So why is Beastie Boys’ Ill Communication on this best 1,000 albums ever thing?
There’s something about music that fuses with memories of our pasts in a visceral way that can perpetually yield feelings of joy or sadness – and sometimes both at the same time – when we summon them.
Here’s an example.
Ill Communication was released on May 31st, 1994, which ties to around the time I would have been back home on Long Island after my sophomore year at Binghamton University. I bought the album shortly after it was available, and I recall listening to it for the first time in my bedroom while hanging out with one of my closest childhood friends.
We absorbed the first few songs – the sublime flute sample that dominates “Short Shot,” and then the wild changeup to thrashy punk rock on “Tough Guy” (which is also a hilarious screed against jerky Bigs on the basketball court). By the time we got to the third track, “B-Boys Makin’ With The Freak Freak,” we were fully invested.
This is an eclectic one, minimalist, deeply funky, and slightly deranged all at once. And then at the 1:17 mark, one of the weirdest and most hilarious samples of all time drops, an audio clip that turns out to be from a comedy album by Mantan Moreland (who, among other things, goes all the way back to a career as an actor playing the chauffeur in Charlie Chaplin flicks).
Shit, if this is gonna be that kind of party, I’m gonna stick my dick in the mashed potatoes
A woman’s loud, shocked laughter follows.
As soon as the woman’s laugh passes, my friend and I were so absorbed with the song, so giddily surprised by the audio clip, that we spontaneously high-fived as only two white college kids out in the suburbs can do in such a situation.
This happy memory is immediately tinged with sadness for me, as I lost touch with this friend a few short years later for reasons that are painful and complex and not worth getting into here.
As I mention above, memories plus music can bring joy and pain, sometimes at the same time.
Anyway, “B-Boys Makin’ With The Freak Freak” also name checks Anthony Mason of my own beloved New York Knicks, who played for a team and in an era that will forever be iconic.
I got my hair cut correct like Anthony Mason
Then I ride the IRT right up to Penn Station (yeah)
Penn Station, up on 8th Ave
An enduring memory from my college years at Binghamton University is hearing “Sabotage” blasting out of dorm room windows.
And of course the “Sabotage” music video is arguably one of the very best of all time – and it might just be the funniest one as well. I’ve watched it countless times and can never get enough. I mean, “Nathan Wind as Cochese” alone is the stuff of legend.
We’re getting into territory now with the best 1,000 albums ever that nearly every song touches on different memories or other stories that I’ve always been meaning to write about.
“The Scoop” deserves special attention as it’s easily one of the B Boys’ best lesser-known tracks. It’s endlessly and thickly layered funk which is both tight as hell and yet so delightfully loose and swinging.
I got into jogging in college – and all credit to my girlfriend at the time for prompting me to get off the couch and give it a go – and I would often listen to a lovingly curated and lengthy mixtape while jogging around campus in Binghamton. “The Scoop” was on that mixtape, as were songs such as Midnight Oil’s “Power and the Passion” and R.E.M.’s “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?”
While I’ve always dug “Root Down,” I’m an ecstatic fan of the much moodier and mysterious Free Zone Mix of that one.
Then it’s really wild that among Ill Communication’s tracks are a substantial number that are much more ruminative, some of which reflect the fellas’ growing embrace of eastern and Buddhist influences.
If you listen to “Shambala,” for example, without knowing who the artist is, you might well mistake it for Jamiroquai as easily as guessing that it’s by the same dudes who produced such cuts back in the day as “Fight For Your Right” and “Brass Monkey.”
“Bodhisattva Vow” brings together multiple regions from the Beastie Boys’ growing musical terrain in a rather fascinating way.
Some stats & info about Beastie Boys – Ill Communication
- What kind of musical stylings does this album represent? Rap, Hip Hop, East Coast Rap, Underground Rap, Alternative Rap
- Rolling Stone’s greatest 500 albums ranking – not ranked!
- All Music’s rating – 4 out 5 stars
- When was Ill Communication released? 1994
- My ranking, the one you’re reading right now – #94 out of 1,000
Beastie Boys’ Ill Communication on Spotify
A lyrical snippet from Beastie Boys’ Ill Communication that’s evocative of the album in some way, maybe
‘Cause you can’t, you won’t, and you don’t stop.
What does the “best 1,000 albums ever” mean and why are you doing this?
Yeah, I know it’s audacious, a little crazy (okay, maybe a lot cray cray), bordering on criminal nerdery.
But here’s what it’s NOT: a definitive list of the Greatest Albums of All-Time. This is 100% my own personal super biased, incredibly subjective review of what my top 1,000 albums are, ranked in painstaking order over the course of doing research for nearly a year, Rob from High Fidelity style. Find out more about why I embarked on a best 1,000 albums ever project.