Beastie Boys
Hello Nasty (Deluxe Edition)
UMe
Celebrating the Beastie Boys is like toasting your slightly older brother at his wedding: You want to be crude because that’s the nature of the relationship between two snot-nosed siblings, but there’s deep abiding reverence and love, to say nothing of the wealth of good feeling at what he once did—inventively but goofily—long before you came into the picture. So along with Mike Diamond and Adam Horovitz attending the marking of Beastie Boys Square this weekend in NYC’s Lower East Side where their Paul’s Boutique album cover photo was shot, there’s the 25th anniversary of Hello Nasty to consider.
If Paul’s Boutique was the Beasties’ Sgt. Pepper, Hello Nasty—expanded as a four-LP box set with rarities, remixes, a coffee table book, and cool sew-on patches—was the trio’s expansively trippy Magical Mystery Tour. Or should I say foursome, as, by the time of 1998’s mid-career opus, Diamond, Horowitz, and the late-great hoarse Adam Yauch had welcomed Mixmaster Mike into the fold as their own Billy Preston. Integrating the Mixmaster into the Beasties’ wonton grooves (exquisitely Latin-accented on the psychedelic likes of “Song for Junior”), to say nothing of their increasingly adult lyrical stance, meant expanding BB’s range beyond Paul’s Boutique’s sampledelics, and shifting the skronky punk-funk of 1992’s Check Your Head and ’94’s Ill Communication into something more sparse, awesomely broad, effervescently electro-driven, and all-encompassing (they fit Lee “Scratch” Perry, Biz Markie, and Cibo Matto’s Miho Hatori onto one album, after all).
From the ’80s high-energy of “Intergalactic,” the jungle shuffle of “Flowin’ Prose,” and the era-appropriate rhythmic kick of Fatboy Slim’s “Body Movin’” remix, to the camp lounge-soul of “Song for the Man” and the punky reggae party of "Dr. Lee, PhD,” Hello Nasty makes the most of its positioning as a free, future-forward, melodic mixed-bag box set. Sure, there are spacious old-school hip-hop moments to be found in "Super Disco Breakin’,” “The Move,” and “Creepin’,” and enough tightly edged nasal raps to be found among the brotherhood of Beasties. But face it: hearing Adam Yauch having the room to both belt and croon like Mel Torme on “I Don’t Know” is worth the price of the four-LP admission—hardcover book and all.
