To The 5 Boroughs
For three mostly diehard New Yorkers who played an ambassadorial role in the dissemination of the city’s hip-hop and punk culture during the ’80s and ’90s, the fall of the Twin Towers—which, incidentally, were only a few blocks from the band’s studio—didn’t just upend the Beastie Boys’ lives, it forced a reckoning about their legacy and purpose. Fun, yes—and camaraderie, and joint discovery. But *To the 5 Boroughs* was also an effort of stewardship, of reasserting the culture they came from in the face of changing times. So you get the Double Trouble/Treacherous Three homage of “Triple Trouble,” the rainbow-flag electro of “All Lifestyles,” and the personal geographies of “An Open Letter to NYC,” probably the most earnest, emotionally up-front track the band had ever recorded. But because this is a Beastie Boys album (and because they were always too smart to betray the lightness of their collective heart), you also get “Hey F\*\*k You,” a Partridge Family loop (“Right Right Now Now”), and MCA standing outside your favorite rapper’s house like a creep and offering them a shawl (“Crawlspace”), because—what? They looked cold. And to their elder-statesman status, Mike D offered this: “Ready to throw a craze/Make your granny shake her head and say ‘those were the days.’” It’s not nostalgia if you’re still having fun with it.
On walks around Manhattan, even on sun-scorched days, mysterious precipitation falls on your head. Whether this comes from urinating birds ...
Luckily the album’s sound is as intriguingly stripped down as the Crossfire bits are jacked up.