To the 5 Boroughs

Barnes & Noble

The Beastie Boys have never shied away from acting as goodwill ambassadors for their home city, but they've really outdone themselves on To the 5 Boroughs, an unreconstructed love letter to the Big Apple. That devotion is most clear on the post-9/11 ode "An Open Letter to NYC," which sets a laundry list of the city's attributes -- with a typical onslaught of inside references to delight fellow Gotham dwellers -- against a backdrop that's at once airy and fierce, thanks to clever deployment of a sample from the Dead Boys' "Sonic Reducer." The entire disc, however, is chock-a-block with asides and digressions that make up a travelogue as dizzyingly detailed as, say, the cover of Paul's Boutique. Even so, the self-produced To the 5 Boroughs is something of a back-to-basics offering, in many ways. The Boys kick it extremely old school on "Triple Trouble," which borrows a snatch of the "Rapper's Delight" beat for a street-corner rhyme session that could've appeared on Check Your Head, but they get decidedly futuristic on tracks like "3 the Hard Way," which suspends some clever pre-gangsta braggadocio in bass-heavy surroundings that envelop the listener with a decidedly underwater feel. "Oh Word?" has a similarly spacey ambience, with bleeping synths and ping-ponging drumbeats (not to mention distorted vocals and some of the goofier expletive replacements in recent memory -- "what the falafel," anyone?). Many of the disc's cuts nicely reconcile the smash-mouth beats of the Beasties' formative years with the consciousness-raising rhymes of recent years. "Right Right Now Now," for instance, laces a wickedly infectious turntable/clavinet backing with lines such as "I'm getting kinda tired of the situation / The U.S. attacking other nations," while "It Takes Time to Build," a dub-wise beckoner, makes quick work of ugly environmental policies. All three Beasties are in fine form throughout, making 5 Boroughs the group's most consistent -- and consistently enjoyable -- disc in ages. David Sprague

All Music Guide

Six years is a long time, about one-and-a-half generations in pop music and a fairly large chunk out of anyone's life, two sentiments that come into play on the Beastie Boys' sixth album, 2004's To the 5 Boroughs. When the Beasties last delivered an album, it was in the summer of 1998 as the Clinton impeachment scandal was heating up, and just as that sordid saga closed the curtain on the swinging '90s, Hello Nasty served as both a culmination of the New York trio's remarkable comeback and as a capper to the alt-rock boom of the '90s, the last album of the decade to capture what the '90s actually felt like. Not only is the political and cultural landscape of 2004 much different than that of 1998, the Beasties are a different band in a different position. They're no longer on the vanguard of pop culture, setting the trends and styles, nor do they embody their time; like it or not, the po-faced, humorless brooding of Coldplay and Wilco is an appropriate soundtrack to the drab, dark days of the early 2000s. No, the Beastie Boys are no longer groundbreakers; they're elder statesmen, operating outside of the fashions of the time. This has as much to do with maturity as it does with changing times. Now that Ad-Rock, MCA, and Mike D are all nearly 40, they're not as interested in being the world's hippest group, as evidenced by their abandonment of their Grand Royal empire at the turn of the decade, and that suspicion is borne out by To the 5 Boroughs. Like many musicians at middle age, the Beasties are a little set in their ways, ignoring modern music nearly entirely and turning to the music of their youth for sustenance. For the Beasties, this means heavy doses of old school rap spiked with a bit of punk, which admittedly isn't all that different from the blueprints for Check Your Head, Ill Communication, and Hello Nasty, but the attack here is clean and focused, far removed from the sprawling, kaleidoscopic mosaics of their '90s records. In contrast, To the 5 Boroughs is sleek and streamlined, with all the loose ends neatly clipped and tied; even the punk influences are transformed into hip-hop, as when the Dead Boys' "Sonic Reducer" provides the fuel for "An Open Letter to NYC." Given the emphasis on hip-hop, it may be tempting to label Boroughs as an old-school homage, but that isn't accurate, since nothing here sounds like a lost side from the Sugarhill Records stable. Still, old-school rhyme schemes and grooves do power the album, yet they're filtered through the Beasties' signature blend of absurdity, in-jokes, and pop culture, all served up in a dense, layered production so thick that it seems to boast more samples than it does. Apart from an explicit anti-Dubya political bent on some lyrics, there's nothing surprising or new here, and the cohesive, concise nature of To the 5 Boroughs only emphasizes the familiarity of the music. Familiarity can be comforting, though, particularly in troubled times, and there's a certain pleasure simply hearing the trio again after six long years of silence, particularly since the Beasties are in good form here, crafting appealing productions and spitting out more rhymes than they have since Paul's Boutique. If there are no classics here, there's no duds, either, and given that the Beasties' pop culture aesthetic once seemed to be the territory of young men, it's rather impressive that they're maturing gracefully, turning into expert craftsmen that can deliver a satisfying listen like this. That's a subtle achievement, something that will likely not please those listeners looking for the shock of the new from a Beastie Boys record, but judged on its own musical merits, To the 5 Boroughs is a satisfying listen, and convincing evidence that the trio will be able to weather middle age well. Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Rolling Stone

Two decades after turning from hardcore punk to homeboy jollies, the Beasties are still the best rap band in the biz -- three voices swinging like a jazz trio, racing like Bad Brains. David Fricke