Once
Adam Yauch
discovered he had cancer in 2009,
the Beastie Boys
shelved their forthcoming
The Hot Sauce Committee, Pt. 1
and its companion volume, gradually reviving and revising the project once
Yauch
went into remission. At this point, they scrapped their convoluted plans to release concurrent complementary volumes of
THSC
and simply went forth with
The Hot Sauce Committee, Pt. 2
, which retained the bulk of the track list from Pt 1. All this hurly-burly camouflages the essential truth of
The Hot Sauce Committee
: that
the Beasties
could sit on an album for two years to no ill effect to their reputation or the record's quality. This doesn't suggest they're out of step so much as they're out of time, existing in a world of their own making, beholden to no other standard but their own. Certainly,
stitch together sounds and rhymes from their past throughout
, laying down grooves a la
Check Your Head
but weaving samples through these rhythms, thickly layering the album with analog synths out of
Hello Nasty
, all the while pledging allegiance to old-school rap in their rhymes. Nothing here is exactly unexpected -- even the presence of
Santogold
on
"Don't Play No Game That I Can't Win"
isn't new, it's new wave -- yet
feels fresh because there is such kinetic joy propelling this music. Last time around,
weighed themselves down by creating retro-tribute to N.Y.C., taking everything just a little bit too seriously, but here they're free of any expectations and are back to doing what they do best: cracking wise and acting so stupid they camouflage how kinetic, inventive, and rich their music is. And, make no mistake,
does find the
Beastie Boys
at their best. Perhaps they're no longer setting the style, but it takes master musicians to continually find new wrinkles within a signature sound, which is precisely what
do here. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine