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TIME - Man of the Year
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CompactPublishing-TimeMagazine-TimeManOfTheYear-Win31MSDOS.iso
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moy
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051892
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1992-09-10
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REVIEWS, Page 76MUSICPunky Funk
By GUY GARCIA
PERFORMER: Beastie Boys
ALBUM: Check Your Head
LABEL: Capitol
THE BOTTOM LINE: Six years after their debut, rap's
original brats look back to the future, with blurred results.
It seems like centuries since the Beastie Boys stormed the
pop charts with their 1986 album, Licensed to Ill, an
appealingly rude debut that fused Animal House antics with a
pounding beat borrowed from the black ghetto. No longer the only
white kids on the block, the Beasties have since been muscled
aside by a host of hip-hoppers, including current media champ
Marky Mark. Their response has been to grow up -- sort of.
On Check Your Head they lay down equal parts of spunk,
punk and funk to retake some of their old turf while displaying
a newfound respect for their musical elders. For the listener,
the result is like looking at 30 years of pop music through the
bottom of an empty beer bottle. Live at P.J.'s at times evokes
a schmaltzy hotel lounge act. Elsewhere, Santana-like Latin
percussion and '60s soul grooves join a pastiche of
electronically altered vocals and jabbering wah-wah guitars.
Songs like Finger Lickin' Good mix live instruments with
electronically sampled sounds and fluid tempos -- "switching the
rhythm," as the Beasties say, "like another piece of chewing
gum."
Less inspired are the lyrics, which range from gibberish
to p.c. platitudes ("Someday we shall all be one"). Only on
Blue Nun, a snickering satire of middle-class oenophiles, and
Pass the Mic, a put-down of rival rappers who "haven't got a
thing to say," do the Beasties show a flash of their old
brattiness. At such moments they simultaneously capture and
embody the giddy social vertigo of livin' large in the '90s.