Five Faves: Beastie Boys Songs

Welcome to week two or so of Beastie Boys Month here at Popwell! The band released a lot of songs during their decades-spanning career, and there’s something to recommend almost every one of them. Choosing just five out of their dozens of great tunes was a daunting challenge, but someone had to do it. Someone had to, right? Ranking them beyond that is a fool’s errand, so they’re listed in chronological order. Feel free to argue with my choices.

Slow and Low (1987) – Yeah, I know that it was originally written and recorded by Run DMC, but was left off the King of Rock album. It only contain two lines written by the Beasties, and they only wrote those because the original lyrics referred to Run or DMC by name. Still. I didn’t know it at the time, though, and this is the song that made me fall in love with the group. “Slow and Low” is the tune I played and rewinded and played again and again. The song leaped out of my speakers and grabbed me from the first time I heard it. “Slow and Low” is a perfect dose of mid-80s rap, with that super-deep 808 bass, hard-hitting snare drum sound, tinkling bell samples, and Rick Rubin-style guitar power chords dropping in on top of it all. The Beasties succeed in making the song their own with their unique deliveries and back-and-forth vocals. Plus, one of the few lines they wrote themselves taught me the only thing I really know about White Castle: their fries only come in one size. (Or used to, I guess.) I must have listened to this about a thousand times in my car with the bass turned up to eleven.

Hey Ladies (1989) – While “Slow and Low” was the tune that really sold me on the Beasties to begin with, it was “Hey Ladies” that convinced me that they were here to stay. After the drunken hi-jinx of Licensed to Ill, everyone was expecting more of the same from the Beasties’ follow-up. But when MTV premiered this video as a prelude to Paul’s Boutique, all expectations flew out the window. Yes, there was a time when the first time you heard a song was when they debuted the video on MTV. It was a big deal, kids. Anyway. . . From the moment I saw this video unspooling on the screen, it was clear that this was nothing like their previous stuff. Instead, it was a sample-drenched blast of pure funky silliness that took me about two seconds to fall in love with. Their alternating lyrics flowed better than ever, and retained every bit of their ridiculous edge. Name-dropping everyone from Chachi to Vincent Van Gogh, rhyming “tomfoolery” with “Chuck Woolery”! The lyrics to “Hey Ladies” rank with the best and loopiest in their entire catalog. And the beyond-words greatness of the densely-layered samplefest underneath it all only hinted at the greatness that they proceeded to drop when Paul’s Boutique arrived in record stores near me. This is some fantastic, funky shit.

B-Boy Bouillabaisse (1989) – The eleven-minute hip-hop opus that closes out Paul’s Boutique is more like eleven songs, really. On my cassette back in the day, it had a bunch of subheads under it listing the pieces in a) b) c) order, in fact. “B-Boy Bouillabaisse” is the ultimate showcase for the Dust Brothers, the mad sampling geniuses behind the album’s music. It’s a whirlwind of mish-mashed half-songs, each blending or scratching into the next. What I love about the song is the crazily eclectic mix of styles the Beastie Boys and their producers employ. The vignettes veer from human beatbox to guitar-drenched Isley Brothers samples to ridiculously deep 808 bass. Some tunes are connected via off-beat samples from the likes of Johnny Cash and Bob Marley. It all just flows brilliantly, with a lot of the tune’s best moments coming from Adam Yauch’s on-point flow. Lyrically, it’s a prime example of the pop-culture drenched free-association style that epitomizes the album. Plus, they’re using cheap mics to muddy the sound years before Julian Casablancas invented the idea. And the very last line name-checks Bad Brains AND Original Concept! So great.

Professor Booty (1991) – Check Your Head is full of incredible tunes, as the Beastie Boys added another layer to their funky stew by picking up their instruments again and actually playing on a bunch of the tracks. For whatever reason, this track buried deep in its twenty tracks has always been my favorite, though. It’s just got this weird funky swing to it. I love the wacko sample bit at the start (after the clip from Wild Style) about pirate treasure, and everything after it is even better. This is one of the rare Beastie Boys songs in which all three guys are flowing at their smoothest. Alright, Mike D will never be mistaken for smooth, but this is as close as he gets. Each MC delivers an on-point verse, with Ad-Rock leading the way over a sparse repeating drum line. Strange new bass accents keep dropping in once Mike D takes over, and then MCA brings the song home with a lengthy, blistering dis directed at 3rd Bass rapper MC Serch. The whole thing maintains a relentless, propulsive drive from start to finish and then wraps up with about forty seconds of block-rocking bass-heavy goodness. Yep.

Get It Together (1994) – This fun, funky collaboration with Q-Tip is my favorite cut off of Ill Communication. The song is built off a fairly simple little Moog organ loop that the band had been playing around with. One night when Tip was visting their studio/skate park/basketball court in Atwater, they played the loop for him and he busted out some freestyles on the spot. They caught Tip’s off-hand lyrics on tape and built the rest of the song around them. The Beasties came up with rhymes to match what Tip had done, spliced everything together, and came up with this gem. Tip has admitted in interviews that he was “fucked up” when he recorded this and the song retains a sort of wasted, lurching momentum that’s driven by that buzzing Moog. His freestyle is suitably all over the place, referencing John Holmes, Joanie Loves Chachi, Ione Skye, and Ma Bell as he meanders from topic to topic. The lyrics the Beasties bounce off Tip’s boozy rhymes are razor-sharp, boasting about having “heart like John Starks” and grandmas named Hazel and Tilly, among other things. Plus it’s got that cool chorus with the sampled “get it together” and “see what’s happenin…” A total original that’s funky as hell.