Beastie BoysThe Mix-Up
Over the past twenty-or-so years in their career Beastie Boys have been frat-hopping rappers, oddball samplers and human-right activists to varying levels of success. Reinventing yourself for the umpteenth time is an arduous task indeed for alternative hip-hop's pioneers - then again, it's what they do best.
At their core, Beastie Boys are still a group fashioned upon toeing the line between smart ideologies and fart jokes. And although they get (fairly) criticized for their overall lack of true-blue innovation - they merely boil down the fun-loving elements of any given genre, which is nice enough by all accounts - the Brooklyn-based trio is not susceptible to mimicry, as evidenced by the boatloads of like-minded artists (think of any "good-time" group like Jurassic 5, or even 311) slumming it just outside the inner-circle of critical and commercial acceptance.
To further ensure their status and "the one and only" comes The Mix-Up, the Beasties first fully-instrumental album, which reveals their love for blue-collar funk bands like The Meters while maintaining their infallible old-school aesthetic. Dusty, vinyl-popping grooves are smeared over the entire album in a way that hearkens back to the Boys' most lucid and experimental phase: Paul's Boutique to Check Your Head.
