Marcel Winatschek

Still Running the Table

The Beastie Boys have been at it since before I understood what music was for, and at some point their sheer continued existence became part of what they were. Hot Sauce Committee Part Two finally arrived in May 2011 after years of delays—most of them traceable to Adam Yauch’s cancer diagnosis hanging over everything—and "Don’t Play No Game That I Can’t Win" is the kind of track that explains why the wait mattered. It features Santigold and rides a ska-inflected bounce that could have been embarrassing in other hands, but they’ve always known precisely when to be ridiculous and why. The defiance in the title feels earned now in a way it might not have before all of this, though honestly—they were always like that.