The Beastie Boy’s third album is some of their best, most eclectic music
By Colin O’Neil
If you still think the Beastie Boys were only about “You gotta fight for your right to party!” and “Brass monkey, that funky monkey,” you better go take another look, lest you get chewed out by someone like me at a party. Check Your Head, the Beasties’ third offering from way back in 1992, is most definitely their best. Sure, you may only recognize one song from the back of the album, but when you put that shit on, you’ll see.
It’s an album I struggle to genre-tize. It’s hip-hop, I guess, but that label gets challenged throughout. Both “Gratitude” and “Time For Livin’ ” are heavy-distortion, power-strumming punk songs, while “Pow” and “In 3’s” are lyric-less fuck jams, a prelude to the Beasties’ 2007 instrumental album The Mix Up. In fact, the songs on Check Your Head are a mix-up themselves, a collection of the group’s classic verse-trading raps over heavy beats, creeping basslines, and perfectly tangled melodies. But this album is far from one dimensional.
The Beastie Boys are exceptional musicians, and although that may have gone unnoticed on their 1986 blow-up, License to Ill, it comes out full force on Check Your Head. The Beasties prove they can cross musical boundaries with ease on this album, showing a masterful balance of musicianship with demo tracks and turntable scratchings. They find a place for everything: gospel backing vocals, organ lines, and even something that sounds like a slurpee straw moving up and down against a plastic lid.
The Beastie Boys have come back into conversation lately after the death of Adam Yauch, a.k.a. MCA. For us fans, this unfortunate event means the end of new material, as the Beasties are not a group to pick up and carry on. They have a vast musical library to their name, although to many, they are still only known for the gems of their first album. They’ve got more than that, as Check Your Head proves — much more. It’s an album of groovy beats, catchy rhymes, funky samples, sunglasses, oversized t-shirts, and a little 1990s Brooklyn philosophy. Check it.
