No band in America was ever more laddish in its first blush of success — they boasted about smashing the nerds glasses on one of their sharpest songs! I grew up with these boys. And I mean boys — in 1986 the girls loved True Blue, my friends loved Licensed to Ill. I loved both, the first signs that I was a future critic and gay. When a classmate in the sophomore year of high school stenciled BEATIE BOYS [sic] on his art class pencil kit I thought, “Losers.” Then Check Your Head dominated college radio play in the late spring and summer of 1992.
By the time of the release of the marginally superior Ill Communication, their comeback was complete. Hello Nasty was the best kind of consolidation: a polished retrenchment. I feel MCA’s death like I didn’t eight years go. These white dudes looked as mortal as the rest of us, at last. And the two survivors still look great.
1. The New Style
2. Rhymin’ and Stealin’
3. Shake Your Rump
4. Intergalactic
5. Sabotage
6. Fight for Your Right
7. Cookie Puss
8. Johnny Ryall
9. Body Movin’
10. Paul Revere
11. Egg Man
12. She’s Crafty
13. Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun
14. Get It Together
15. So What’cha Want
16. Sure Shot
17. Finger Lickin’ Good
18. Three MC’s and One DJ
19. Root Down
20. Super Disco Breakin’
21. Girls
22. Lee Majors Come Again
23. High Plains Drifter
Humanizing The Vacuum 