‘Hot Sauce Committee Part Two’: How Beastie Boys Delivered the Definitive Farewell Album

This article was originally published on Far Out

The passing of Adam ‘MCA’ Yauch back in 2012 left a gaping, Beastie Boys-sized gash in the music realm that will never truly heal.

As much as it hurts, carrying the weight of his absence is necessary because his alliance with Mike D and Ad-Rock created an imitable force that now lives only in memory. There was a peerless fluency with which they moved from punk to jazz to rap to rock, and by the end, each of these variations had amalgamated into a seamless unit that was far too great to compare to anyone or anything else. This growth, combined with the heartbreaking yet poetic timing of its culmination, resulted in Hot Sauce Committee Part Two, their send-off record.

First and foremost, it’s important to establish that the Beastie Boys never once released a weak album. Sure, they kept switching gears nonstop and perhaps even alienated some fans along the way, but there isn’t so much as a credible debate over the group ever falling short musically. By the time they reconvened in the studio to start working on what would end up being their last LP, the chances of them missing had been ruled out altogether.

Their previous two full-length releases were a little more focused, with 2004’s To The 5 Boroughs being a pretty straightforward hip-hop package while The Mix-Up in 2007 was made up entirely of instrumental jams. They had essentially perfected every version of themselves by 2008, and so all they really had to do was bring them all together in one place again, just like they had on Hello Nasty a decade prior.

The release of Hot Sauce Committee Part Two was delayed significantly due to several revisions as well as MCA’s cancer diagnosis. Finally, in 2011, two years after the original release date, it went live, and exactly a year later, Yauch passed away at the age of 47.

While the record was phenomenal from the moment it was published, its overall significance completely changed when the Beastie Boys’ run came to a screeching halt.

Spectacular in every sense but still nothing out of the ordinary, the album just felt like just another knockout delivery from the three-piece upon release. In hindsight, though, their final bow was so profoundly rewarding that it now seems like an unspoken declaration that there was simply nothing left for them to accomplish.

Each track on the album serves a very specific purpose, such that the whole project would become flimsier if even a single piece were moved around. A packaged deal with a runtime of 44 minutes chopped up into 16 cuts, they managed to effortlessly do what the majority of artists today are becoming increasingly inept at: retaining interest.

Every challenge the Beastie Boys ever undertook is present on Hot Sauce Committee Part Two, fully solved. Whereas ‘Too Many Rappers’ with Nas features a traditional approach to modern hip-hop that most fans of the genre are accustomed to, ‘Make Some Noise’ is more of a trademark piece by the group. Carefully positioned between the distorted bars and jazz-funk instrumentals is the much-welcome curveball ‘Don’t Play No Games That I Can’t Win’ with Santigold, which adds another dimension to a catalogue already brimming with multiplicity. An elaborate painting made up of a multitude of colours, shapes and textures (almost as though the cover art wasn’t random), the album still retained that signature punk-rap sound amid all its intricacies.

The “M-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-Mike D” line on ‘Here’s A Little Something For Ya’ is perhaps the most memorable on-brand moment from the project since it’s a reminder that no matter how sophisticated their studio work was, there was always a youthful silliness to the characters the Beastie Boys chose to play despite their gravitas as human beings. That contrast is precisely what made them so easy to connect with emotionally and get deeply attached to, even in the absence of lyrical depth.

The range of flavours on this record is actually quite overwhelming since there is indeed a whole lot going on as always, yet at no point does it feel like they bit off more than they could chew. In fact, unthreatening overstimulation and opening up countless portals is simply what they always did ever since their debut LP; the part that’s so difficult to believe, of course, is that they pulled it off so flawlessly even in their final chapter as fully grown, middle-aged kids. Mind you, this was 30 years into their career and two full decades since they had anything left to prove.

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