Hello Nasty

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On their previous album, Ill Communication, the Beastie Boys expanded their parameters yet again, melding cutting-edge hip-hop with slinky jazz, butt-wiggling funk, weepy classical, and combustive punk rock. Four years down the line, the group’s music isn’t nearly as organic. They’ve all but abandoned the guitars and returned to the kind of old-school beats and rhythms that defined their groundbreaking 1989 disc, Paul’s Boutique. But Hello Nasty isn’t a regression, and it’s anything but a cop-out: in addition to resurrecting the best elements from their past, the Beastie Boys have embraced the dopest high tech gizmos of the computer age. Hello Nasty gurgles like galactic sulfur pools, whizzes like a Sega game, and slurps and thumps like the best backward Hendrix loops. Add in a cavalcade of Latin percussion, calliope keyboards, and exotic samples (Stravinsky, Stephen Sondheim, Jazz Crusaders, Rachmaninoff), and you’re left with one of the most creative and jubilant hip-hop records to date, even if you exclude witty lyrics like, “I’m the king of Boggle / There is none higher / I get 11 points off the word quagmire” (“Putting Shame in Your Game”). To paraphrase über-critic Robert Christgau, Paul’s Boutique may have been the band’s Pet Sounds, but Hello Nasty is the Beasties’ Sgt. Pepper’s. –Jon Wiederhorn

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Review

Hello Nasty reveals a growing adult sensibility, especially in edgy topical tracks like “Flowin’ Prose,” a peacenik anthem set to drum ‘n’ bass rhythms, and “Putting Shame in Your Game….” — USA Today

Hello Nasty is a sonic smorgasbord in which the Beasties gorge themselves with reckless abandon. The melange makes for a looser, more free-spirited record than their earlier albums; the music invites you in, rather than threatening to shut you out. There’s a rub though: For all their leaps toward maturity (a word they probably hate), the Beasties are still most distinctive when they’re randomly accessing crazy rhymes over big beats. — Entertainment Weekly

No matter how much they swear they’re “getting on down or the year 2000,” the Hello Nasty that is given over to hip-hop is filled with so much money-makin’ and disco-breakin’ on an don till the breakadawn, you’d think we’d taken the way-back machine into the early Kangol era. Yet such recapping doesn’t sound even faintly kitschy. More like a labor of love by three premillennial mensches laying their roots down: a B-boy Anthology of New York Folk Music. — Spin

There’s an endearing honesty and lack of guile along with the sheer entertainment value, and if Hello Nasty isn’t these erstwhile brats’ most ambitious moment, it’s hard not to get swept up in the momentum of the slamming tracks and fiery raps. — The Los Angeles Times

[F]or the first time in their career, the Beasties sound more like a group influenced by hip hop instead of an actual hip-hop group. For the most part it is a long- winded, self-indulgent, sub-par effort from one of rap’s originals. — People

[T]hey have lost some of the youthful swagger that fueled their fat boy rap’s high-octane edge. The WDEF radio format that strings this collection together doesn’t work because it’s been done to death and it’s just not funny–especially when you have to fast-forward every five minutes. — Vibe

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