The Beatnuts: A Musical Massacre : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

If you appreciate hip-hop from a technical standpoint, the Beatnuts are for you: As producers, they draw the rarest samples from all genres into their aural brews. If you appreciate hip-hop from a groove standpoint, the Beatnuts are for you: Those brews are like black Russians -- smooth yet hard. And if you appreciate hip-hop from a nihilistic standpoint, well, when the Beatnuts stepped behind the mike in '93, they proclaimed that they wanted to "fuck, drink beer and smoke some shit."

Six years later, the Queens duo of Psycho Les and Ju Ju is as raunchy as ever on A Musical Massacre. On "Muchachacha," Les extols the pleasures of women "jerking me off for the ointment," and "Story 2000" is a corny porn flick, cheesy dialogue and all -- although here, the music is better. With all the references to sex and weed, the only things getting massacred here may be sperm counts and brain cells. But the Beatnuts sure do know how to make self-destruction sound funky. (RS 824)

MARTIN KENNEDY KEATON