Beastie Boys 
Hot Sauce Committee Part Two
Capitol
May 3
By Max Kyburz
If there’s one thing the Beastie Boys’ long awaited Hot Sauce Committee Part Two proves, it’s that they are old. Quite old indeed.
Since 1979, Mike D, Ad-Rock and MCA have been sabotaging, boutiquing and fighting for your right (to party), a remarkable feat for an all-white hip-hop act. They’ve always brought their own eclectic and quirky edge to it, hence why acts like Paul Wall and Asher Roth have failed. Beginning as a hardcore punk outfit, they’ve always possessed a young and angry attitude even when they’ve experimented with every sound imaginable.
But even as time has been good for their legacy, each new recording has been more and more filled with recessive genes. In the case of Hot Sauce, the boys (I use that term loosely) sound tired. Very tired. There are several reasons for this, one of them being that Adam Yauch (MCA) has been battling cancer, delaying the release for nearly a year.
Under a new moniker (by changing it from Pt. 1 to Pt. 2), we can see what’s been taking them so long. When it unfolds, however, the results are disappointing. The opener, “Makes Some Noise,” fails to obey the title’s command. Compared to “Ch-Check It Out,” which opened 2007’s To the 5 Burroughs, it’s a whimper rather than a bang. Their middle-age leaks through into muffled mid-tempos and it yields unpleasant results.
The Boys sound as though they are attempting a more “chill” sound, but their trademark whiny vocals don’t fit into that mold. The first few tracks end up being showcases for some tightly crafted beats, but they distract from what should be prime Beastie riffs and rhymes. Their collaboration with Nas, “Too Many Rappers,” bad-mouths the wannabes on the scene, but it doesn’t work when the Beasties end up sounding as weak as the contemporaries they are criticizing. Some exotic flavor is present on “Don’t Play No Game That I Can’t Win,” which features Santigold, but it all sounds like too much experimenting and not enough solid, focused structure.
The most grueling segment (and clearest example of how they’ve pretty much lost it) is “Long Live the Fire,” which ends up sounding too much like gangsta rap, which is hard to get away with if you are a 40-something white and reasonably wealthy Jewish citizen. Out of nowhere comes “Lee Majors Comes Again,” a brief moment of relief that bursts with that classic B-Boy charisma missing from too much of Hot Sauce. Unfortunately it arrives too late to inspire much interest in the album’s remainder, which ends with a wholeheartedly half-assed fifty-second ditty called “The Lisa Lisa/Full Force Routine.”
Though MCA’s illness must be taken into consideration, Hot Sauce seems less like a comeback and more of an application for an AARP card. May the puns on their term of preference “Ill” ensue.
