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If you went to high school or college in the second half of the 1990's then you may remember Ill Communication as the soundtrack to a good portion of the parties you went to. Fifteen years after its original release, it stands up as perhaps the best release of the Beastie Boys' lengthy career. It managed to neatly distill all of their various, and seemingly disparate, interests (hip hop, funk, hardcore punk, 70's underground culture, and even Adam Yauch's Buddhism) and showed signs that musically the trio were fine-tuning the mix of live instruments and samples that they started with Check Your Head into something more cohesive and mature. The rapping and beats on tracks like "Sure Shot" , "B-Boys Making With The Freak Freak", "Root Down" and "Get It Together" (featuring a classic Q-Tip guest spot) are more confident, the instrumental funk tracks ("Bobo On The Corner", "Sabrosa, "Futterman's Rule") are more than filler, and the hardcore tracks ("Tough Guy" and "Heart Attack Man") are as good as anything from the early 1980's. As for the most well known song, "Sabotage" - it may have been killed by overexposure on MTV and Modern Rock Radio but listening to it now, removed from any kind of pop culture context, you realize it's a pretty strange song to have been such a big hit. Was it rap? Metal? Punk? More likely it was both all and none of the above. It's exactly that kind of progressive genre-blending that made Ill Communication a huge hit with both critics and fans.
This new edition of the album (the third in the Beastie's reissue campaign behind Paul's Boutique and Check Your Head) features remastered sound and a second disc of extra material. That disc features a hodge podge of live songs, inessential remixes of "Sure Shot", "Get It Together", and "Root Down", stoned joking around (an unplugged version of "Heart Attack Man" and "Atwater Basketball Association File No. 172-C" - the latter of which is just a recording of people playing basketball) and four songs ("Resolution Time", "Dope Little Song", "The Vibes" and "Mullet Head") which are good enough that they could have easily been part of the album proper.
DAVID MANSDORF
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