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Zero 7
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To The 5 Boroughs
Generally favorable reviews
Based on 25 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 60 votes
Read user comments
Rate this album >
Album Info
Label: Capitol
Release Date: 15 June 2004
Discs: 1 disc
Genre(s): Rap, Alternative
Summary
The B-Boys, who have moved back to New York from their temporary home of Los Angeles, return with their first album in six years and their second to utilize the beats of Mixmaster Mike. These 15 tracks are all self-produced by the band (a first) and recall the style of their earliest work.
Also By This Artist: The Mix-Up
Also On The Web: Official Artist Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Rolling Stone
To the 5 Boroughs is an exciting, astonishing balancing act: fast, funny and sobering.
Read Full Review >Playlouder
Picking highlights from a release so well executed and downright ass-shaking is difficult.... 'To The 5 Boroughs' is a triumph.
Read Full Review >Filter
Boroughs' greatest strength is its aural cohesiveness, fueled by a litany of Golden Age samples... and the heavy, often dark, bass-driven soundscapes. [#11, p.90]
Entertainment Weekly
The beats... are simple and effective, with a welcome lack of distracting bells and whistles that made Hello Nasty feel overstuffed. [18 Jun 2004, p.83]
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Boroughs unabashedly travels backward, but like Missy Elliott's similarly retro-minded Under Construction, it's so joyful that it makes regression feel progressive and growth overrated.
Read Full Review >All Music Guide
If there are no classics here, there's no duds, either, and given that the Beasties' pop culture aesthetic once seemed to be the territory of young men, it's rather impressive that they're maturing gracefully, turning into expert craftsmen that can deliver a satisfying listen like this.
Read Full Review >Urb
Signals something of a rebirth of their signature creativity. [Jul/Aug 2004, p.123]
Uncut
The music is strikingly minimal throughout, the emphasis is firmly on The Word and the Beastie Boys have plenty left to say. [Jul 2004, p.108]
New Musical Express
Like Missy Elliott, the Beasties are reimagining hip-hop--what it was, what it is, what it can be. [12 Jun 2004, p.47]
Pitchfork
Unlike all previous Beastie Boys albums (with the possible exception of Licensed to Ill), To The 5 Boroughs sounds homogenous and singular in purpose-- dark, steel, and dirty like that incomplete Times Square station.
Read Full Review >RapReviews.com
In all honesty, it's not the sentiment that bothers this reviewer. Rather, it's the insertion of the sentiment into what should have ostensibly been a light-hearted romp, a fun return to their days of old.
Read Full Review >Alternative Press
Most of Boroughs feels like they're sampling themselves. [Aug 2004, p.120]
ShakingThrough.net
To the 5 Boroughs is continuously distracted from its titular dedication by political concerns, severely dampening not only its replay factor but also proving to be the least fun album the normally surefire trio has made.
Read Full Review >Q Magazine
The Beastie Boys have always been at their best when gleefully rhyming and stealing from a variety of sources--both musically and lyrically--and the self-imposed adherence to hip hop traditionalism here, and indeed musically on the album as a whole, rather subdues their famously free-form sonic palette. [Jul 2004, p.108]
Dot Music
Imagine "Hello Nasty" if it had entirely consisted of "Three MCs And One DJ" and you're close to understanding exactly how "To The 5 Boroughs" sounds.
Read Full Review >The New York Times
The tracks crackle and swing with a wit that the lyrics rarely match.
Read Full Review >Blender
This formula wears thin over the 15 cuts here. [#27, p.137]
The Guardian
The beats bounce along happily enough... but the stripped-down sound focuses attention on the anti-Bush lyrics, and that proves to be the album's undoing.
Read Full Review >Stylus Magazine
They sound old. They sound past it. They sound, and this is one word that nobody would have ever thought could be used to describe the Beasties, irrelevant.
Read Full Review >Tiny Mix Tapes
The lyrics on To The 5 Boroughs are, with a few exceptions, a dismal failure.
Read Full Review >Neumu.net
Part of the fun of the Beastie Boys is knowing that they're fucking with the rhymes and you; another part is knowing that they give a fuck about what's happening in the world. Those two things don't always work well together, though, especially when they say something watered down and deliver it as though they don't buy it either.
Read Full Review >Village Voice
The Beasties of 5 Boroughs seem scared--reluctant to innovate; serving up nonsense lyrics and numbing production that are just plain lazy... sensing that there's nowhere to go but down, so better to establish a passable holding pattern than risk an inexcusable backslide toward irrelevance.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this album is 7.4 (out of 10) based on 60 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
R G. gave it a3:
Very disappointing. Cannot understand why the B-boys have decided to separate their hip-hop personae from their instrumental side - that combination is what made them so interesting, fresh and innovative over the past decade and a half (longer, really), and it's absence is exactly what's made the last 2 CD's so boring.
Thorsten D gave it a9:
I like this one very much. Cool, fresh, minimalistic.
Tony D gave it an8:
This album was definitely better than a 69. A 7, at the minimum.
[Anonymous] gave it a5:
For what the old beastie boy albums used to be, this is less than average. Bring Back the old Beastie Boys!
arnab m gave it a3:
compared to hello nasty, this is a really lazily done album. they sound old and tired on this one. sorry boys.
Nathan gave it a3:
Very disappointing. Everything up to and including Ill Communication was great. Hello Nasty was alright, but this is just boring. The B-Boys need to bring back those who helped make their previous albums so funky and innovative.
The Dude gave it a10:
One of the best hip-hop albums I own. This is my favorite Beastie Boys album to date. I think they are growing up, and speaking their mind.
