Among the various prolific and diverse individuals that occasionally rise out of the quagmire that has become the modern recording industry, Danger Mouse or DJ Danger Mouse who remember all the way back to 2004, has proven that he is a producer who haa the musical finesse of a musician and a willingness tongetbincovled in projects that refuse to allow him to be pinned down to a certain template or genre. (That maybe even why he dropped the DJ moniker)
On his latest project, Rome, he teams up with the vocal beauty of daniele Luppo and makes an album that listens like it is the soundtrack of a spagetti western directed by Tricky. The beats are ripe and present and the song structures take a back seat to a cinematic sense of focus on mood and atmosphere.
In the end we are left with a fresh slice of modern musical brilliance. Check it out and feel the power of the mannwho makes Cee-Lo sound good but is still making trcks while Lo is up on the tally with Xtina playing rackstar.... Danger Mouse is building a career not just a following.
I remember vividly tagging along with my cousins to a "christian: summer camp and huddling in the bus with my !st generation Walkman listening to the Beastie Boys' "Lisence to Ill", which was NOT on the accepted listening list. (I'm not kidding there was a list!) My youthful and eager teenage rebellion connected so much more witheir music than with Stephan Curtis Chapman, Even-tough I, at that point, had never even tasted a beer and had no idea what they meant rapping about Angel Dust. I was pulled in by their witty pop culture name checks (Got more rhymes than Picasso got paints), their defiantly "Yeah we are white boys but we are going to rap any way attitude", and ultimately their really great productions and rap flow. Back then it wasn't called hip-hop it was rap and they were three hella good rappers!
Then about the time of "Check Your Head", I checked out in the Boys. They went off in to lots of experimental musical directions that if you give the time of day to came sometimes be slightly rewarding but mostly noodling. It seems that with Hot Sauce the Beasties decided to answer what must have been the constant cry of their 30-40 something frat-boy slacker fanbase and returned to where they began, as a rap trio spitting ego blasts and celebrity name checks, with the occasional Buddha wisdom thrown in by known conscious rebel guru cancer survivor MCA. I have to admit I can see thier angle of giving their fans what they wan they want but when I saw Mike D in his black leather B-Boy hat and cartoon size gold chain, I felt embarressed for him. It didn's seem as if they were parodying themselves it seemed that they were trying to be something there were over twenty years ago...
The problem is that Hot Sauce is a condiment, not a main course. This song cycle feels like a rehash of the old-school Beastie Boy's template, so much that almost all of the songs could be out-takes from "License to ILL" and I mean OUTAKE for a reason, they wold NOT have made the record except as filler if they were doing a double album. You get the sauce that the Beastie can bring and it might be hot and full of flavor but you are left with an empty stomach wondering where is the steak. Now if you are a hardcore fan who still gets up off the couch and shakes your rumpa when your ipod shuffles to Brass Monkey;, then you will feel that the Beastie's themselves are the steak and their return to form is going to please you along with the occasional guest thrown in to add new school cred.
If you are like me and have checked out except for a few singles along the way then you will have a hard time finding that spark on Hot Sauce and you will be left wondering where is Part One and does it have the steak that makes this album worth more than one listen....
You may be looking back for the glory days when they had they Sauce and the Meat:
