To the 5 Buroughs - The Beastie Boys sad decline

I very much hate to say this, but the Beastie Boys have simply lost it. To the 5 Buroughs has almost no musical value whatsoever. The muse seems to have fled from them. Or perhaps they're just tired.

In any case, there is not even one decent song on this record. There is no melody, no song structure, nothing of interest. A lot of bar bands might cover "Sabotage" or even "Fight for Your Right to Party." No one will be covering any song from this album, because there simply are no "songs" here that you would use the word for without scare quotes.

It doesn't even have the rhythm part, which is usually the strong suit of rap. It might be considered to have "beats" in that there are repeated rhythmic patterns, but there are certainly no real grooves.

Then again, the groove thing will be lost in that they are back to not playing instruments, or at least not by much. They're reduced to basically random samples stuck together. Boring. Been done, and much better by the Beasties themselves among others. This is highly artistically regressive.

The lyrics are simply garbage. For starters, there's little in the way of structure, discipline, any kind of pattern. They're just random lines of words, regurgitating the same half-ass smart-ass schtick as ever, only less creatively. At one time they came up with, for example, "Shadrach," framing the rap boasts in a clever Hebrew joke, casting themselves as Biblical prophets.

Whereas now, the more coherent end of their lyrics is something like "WE GOT TO KEEP THE PARTY GOING ON ALL LIFESTYLES, SIZES, SHAPES AND FORMS" That's not a song lyric, it's a mindless piece of liberal PC boilerplate. It shows no creativity. It has no imagery. It's just pointless.

This whole record is so worthless that I'd rather listen to the Katie Melua snoozefest. It does at least have songs, even if they're not much good. Hell, I'd listen to Barbara Streisand before I listen to this again.

Look, the Beasties made several really outstanding albums. There's no shame that it's dried up. However, that does not excuse taking people's money for nonsense like this. Plus, it actively detracts from their legacy.

So then, the moral of this story is that if you don't have any decent songs, you shouldn't put out a record.

Lyrics