Name: To The 5 Boroughs
Brand: Beastie Boys

Bonus disc

Bonus disc: No

Catalogue number

B002699201

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Colour

Black

Colour details

Discogs ID

Format multiplier

Download code

Download code: No

Rough Trade Exclusive

Rough Trade Exclusive: No

Extended format

Extended format: No

Format detail

Format Music US

Limited edition

Release date

2021-08-20

Signed copies

Signed copies: No

Supplier US

Unive­rsal

Tax rate US

Sales:8.875

UPC / Barcode

602557727937

Total Cap

Black LPx2

Artist

Beastie Boys

Genre US

Hip Hop

Label US

Capitol Records

The Beastie Boys are an American hip hop band that formed in New York in 1981. Originally a hardcore punk combo, they gained success with their first hip hop track, "Cooky Puss" in 1983. The group transitioned into a rap group that occasionally incorporated punk rock tracks into their albums. From 1992 to 2001, they operated the Grand Royal label. Following the death of Adam Yauch in 2012, the band officially disbanded in June 2014.

The original members of the Beastie Boys included Ad Rock (Adam Horovitz) on vocals and guitar from 1982 until 2014, MCA (Adam Yauch) on vocals and bass from 1981 until his passing in 2012, and Mike D (Michael Diamond) on vocals and drums from 1981 until 2014. The band also had additional members during various periods including Kate Schellenbach on drums from 1981 to 1984.

Throughout their career, the Beastie Boys collaborated with several touring members such as Rick Rubin as DJ Double R from 1984 to 1985, DJ Hurricane from 1986 to1997, Mix Master Mike from1998 to2014 among others. Their unique blend of genres and energetic performances made them one of the most influential groups in hip hop history.

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From its artwork down, To The 5 Boroughs is situated in the opposite of Hello Nasty’s intergalactic headspace: firmly rooted, the line drawing of the Twin Towers recalled not only a lost skyline, but a lost time and place when the hip-hop aesthetic was stripped-back; all you needed were a handful of DJs backed by a mix master on the ones and twos. In keeping it old school and not over-complicating things, Beastie Boys made sure their message was loud and clear.

Opener ‘Ch-Check It Out’ may sit comfortably in Beasties’ great tradition of party-starters, but, with its straight-up Golden Age sound it only partially set the scene for what would come. With Beasties at their most overtly political, ‘It Takes Time To Build’ calls out President Bush and US foreign policy (“We’ve got a president we didn’t elect… And still the US just wants to flex/Keep doing that, what, we gonna break our necks”); ‘Right Right Now Now’ takes a stand for gun control; ‘An Open Letter To NYC’ is full of love for their home turf in a way that eschewed the Bronx-Queens territorialism of hip-hop’s past for a collective shout out to the five boroughs.

Not that To The 5 Boroughs was solely fixated on New York City in the aftermath of 9/11. Released on 15 June 2004, almost three years after those events, ‘Triple Trouble’ found them determined to recapture the good times, grabbing the mic from ‘Ch-Check It Out’ and extending the block-party stylings. Elsewhere, ‘Crawlspace’ finds Beasties creeping around in their rival MCs’ homes, delivering a weirdly spoken-word rap over a squelchy synth that’s like little else in their discography. “This may be one of my favourite songs we ever made,” Ad-Rock recalled. “Not a lot of weirdo stuff in rap… It makes me laugh out loud every time.”

Hailed by PopMatters as “their best album since Paul’s Boutique” and Rolling Stone as “an exciting, astonishing balancing act: fast, funny and sobering”, To The 5 Boroughs eventually found Beasties straddling two worlds: the irreverent humour they’d mastered with ease over the previous two decades, and a newfound political outlook that may never again have been given such free rein on record, but which chimed with the group’s latter-day position as husbands, fathers and elder statesmen of hip-hop.

As Ad-Rock later put it in Beastie Boys Book: “I’m proud that in a serious time, we got serious.”

To The 5 Boroughs

Music US

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