To the 5 Boroughs by Beastie Boys

To the 5 Boroughs, the Beastie Boys' sixth studio album, landed on Capitol on June 14, 2004, with the American release following a day later, and it's a record about New York City made in the long shadow of the September 11 attacks. It was their first major release since Hello Nasty in 1998, and Adam "Ad-Rock" Horovitz, Adam "MCA" Yauch and Michael "Mike D" Diamond produced it themselves.

The sound is stripped to the studs: lean, old-school beats and three voices passing the mic back and forth at full volume, less a victory lap than a block party with something on its mind. There's a political streak running through it, too, and the boasting and goofing sit next to a real sense of a city taking stock of itself. "Ch-Check It Out" is the lead punch, all clipped rhymes and elbows, while "Triple Trouble" and "Right Right Now Now" keep the pace brisk and the rhymes tumbling.

Nobody had forgotten them in the six years away. It moved 360,000 copies in week one and debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, the group's third album in a row to do that, and it went on to platinum certification in the U.S. It was also nominated for the Grammy for Best Rap Album, losing out to Kanye West's The College Dropout.

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