple1&rnd=1088263993970&has-player=true&version=6.0.11.847

These are some things that have changed since the Beastie Boys' last studio album, Hello Nasty, was released in 1998: There is no Grand Royal Records; the trio shut down its eccentric custom label in 2001. Adam "MCA" Yauch's deep, rough growl is now an even deeper, stranger weapon of taunt; he now fires boasts and insults like a hip-hop Tom Waits, in a smoker's-cough harangue scoured free of melody.

And there is no World Trade Center. This may seem like a weird time -- wartime, everywhere you look -- for Yauch, Adam "AdRock" Horovitz and Michael "Mike D" Diamond, all on the cusp of forty, to make a record that in its gibes and hyperspeed is the closest they have come to their old-school fight and comedy on 1986's Licensed to Ill. Actually, it is the perfect time. To the 5 Boroughs is an exciting, astonishing balancing act: fast, funny and sobering. "I bring the shit that's beyond bizarre," Horovitz asserts against the quick hop and spears of sampled brass in "Ch-Check It Out." "Like Miss Piggy," he adds, apropos of nothing, to which all three respond in idiot falsetto, "Who moi?" In "Right Right Now Now," the Beasties lament Columbine and call for "more gun controlling" over tense rolls of Muzak harpsichord, then twist the chorus of their biggest hit into a free-speech cheer, retrieving Public Enemy's inversion from 1988: "We're gonna party for the right to fight." The Beasties pour the Pink Champale and Riunite here, but they're not drinking to forget. They turn the dis on "a president we didn't elect" in "It Takes Time to Build": "Is the U.S. gonna keep breaking necks/ Maybe it's time that we impeach Tex."

-snip-

More than anything, To the 5 Boroughs is the Beasties' valentine to the city where they, and rap, were born. It is a brash, passionate toast to what we lost on 9/11 (in the cover illustration, the Twin Towers are still standing) and what survives: in memory, on the ground. The raps are packed with local cuisine (Blimpies, Murray's Cheese Shop on Bleecker Street) and nostalgia (Yauch: "Used to ride the D to beat the morning bell at Edward R. Murrow out on Avenue L"). And in "An Open Letter to NYC," the Beasties celebrate the city "that blends and mends and tests," mixing prayer and pride with sampled shots of 50 Cent, RZA and Nas over the killer riff from the Dead Boys' "Sonic Reducer." It's a dark whirl, but never maudlin: "2 towers down but you're still in the game," Diamond crows, a line that also has everything to do with the state and fate of the nation. The Beasties are New York from head to heel, but they've made To the 5 Boroughs for the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan and Staten Island in all of us.
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saw this article at www.democrats.com and they had this to say:

Beastie Boys Debut at #1 with Anti-Bush Album
In just its first week, the Beastie Boys' "To the Five Boroughs" sold 360,000 copies, debuting at #1 on the Billboard Hot 200 Album Chart. The album features scathing lyrics about Bush, as well as an ode to New York in the post-9/11 era. Here are some sample lyrics: "We've got a president we didn't elect, the Kyoto treaty he decided to neglect ...Is the U.S. gonna keep breaking necks? Maybe it's time that we impeach Tex, and the military muscle that he wants to flex. By the time Bush is done, what will be left? Selling votes like E-pills at the discotheque" ... "I'm getting kind of tired of the situation, the U.S. attacking other nations. And narration on every station" ... And from "An Open Letter to NYC": "Dear New York, I know a lot has changed; two towers down but you're still in the game. Home to the many, rejecting no one; accepting people of all places wherever they're from." Rolling Stone's David Fricke gives TT5B five stars (see also beastieboys.com).

[CaptainClark23]

1. went to HS with Mike D.

took poli sci together.

went to summer school with their first manager (pre-rap days).

We attended the same parties.

Frankly I regarded them as arrogant opportunist assholes. They probably thought me a stupid stoner hippy.

Was never a fan of the music, but have to say they have made me proud. They have always honored NYC in the truest noblest fashion.

I am an unabashed fan now.

[Frances]

2. I am way too old for this kind of music

but I think it is so important for young people not to think that Bush and Repubs are cool.

Bush and the Repubs are making the world a much more difficult place for everyone to live in, but young people especially need the kind of careers that Bushco is outsourcing to India and other countries.

[AndyTiedye]

3. Unfortunately, Bush Has Other Plans for Young People

The Crusade needs them. All of them. Onward Xtian Soldiers.:grr: