Ill Communication by Beastie Boys

Ill Communication, Beastie Boys' fourth studio album, came out on Grand Royal and Capitol in 1994, and it's a crew of rap wiseacres running wild in a room full of instruments. Co-produced with Mario Caldato Jr., it pushes further down the road they took with Check Your Head: less sampling, more live playing, and a stylistic free-for-all that dives from hip-hop into punk, jazz and funk without warning.

Money Mark, Eric Bobo and Amery "AWOL" Smith add their chops, Q-Tip and Biz Markie drop in on vocals, and the Miles Davis records On the Corner and Agharta were in the air while they worked, which explains the loose, murky jazz-funk grooves that bubble up between the rap tracks. "Sure Shot" rides a lazy, loping groove and sharp, back-and-forth rhymes, "Root Down" is a funky, strutting throwback, and then there's "Sabotage", a howling, guitar-and-distortion punk explosion that sounds like the band kicked the studio door off its hinges. Its video, directed by Spike Jonze, is a gleeful spoof of '70s cop shows.

It became the band's second number one on the Billboard 200 and their second album to go triple platinum, and critics loved it then and still do.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.