THE BEASTIE BOYS' CHECK YOUR HEAD AND YOUR RECORD COLLECTION

Following on from the recent re-mastered anniversary release of (the still outstanding) Paul’s Boutique, and in anticipation of their new album, possibly due out late in the year, the Beastie Boy’s have also recently dropped a re-mastered (curiously non-anniversary) version of the 1992 record Check Your Head, complete with a disc of b-sides and remixes.[1]

Check Your Head was, and remains, a pivotal moment in the Beasties’ oeuvre, pointing toward the path they would take throughout the 90’s, and returning them to mainstream consciousness after their previous commercial failure. The album appears to be simultaneously, and quite possibly contradictorily, a huge departure from their previous release and a continuation of same ethos that informed Paul’s Boutique’s creation. On first listen it provides a genuine ‘where the fuck did that come from?’ moment whilst continuing the Beasties’ modus operandi of producing albums that filter and combine their disparate influences, fashioning the music they listen to and care about into something original and, as always during their peak, enjoyable.

It’s a good idea to keep the two previous releases in mind. Licensed to Ill picked up where Run DMC left off and took it to the next stage with some genuine breakthrough moments (Slow & Low, The New Style, Paul Revere) as well as incorporating all the frat boy humour, sexism, stupidity and obvious riff samples. Three years later and Paul’s Boutique is still seen by many as a high watermark for the sampling era. Teaming up with the Dust Brothers, they made what is possibly the most sonically brilliant hip hop album of the late eighties (and there is a lot of competition[2]). It still sounds staggeringly good 20 years on.

So where is this ‘what the fuck moment’ in Check Your Head? Well, it might start out with the Jimi Hendrix sampling ‘Jimmy James’, falsely leading you to believe they will continue where they left off, but it soon becomes apparent the net has been cast much wider than that. By the time the Beasties have hit Biz Markie’s slurred singing over Ted Nugent, an unrecognisable hardcore cover of Sly Stone’s ‘Time For Livin’’ drenched in MCA’s fuzzed bass that blows everything you’ve already heard out of the water, and the talk box vocal of ‘Something’s Got To Give’, they have already touched on jazz-funk instrumentals, soul, the bosa nova rhythms of ‘Lighten‘ Up’, the alt-rock of ‘Gratitude’, and of course hip-hop (‘Pass the Mic’, ‘Jimmy James’, ‘So What’cha Want’). This is an album that followed the juvenile jokes of Licensed to Ill (see ’Girls’) and Paul’s Boutique’s layered sample buffet and intelligent wordplay with a record that references about 10 genres before ending with a spoken word number, intoned over a jazz influenced instrumental backing, that opens with the line “A butterfly floats on the breeze of a sun lit day/As I feel this reality gently fade away”. What the fuck? Where did this come from?

The production values have changed, now a loose, semi lo-fi aesthetic prevails. The way they actually made records had changed too, now they preferred to cut up and sample their own sessions rather than just stealing from other people’s records[3]. Oh, and it’s barely a hip-hop record anymore. There are a host of tracks that come out of nowhere stylistically and leave you unsure what they are (‘Mark on the Bus’, ‘Funky Boss’, ‘Something Got To Give’, ’The Maestro’). But they almost all work.

Check Your Head is a departure in one sense: they had broadened their scope to include every one of their influences, as well as their own playing, in a triumphant return to their pre-Cookypuss hardcore roots. However, it is not such a massive departure as might first appear. Check Your Head, like all the best Beasties’ records, provides you with a window into their own record collections. Discovering the Beasties Boys albums at the right age is like discovering a guide to 20^th century popular music. It’s a signpost to what’s good, made by people with wide listening habits and good taste, like a list of recommendations given to you by the coolest, most generous big brother in the world.

Previous effort Paul’s Boutique made you want to pick up the records they’d sampled. If you owned every record the Beasties and the Dust Brothers used or referenced on the album, your record collection would be a fairly expansive collection of the best music from the 30 years preceding its release[4].

Check Your Head is still about their record collections. It’s still about pop music from jazz through to soul and hip-hop, but this time they want you to pick up Minor Threat, Black Flag, and Bad Brains as well as all those funk and soul records that formed so much of the spine of Paul‘s Boutique. And crucially, Check Your Head, like previous records, distills popular music into something strange, new and exciting. This is ultimately much more than just an exercise in playful pastiche.

The dichotomy between being a radical departure and a continuation of went before is artificially enhanced by the fact that on Check Your Head the Beasties went back to being a ‘proper band’[5]. They picked up their instruments again, recording hours of sessions before applying a cut and paste technique to the tapes for the hip-hop offerings, and turning the remains into instrumentals like ‘Pow’ and ‘In 3’s’. Though they are certainly not the best hardcore, funk or hip-hop group ever, the way they combine all three with such consistently inventive results provides more than enough momentum to carry the album through.

The lo-fi aesthetic and energy help the endeavor. The percussion, low ends and rhythm are turned up, with fuzzy bass lines and distorted vocals layered on top loose beats and MCA’s stand up bass adding depth. Check your Head is really all about the grooves.

Perhaps the really significant change between their previous efforts and Check Your Head is the lyrics. The humour is not missing in action completely, but a significant part of the one-liners, literate pop culture references and overlapping three way wordplay is no longer prevalent, replaced by more introspective lyrics that, in keeping with the tone of the album, seem to celebrate the music itself and its effect on them through a more straight-up, traditional delivery. You might miss the sort of nimble quick wit they deployed on ‘Eggman’, ‘Car Thief’ or ‘Shake Your Rump’, but the new layer of seriousness helps to complete their quiet revolution. MCA delivers his first solo lyrical effort ‘Stand Together’, which along with other offering Something’s Got to Give[6], mark the start a more conscientious approach to lyrics that would be adopted from this point forward.

Lyrics about their love of the music and its redemptive power are all over the record: “find that I can groove with the beat when I let go/so put your worries on hold/get up and groove with the rhythm in your soul”, “I’ve been through many times in which I thought I might lose it/ the only thing that saved me has always been music”, “got the vibrations of the music/bringing light to your mind/so you can move and groove/and feel the beat of the time”; “’cause life ain’t nothing but a good groove /A good mix tape to put you in the right mood”.

Out of context, this kind of thing does occasionally seem in danger of slipping into self-help seminar mode (and a little too blunt and straightforward at that), but essentially, MCA, Mike D and Adrock sound like they’re having too much fun to fall completely in that trap.  Playful humour is still there, check the sharp rhymes traded back and forth from MCA and Mike D on ‘Finger Lickin’ Good’ or Biz Markie’s singing. ‘Professor Booty’, where Adrock manages to pull off the fairly ridiculous opening gambit of “Well, I got more bounce to the fuckin’ bump / And then you want to know why? / it’s cause I’m motherfuckin’ truckin'” through sheer force of delivery, and the irreverent bounce of ‘The Maestro’ including TV detective name dropping (Colombo, Barnaby Jones, Mannix) sustains this pattern of comic bravado right throughout the record and, well, they just sound like they’re having the time of their lives. It’s infectious.

The hip hop is less prevalent, now just another element thrown into the mix, and Check Your Head has songs that don’t easily fall into any existing category, experiments that leave you unsure as to whether they’ve quite succeeded or failed (‘Stand Together’). But ultimately all this ends up adding to the wider mood of shaggy, rough-hewn adventurousness. Though the lyrics might not bear up to close examination in the manner of Paul’s Boutique, in the end Check Your Head is a runaway success because of its danceable accessibility, because of its focus on the music they listen to and what they want you to listen to. It still manages takes you by surprise and somehow is exactly what you wanted at the same time. For that reason it still holds up. It’s still a good place to start your record collection and you still want to be part of it.

GE

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[1]  As for the disc of extras, a lot of it is inessential filler of varying quality. The stand outs are ‘Skills to Pay the Bills’, which really should have been on an album, and the Soul Assassin’s remix of So What’cha Want, reminding you what Cypress Hill once were before it all went wrong.

[2]  It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, 3 Feet High and Rising, Criminal Minded, Paid in Full, Strictly Business, Goin’ Off, Straight Outta Compton, Raising Hell, Critical Beatdown etc

[3]  Although this had just as much to do the landmark copyright ruling regarding Biz Markie’s use of Gilbert O’Sullivan’s ‘Alone Again (Naturally)’ on his I Need a Haircut album in 1991, which effectively ended the possibility of an album like Paul’s Boutique ever happening again.

[4]  Sly Stone, Gene Harris, Funkadelic, Funk Factory, Afrika Bambaata, Led Zeppelin, Curtis Mayfield, Pink Floyd, Kurtis Blow, Jean Knight, The Ramones, The Eagles, Fatback Band, The Beatles, Funky 4 +1, James Brown, Joni Mitchell, BDP, Jimi Hendrix, Isley Brothers, The Meters, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Bob Marley, Chic . . . the list goes on

[5]  With the addition of ‘Money Mark’ Nishita who’s keyboards and organ are all over the album, as well as Mario Caldato Jnr. producing, and various people picking up percussion

[6]  Sample lyric “I wish for peace between the races/ Someday we shall all be one”