Beastie Boys “Hot Sauce Committee Part Two”
1993 was the year I reunited with the Beastie Boys. In 1987, when “License to Ill” dropped like a loogie bomb on American airwaves, I was thirteen. It was hard to deny the adolescent force of those first singles. I was a Jewish kid from New York, myself. I was into music. I would tape Grandmaster Flash and Kurtis Blow off the radio. The Beasties should have been my thing. But they weren’t. I had this vague sense that it was all a bad joke -- that liking them meant I was less grown up. And, at that age, what I wanted more than anything was to be grown up. So, in spite of what my ears enjoyed, I kept my nose up in the air while my friends at school sang “Brass Monkey” and “No Sleep Till Brooklyn.”
A couple of years later, I had made the very grown up, very precocious and very pretentious turn into Post-Punk. And with that, anything in between Dylan and The Talking Heads (and certainly everything that followed The Replacements) was irrelevant to me. So, in my own highmindedness, I missed out on “Paul’s Boutique” when it was first released. I was probably not alone. “Paul Boutique” was a weird fucking record. Though it came out only three years after “Licensed to Ill,” it was spiritually ten to fifteen years older. And, in spite of the fake location in its title, it was also a West Coast album. It was dense and funky like a serious bong -- not like the cheap ceramic pipes I nervously eyed on Second Avenue. Its references were both broader and more insular that most of us could keep up with. In these ways, the album leapfrogged a lot of East Coast teens who had first encountered the group when we were fighting for their rights to party.
By the summer of 93, however, I was on the border of twenty. I had finished my freshman year at college and was interning for a woman who managed local bands. I got paid nothing. I would eat two hot dogs and Welch’s grape soda for lunch and rice and tofu bowls at Dojo’s for dinner. I slept on the floor of an over-crowded NYU dorm room, with no air conditioning. But it was unquestionably the most memorable summer of my waning youth. You see, my boss managed Luscious Jackson, who had an EP out called “In Search of Manny.” As importantly, the group was part of the extended Beastie Boys universe. Grand Royal Records, which the Beastie Boys owned, released the record. And Luscious Jackson’s drummer, Kate Schellenbach, was an original Beastie Boy.
When I first started my internship, none of this mattered a whole lot. I was busying myself with Joy Division, Wire and Tom Verlaine solo albums. But gradually that began to change. Every day, I would listen to the Luscious Jackson EP and then I would put on “Paul’s Boutique” and “Check Your Head.” Instead of a salary or wages, I would get free tickets to shows where my boss had an in. I saw Beck and Cibo Matto and The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. During my extended lunch breaks (there was not that much work to do), I would wander towards Avenue A and visit the new X-Large store, which Mike D was apparently involved with. At the time, Avenue A may as well have been the edge of the universe to me. Tomkins Square Park was still the place to score dope and the bars that far east had nine professional drunks for every one professional hipster. This was the moment in New York between Liquid Sky and Supreme. Nobody I knew lived in Brooklyn, much less Williamsburg.
Outside of Hardcore, there was no New York Rock music scene to brag about in 1993. But I had found myself on the very edges of a slightly older, impossibly cool creative class. And Grand Royal was at the center of it all. The Kim Gordon clothes. The Mike Mills posters. The Beck remixes. The magazine with the cover story about mullets. I didn’t need to understand Sonic Youth or the history of Rap. I didn’t need to be cool. I was five foot eleven, one hundred and thirty pounds. I still had acne. I was noticeably awkward. And I was by no means on the inside. But I had stumbled my way close enough to get a view of something much, much bigger.
For me, that summer culminated at a party on the top floor of one of the Twin Towers, where my memory was fuzzy but the mark was indelible. The famous restaurant and bar there was called “Windows on the World” and I found my name on a guest list that included every amazing person in the Grand Royal rolodex. Plus me -- the intern for the nice woman who managed Luscious Jackson. I remember sweating nervously, drinking even though I was pretty straight edge and, around midnight, watching the dance floor clear as Beck breakdanced in a tiny, fitted suit and tie. To this day, I’ve never seen anything or anyone so cool. That night, I brushed up against the genuine article. And I tried to hang onto the contact high for the rest of the summer.
I managed to smuggle an ounce of that irrational confidence back with me to college after the summer ended. In the fall of 1993, “Paul’s Boutique” was my secret weapon. I didn’t go out to bars. I wasn’t in a fraternity. My thing was to meet up with friends in a dorm room, dim the lights, press play on that album, and just wait as people’s natural inhibitions melted away. That was the effect of “Paul’s Boutique.” It made people who couldn’t dance want to dance. It made shitty dancers, like myself, feel completely at ease moving ridiculously. It made way too serious, film theory majors smile as they rapped along. It made you believe you were in on the inside jokes, even when you were outside of the in crowd. Then, when we were sufficiently giddy, we’d put on “Check Your Head” and pretend that we were ready to really fuck shit up. To be clear, we weren’t.
In that one year, I learned a lot from the Beastie Boys. I learned about skate culture. I learned about being an artist and a not so small business owner. I learned about Lee Perry. I learned about The Dust Brothers and sampling as an art form. I learned that you were allowed to love Punk Rock and Rod Carew. I learned how obscure, inside jokes can become shared, cultural tropes. I learned that dorks could be the coolest people in the room. And I learned about “bricolage” -- the concept of construction through seemingly disparate, even random sources and references. In barely studying Andy Warhol and John Waters, I had understood how high and low culture converged. But, on “Paul’s Boutique,” the Beastie Boys and Dust Brothers had taken it much further and in every conceivable direction. They did something musically that had never been done before and, for many reasons, has not been done since.
During my season in the Grand Royal neighborhood, I learned a whole bunch of stuff -- most of it funny and clever, but also kind of frivolous. In time, though, the Beastie Boys did teach me some things that have endured. Serious and far-reaching things. They taught me how to grow up. How to have friendships. And how to be a good, Jewish, adult man. I say this mostly seriously. I got to watch three best friends, who were about ten years older than me, dream, try something, get famous, act like jerks, evolve, strive, sincerely apologize, grow apart, stay together, have families, laugh a lot, be deadly serious and return to each other and their music. I got to watch Ad Rock go from prankster ham to private, more serious artist. I got to see MCA go from quiet, slightly older brother to sophisticated filmmaker and humanitarian. And I got to see Mike D, constantly in the middle, become a Dad and CEO of a small business empire.
As I grew older, I listened to their music much less. After “Hello Nasty” I would check in with singles and read reviews. But I couldn’t fairly call myself an “avid fan.” That being said, I never lost track of the Beastie Boys as men in the world. It was hard not to project -- to imagine a life wherein you and your best friends made a successful career out of your collective dreams, talents and jokes. There was something very romantic about it all. About growing up but not leaving childhood behind. About making your friends laugh and getting paid for it.
The more I considered it, however, the more I saw the tragedy of their plight. Michael Diamond, Adam Horovitz and Adam Yauch’s friendship was their business. Literally, in that they co-owned corporate entities. And figuratively in that their band’s brand was built on the perception of their camaraderie. But if you reread that sentence and emphasize the word “their,” you realize that, so long as the Beastie Boys existed, their friendship was not exactly their business. For almost thirty years, the band shared their inside jokes, nicknames, favorite actors, shows, movies, singers, restaurants and MCs with the rest of us. They, of course, didn’t share the breadth and depth of their friendships with the world. But they did share some part of it. They built windows and profited from the views in. And that could not have been simple or easy. Over time, you could see MCA taking steps backwards. And, to this day, you can see Ad Rock chafe when he is asked to participate in the performance of it all. He will gladly act. But he won’t pretend that promotions and public relations are anything more than shilling. Meanwhile, Mike D, the company guy, had to step up and do the selling.
This increasingly demanding act came to a public head, of course, when Yauch got sick. Like many of his fans, when I heard the news, I got a sharp pit in my stomach. But I also presumed that he would beat the cancer. I’d never heard of the parotid gland and I assumed that, given modern medicine and Yauch’s relative youth, it would all be a terrible scare, but nothing more. He meditated. He ate well. He looked like he was in good shape. He was in his mid-forties. He had a ten year old daughter. Fuck. He was MCA. He was Nathanial Hörnblowér. He was Abednego. He couldn’t die.
Moments before we all learned about Yauch’s cancer, we got two singles from a forthcoming album that was alternately called “Tadlock’s Glasses” and “Hot Sauce Committee Part One.” “Lee Majors Comes Again” was badass, straight up, 80s Hardcore with squeal, scratches and our MCs rapping. It sounded like Lemmy from Motorhead grew up in Brooklyn in the early 80s. It was a version of Rap Rock that completely undressed Limp Bizkit, Kid Rock, ICP and a lot of what topped the charts between 1998 and 2000. And “Too Many Rappers,” the second single, was a throwback flex. Alongside some bong residue, Dub bass and a heavy screech for a hook, Mike and the Adams are joined by Nas. And, even though the MCs are mixed deeper into the track and even though the vocals are treated with echo and reverb, the wordplay and flow is undeniable. It’s not necessarily a great radio or club single but it is still an undeniable performance. And so, based on those two songs, we excitedly held our breath for the album, which was scheduled to come out in September of 2009.
Just days after “Too Many Rappers” was released, however, Yauch shared his diagnosis. We gasped from the gut punch. Then we briefly exhaled. the Beastie Boys pressed pause on “Hot Sauce Committee Part One” so we held our breath all over again. In October of that year, Yauch announced that, while a new release date had not been confirmed, the band was targeting the first half of 2010. The mere fact that he was going on record and looking towards the future gave us some minor relief.
Meanwhile, track listings had been shared, some early reviews of leaked songs began to crop up and nervous anticipation built. The optimism turned to confusion, though, in late 2010 when the band reported that “Hot Sauce Committee Part One” was being shelved indefinitely but that “Hot Sauce Committee Part Two” was now being slated for a 2011 release. Additionally, the new album was going to include most, but not all, of the songs that were included on the track list for the original record. It was unclear if these were new versions of the same songs or the same versions or if it was all an elaborate, if typical, inside joke. Naturally, rumors began to swirl in music magazines, on boards and social media. Most parties, but not all, agreed that a “Part Two” was always intended as a follow up to “Part One.” Some people suggested that the hard drive that contained the original album had been damaged or lost. Others concluded that Yauch’s cancer and the time off gave the band new perspective, which inevitably affected their previous conclusions. For my own part, I couldn’t figure out if what I was sensing was a masterful prank, or a final reckoning or none of the above.
When “Hot Sauce Committee Part Two” did, finally, come out in May of 2011, it was approached carefully. The build up had run on so long and the misdirections were so great, that some writers and fans were fatigued. Moreover, MCA’s health and the future of the band loomed large over the entire affair. From what I gathered at the time, people generally liked it, the way they appreciate the rhymes, humor and craftiness in all Beastie Boys’ albums. But critics commented on a discernible lack of hooks and a general “soupiness” in the mix. While the group had indicated a return to the density of “Check Your Head” and “Paul’s Boutique,” detractors heard less songs and more sludge.
I didn’t buy the album in 2011. I still don’t own it on vinyl. And I didn’t stream it until many years later. Following Yauch’s death in 2012, I wasn’t sure if I was ready to read the farewell transmission. But, in late 2018 Ad Rock and Mike D, with the help of the extended Grand Royal universe, made a book that eventually became a theatrical production. I bought the book the week it came out and devoured it. I saw the duo on TV and heard them on podcasts — Mike D earnestly selling and Ad Rock less politely resisting. The men were in their fifties. How the fuck did that happen? Horovitz was handsome and had gone mostly grey. Diamond looked lean and had inordinately healthy looking hair. I couldn’t resist. I mean — the Beastie Boys were never my favorite band. But they were always my favorite guys. I had to go back to “Hot Sauce Committee Part Two.” I just had to.
It turns out that the critics were about half right in their appraisals. A bunch of the tracks on “Part Two” have the heavy screech of “Check Your Head” with the addition of video game beats in place of something steady or catchy. Tracks like “OK,” “Tadlock’s Glasses” and “Here’s a Little Something for Ya” all indulge Ad Rock’s more experimental noisemaking. Voices get filtered through robots. Hooks sound like ping pong balls. The Moog sounds like a Heavy Metal fart. Each of those things can still work, but the beats, whether they are made by Mike D’s drums or Ad Rock’s computer, don’t always keep up. Even in his fifties, Ad Rock is one of the world’s greatest MCs. But he’s not Pharrell or James Murphy or The Dust Brothers when it comes to building tracks. And, given the relatively even mix between the vocals and the tracks, “Part Two” can occasionally sound like hot soup more than hot sauce.
Those are honestly the exceptions, though. “Part Two” is lean (sixteen songs in forty four minutes) and exceptionally fun. When it gets funky or dubby, it absolutely crushes. The opening track, “Make Some Noise,” is like a pre-party hype machine. The hook has some real Space Funk about it and the chorus literally incites the crowd to get up and cheer. They rhyme like grown up, genius clowns, trading verses and sharing the chorus. They don’t sound much older or wiser. But, they sound as great as ever.
Aside from “Lee Majors Come Again,” which I had heard many years earlier on the radio,” the best two tracks on the album took me by surprise. "Don't Play No Game That I Can't Win" is a very straight, very live Dub track featuring Santigold on lead vocals. The beats are slick. The hook is perfect. The (synth) horns are white hot. And Santigold plays it cool while the Boys bark it up alongside her. It’s the sort of song that could soundtrack every hip sneaker shop from New York to LA. Towards the end of the album, we get "Multilateral Nuclear Disarmament," with its stoned Soul groove and light Eurotrash synth. It sounds like Air’s “Moon Safari,” but with a better ass. The vocals are sort of muttered through a computer, but I’m completely into all of it. I want it to go on forever. I want the Beastie Boys to play it on an endless loop when I get to heaven.
The last two tracks on “Part Two” are barely three minutes, combined. "Crazy Ass Shit" comes first. It features Mike D’s sons in the chorus, goes on and on til the break of dawn, is full of silly callbacks, and sounds cheap and funky like brass monkey. It’s followed by a fifty second shard of an idea -- an homage to Lisa Lisa and the music and city that the guys grew up with. Without context, it feels like an odd ellipsis at the end of an album full of exclamations. With the benefit of time, however, these final minutes sound more like a quick fever dream, looking back, trying to locate something. It’s profoundly sad in 2021, but perhaps there was something hopeful about it in 2011.
Six months after the release of “Hot Sauce Committee Part Two,” the Beastie Boys were inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. MCA was too sick to attend and, in a moment of dystopian irony, Kid Rock performed part of the tribute. Five months later, Yauch died. We were given ample notice. Nevertheless, we did un-Buddhist things. We mourned. We struggled to accept it. I kind of did those things. But, I mostly thought about 1993 and those rare moments when I danced very willingly (but terribly) to “Paul Boutique.”