Beastie Boys Solid Gold Hits Review

Listening to this stocking-filling compilation of all the Beastie Boys' hit singles, you have to admire how far they've come.

Solid Gold Hits spans eighteen full years of musical chaos, during which the three skinny white boys from New York matured from macho party dudes into right-on hipster kings.

The greying freedom fighters have rhymed about everything from throwing eggs to the racial politics of their home town, creating classics with the explosive mayhem of "Intergalactic" and the disorienting scream-punk of "Sabotage".

Though 1999's The Sounds of Science double anthology was more representative - drawing on their often beautiful instrumentals and hardcore experiments - Solid Gold Hits is a lean and exhilarating introduction to NYC's finest in chart-busting hip-hop mode.