Review Summary: Other than a couple of absolutely classic worthy highlights, is littered with cheesy instrumentals, repetitive songs and themes, and obnoxious 'frap'boys.
You know that feeling? You might already be feeling the ever presiding mediocrity of a review coming along, and I can certainly understand if you fall asleep during this review. Indeed, this is generic as everything else this site has put out, or better yet, anything I've done as a reviewer. Formulaic, inconsistent, unreliable garbage, and not worthy of being posted on a website. I should be guillotined immediately. I might as well, anyway, for the bizarre opinions I am about to make public as soon as right now. I am not a big fan of Beastie Boys. That may come as a shocker to many music fans, but their form of bland 80s rap mixed with rock samples and frat boy stand-up lyrics just isn't that appealing. Their first album as a rap group,
Licensed to Ill, shows a lot of potential in the form of a couple of the best songs in this bands career (“Brass Monkey”, “Girls”, and of course “Fight For Your Right”), but other than a couple of highlights, drags down in mediocrity, and makes one reassured that eighties have been over for twenty to thirty years!
First off, the highlights. Beastie Boys started off their career as a generic punk/hardcore band, and some of that general taste for simplistic blasts of rebellion still manifest themselves. “Fight For Your Right” is probably the most punk rap song recorded, with rattling metal drums, kicking power chords, and robustly loud vocals give off the feeling of the teenage rebel, except instead of a deeper topic which punk lives for, Beastie Boys are fighting for the party. “No Sleep Til Brooklyn” is sort of like the punk/metal rap anthem “Fight For Your Right”, but takes on more of a arena rock trip, utilizing mammoth riffs and infectious hooks. Although this humorously punk mentality takes effect on a good half of the albums highlights, other are littered with Beastie Boys signature silliness, that somehow works fantastically in some cases. “Girls”, driven by incessant drums, loopy keys, and a general barber shop aesthetic, tells hilarious tales of women with some deep undertones of childish misogyny that are hilarious rather than offensive (“Girls - to do the dishes/Girls - to clean up my room/Girls - to do the laundry/Girls - and in the bathroom”). “Brass Monkey”, however, proves itself to be the best track of the album, with the Beastie Boys parading the silly nature of their music over a thumping beat and making a hook that just gets giggles out of the listener. In the nature of humor, Beastie Boys succeed.
But when it comes to making music worthy of listening to, throughout
Licensed to ILL, the album is marked with mediocrity. How so? Well for starters, The Beastie Boys, as hilariously over-the-top and anthemic as they can be, they overstay their welcome, and their whiny, frat boy voices become inexplicably annoying. The beats, however impressive most of them sounded in the mid 80s, sound dated today, ridden by ridiculously thin guitar samples, clickity wack drum programming, and generally ridden in pure cheese. Mix the almost furious beats, which try hard to create a buzz but only create a whimper, with the high pitched voices of the Beastie Boys, and we get something that's quite hard to pull any good band out of, even one as acclaimed as Beastie Boys.
This effort, no doubt, would have been incredibly impressive back in the 80s, it's clearly what the future of mock rap would become. But evolution involves improving on the past in order to survive, and a lot of mock rappers have improved on this general formula, created rap rock without the datedness of the samples, or created humorous rap without all of the whiteness and general jew environment. For
Licensed To ILL, its influence is undeniable, but the actual music is lackluster other than a couple of highlights
