The album starts with a surprising bit of laid-back jazz with To All The Girls before it explodes into the funkiness of Shake Your Rump, and that sets the scene for the rest of the album. Samples from all over the place – I picked out a bit of Johnny Cash, for example, layered into deeply funky tracks with the typical Beastie Boys wit and verve to the lyrics. The back-and-forth of the rapping is pared back a bit, but the verbal dexterity is still there.
The track Johnny Ryall is Zappa-esque in its character sketch of a homeless addict – “Johnny Ryall, Johnny Ryall. He drinks where he lies, he's covered with flies. He's got the hand me down Pumas, and the tie dyes. Well, you go upstate and get your head together, Thunderbird is the word and you're light as a feather”, or from the track Shadrach – which casts the three Beastie Boys as Biblical Daniel’s companions in the fiery furnace, Shadrach, Mesach and Abednego – “Because they got more stories than J.D's got Salinger, I hold the title and you are the challenger”.
There’s a bit of an ongoing Beatles tribute as well. Not only is there a track called Eggman (which, to be fair, has nothing to do with I Am The Walrus), The Sounds Of Science uses a sample of When I’m Sixty-Four as the bed, along with elements of The End (the one from Abbey Road, not the one by The Doors) The ongoing mix of rock and rap continues with plenty of heavy guitar on Looking Down The Barrel Of A Gun. The album ends with B-Boy Bouillabaise, a 12-minute mélange of chaotic sample-based mini-tracks.
Here we hear the continuation of the collage style of sampling, building up complex tracks from bits and pieces of other tracks and (as Byrne and Eno did), cut and paste from words and sounds as well. The sheer intense funkiness of the beats really carries this one along – apparently it was a flop on release – another good reason to explore it as part of this list.
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