Gather round, children. It’s story time. In 1992, there was a wild trio of emcees that reinvented themselves and an entire genre. Their names were MCA, Ad-Rock, and Mike D, and they were known around most circles for beer drinking, breath stinking, and sniffing glue. One day, almost without warning they released a new album that redefined everything about themselves, and my musical life was flipped on its head in the best possible way.
I grew up a Beastie Boys head from the moment I heard my older cousin Ronnie’s Licensed To Ill cassette in 1986. Then, MTV gave me the keys to the car when they aired the videos for “(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party!)” and “No Sleep till Brooklyn”. Those guys were wild and crazy party dudes. Every minute of their lives seemed like hedonistic fun. 1989’s Paul’s Boutique wasn’t a whole lot different on that front either. The sound changed quite a bit with the sample heavy production work, but the lyrics were in the same vein, albeit wittier, sharper, and somewhat less juvenile. It was “Hey Ladies” instead of “Girls” on the backs of three years of maturity between albums. So, true to the three year window of album releases, in 1992 came Check Your Head. I expected the same thing I’d gotten the two times before. One day, I was watching Rap City and they announced the upcoming video was the premiere off the new Beastie Boys’ record. I waited with bated breath for a song called “Pass The Mic”. What played blew my mind to bits. It was gritty, in your face, and razor sharp. These were not the Beasties I knew, but they were most definitely the Beasties I wanted more of. They still traded off rhymes with bravado, but this time it was full verses interspersed with minimal samples with maximum impact. The production was driving, discordant, and fully grown. The video had skateboarding and street rapping with an urban backdrop. It was glorious.
In July of that summer, my family traveled to Waco to visit my aunt, uncle, and cousins. Gabe, Caleb, and I had always shared a passion for music, and Beastie Boys were certainly one of the groups we mutually loved. We took a quick drive over to the mall early on into the trip to hit up the Sam Goody, where Caleb wanted to get a copy of Check Your Head to explore the rest of the tracks. After I vouched that it was okay for him to listen to despite the explicit lyrics label on the cover, my Aunt Jane allowed it. We listened to it on repeat the entire time I was there. Then, one night before we went home, the Beastie Boys made their infamous appearance on the Arsenio Hall show to perform “So What’cha Want”. As we watched them dismantle minds, it suddenly took an unexpected turn when DJ Hurricane spit a venomous and previously unheard verse. I was stoked. Then, after getting back into the regularly scheduled verses, came a twist that would make M Night Shyamalan blush. B-Real and Sen Dog from Cypress Hill came out high stepping on the stage and threw down another super secret verse. It was almost more than I could wrap my head around in real time. It felt like watching an historical event unfold right in front of you. I wished in the moment afterward that I could rewind television and watch it again. Hip hop history had been made on my cousins’ TV screen.
I missed Pollywog Stew (I was in kindergarden), the Beasties’ 1982 debut EP release when they were still a hardcore punk band, so I was unaware that prior to Check Your Head they had played instruments at all. The deeper into the album I listened, the more I realized that the instrumentation wasn’t new at all but rather a reinvention. Now a decade later, they weren’t slamming on their instruments. They had evolved and learned to play with grace and style. This was evident in tracks like “Gratitude”, which gave a glimpse into the future of what was to come on Ill Communication, and the instrumental funk workout that was “P.O.W.!”. The bass, drums, guitar, and keyboards demonstrated just how seriously they’d begun taking themselves as players without suddenly trying to prove they were virtuosos. They are credited on 17 of the album’s 20 tracks on bass, drums, and guitar. All this came at a time when hip hop and alternative rock were both blowing up, and instead of choosing one or the other, they realized they could do both. This was the defining moment for the Beastie Boys as they transformed from a group into a band, defying critics and norms and genre boundaries. This was the future present, and it was perfect.
HIGHLIGHTS
Pass The Mic: My introduction to Check Your Head and the reinvented Beastie Boy sound. Classic Beastie interplay between Mike D, MCA and Ad-Rock, but now sitting inside this grimy combination of live instrumentation, samples, and production experimentation. MCA’s bass is especially important to the groove.
So What’cha Want: The centerpiece of the album. The track that blew my post-Paul’s Boutique mind. Fuzzed-out bass, distorted vocals, pounding drums, and swagger for days. It’s probably the single best encapsulation of the Check Your Head sound.
Gratitude: One of the clearest demonstrations that the Beasties had become an actual band again. MCA’s distorted bass drives the whole thing, with Money Mark’s organ adding another layer of funk. You can hear the DNA of what they’d do later on Ill Communication.
Jimmy James: A killer opener and statement of intent. Hendrix-inspired guitar textures, scratching, samples, live playing and hip-hop all get tossed into the same blender. It immediately announces that Check Your Head isn’t going to sound like Paul’s Boutique Part II.
Professor Booty: My deep-cut choice. It brings the emphasis back toward straight hip-hop and features some fantastic verses, particularly MCA’s closing verse. It also helps represent the album’s ability to move between playing instruments and simply being three ridiculously charismatic MCs.
“What’s gonna set you free Look inside and you’ll see When you’ve got so much to say It’s called gratitude, and that’s right”
-“Gratitude“, Beastie Boys (1992)
Pairs well with:
Reinvention, funky beats, funky bosses, smashing labels, passing mics, inspiration, punk, funk, hipping and hopping, alt rocking, coming of age, good livin’, and life lovin’
