Ill Communication

By 1994 the Beasties had settled into their cultural role as the grand arbiters of cool, and Ill Communication is pretty much a catalogue of coolness: live funk, a bit of hardcore, ingenious samples of obscure records, keyboards by analogue master Money Mark, guest shots by Q-tip and Biz Markie, MCA's cop-show metal number 'Sabotage', and the inevitable cascade of witty old-school rhymes. But it's also a surprisingly mature record from a band that had, after all, been at it for 12 years already. The original jazz-funk instrumentals hold their own with the group's favourite sample sources. Their voices are modestly buried in the mix, and they've tempered their old snottiness with lyrical compassion: check out 'bodhisattva vow', a salute to Buddhist spirituality.