http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/beastie-boys-co-founder-adam-yauch-dead-at-48-20120504
Love me some Beastie Boys. Really sucks that he never got to attend his induction into the Hall of Fame, but at least he lived to see it. Although I'm of the age where most of my memories were listening to "Ill Communication" in elementary school because it was the REBELLIOUS thing to do, the later stuff was really awesome, preachiness over Tibet and such aside. RIP, MCA.
Goofy true story: When that album came out, for some reason I remember thinking how cool it would be if MCA was my uncle, and Fight for Your Right would be playing at the skate rink I used to go to and he would walk in slapping hands and being all like "hey what's up, guys?" He just seemed really cool for some reason! Maybe it was the beard and leather jacket.
ReplyDeleteHey, I was only 10.
I also remember when Paul's Boutique came out, and how awesome the video for Hey Ladies was.
ReplyDelete"Hey Ladies! Get... funkay!"
*cowbell*
I grew up listening to mostly 90s BBs, so my favorites were always tracks like Sabotage, Sure Shot and Intergalactic (before that one got MASSIVELY overplayed). Although I did dig me some Whatcha Want. Totally forgot how awesome they were.
ReplyDeleteIn the late 90's when my buddies and I ran "wrestling shows" out of a boxing ring in an old building. A character named Lance Perot came out to "So Whatcha Want". The song alone made him awesome.
ReplyDeleteI kid you not, I was watching an old ECW PPV yesterday and when Nova came out I said 'huh, I forgot Intergalactic was his entrance music.' RIP MCA.
ReplyDeleteRIp MCA,
ReplyDeleteI have memories of being in my mother kitchen, with my older sister as she would play Licensed to Ill on a tape player, pause the song so she could write down the lyrics and then continue with the song. SMH... That was 86-87 and I was in first grade
I thought you were older than me Scott, cuz Im only 31.
Man, I was at the perfect age when early hip-hop was a cool underground thing and the Beasties just seemed so cool back when you're 9 or 10 years old.
ReplyDeleteRIP
Beastie Boys are one of my favorite bands of all time, their beats were so far ahead of their time they sounded like aliens. Specifically the Check Your Head and Ill Communication albums, the way they shattered boundaries of what hip hop and rock could do was something that made them outright innovators. To that point any combinations of rock & rap ("Walk This Way", "Bring the Noise", the Judgment Night soundtrack) were just tacked on & gimmicky, but these guys took their influences and inverted them into a true art form. I'm also of the opinion that they never had a mis-fire, album wise, even the criminally underrated "To the 5 Boroughs". This is a really sad day for fans of true artists that don't see walls when they get to the studio. RIP Adam "MCA" Yauch.
ReplyDeleteIf you're hot to trot, you think you're slicker than grease, he's got news for you crews: You'll be suckin' like a leech.
ReplyDeleteHe expanded the rhymes of sucker-MC amateurs. They called him Adam Yauch but he was MCA. Namaste, Yauch.
Outside of Michael Jackson and maybe Kurt Cobain, the Beastie Boys were the most influence artists of my lifetime. I still admire how literary their rhymes were.
ReplyDeleteIts funny you say that cuz everyone in my social circles could not STAND Pauls boutique when it came out.
ReplyDeleteNow they grew into it later, but Im listening to it as i type this and I just find it being a jumbled mess.
Every music critics talks about the heavy over layering of sampling and to that I say, its too much. I never cared that Licensed to Ill was so simple, thats what i loved about it. Thats what all my friends love about it, its simple drum machine and guitar riffs over jews rhyming. thats hip hop to me.
I can appreciate Pauls but it never eclipsed Licensed to me. Licensed to me is the quintessential BB album and damn near perfect.
Pauls was a growing period for them, they were starting to bridge the gap between the old style Beasties with the goofy persona and jokey songs and into these new areas of sampling and more attitude in their rhymes. I think critics got behind it at the time for being ambitious, but it was hit or miss with a lot of fans. I know in some of the press around the time they released Hello Nasty, Pauls was the album they kinda shrugged off as their black sheep record (because this was the 90s and every artist had to hate at least one thing they made themselves).
ReplyDeleteYou dont have to explain that to me, cuz I lived through it. (being 9 and all) but i can remember everyone going banana for the upcoming BB album and when it came out, it went over like a fart in church.
ReplyDeleteThen like around Ill Communication people went back and relistened and went "man, this is deep" but by then I had already moved on and I still to this day just go "meh... sounds like overbooked Russonian crap to me"
To each his own. Personally, I find Licensed to Ill to be about their 5th best album, even with it being what I grew up on (to the point of having most of it memorized by first grade.) They did that album as basically a parody act, but then became actual hip-hop pioneers.
ReplyDeleteWrong information Ryan. License to Ill (and Fight For Your Right in particular from said album) was the album the band HATED and despised and pretty much disowned. The group always loved Paul's Boutique and considered it to be the album that got the critics to take them seriously, having been written off as a one-hit wonder group due to FFYR. They even openly bragged (and had Chuck D back them up in confirming this) that Paul's Boutique while the album didn't do well commercially, it was widely loved by critics and their fellow rappers, to the point that most of the big name rappers like Chuck D were jealous of how good the album was.
ReplyDeletePaul's Boutique came out a couple years too early. It suffered commercially during the height of the pop metal era. "Hey Ladies" would have been a HUGE hit in 1992-93. But Check Your Head fit that period perfectly. "So What'cha Want" is probably my favorite BB track. RIP MCA.
ReplyDeleteCriterion Anthology and Cold Beers, this one's for Adam.
ReplyDeleteJesse's right. License to Ill was largely the brainchild of their then producer, Rick Rubin. He had this intense desire to combine rap and rock into one cohesive sound and the Beasties were the perfect group for him. They've always talked poorly of License to Ill and To The 5 Boroughs was them revisiting that time in their lives and making the album they wished they could have back then.
ReplyDeleteThat's crazy for me. I can't imagine not loving Paul's Boutique. I mean, obviously you don't and your opinion is as valid as mine, but I can't get my head around it.
ReplyDeletePaul's Boutique and Public Enemy's Nation of Millions were the two albums that totally opened my mind as a kid and forced me to really think about how music was made and produced.
I actually cried over this news earlier. I'm having a hard time imagining a future without new Beastie albums....
ReplyDeleteI don't want to start anything vicious here (RIP Adam) but is Kurt Cobain REALLY as legendary as everyone says he is? You mentioned Michael, who had this crazy global appeal (you go to countries that know nothing about western culture...but they knew who Michael Jackson was) but to me, as a black dude who loves all kinds of music (including heavy metal/rock/alternative as well as the seemingly prerequisite hip hop), it seemed that Kurt's fame was only heightened by his death and someone who only the white kids in my suburban neighbourhood latched onto.
ReplyDeleteI'm not saying Kurt wasn't a great artist, because he was, but I find it hard to believe he deserves his deity-like reputation. Tupac is another one who has this status, yet he was never as popular in life as he was in death.
I agree with the Beastie Boys, though. I saw them perform live like ten years ago and it was amazing.
mca was 1/4 of the bbs and by himself he was a PART of the group. they all (rubin included) brought a part to the table. pauls boutique excluded i liked all thier music but when i think the bbs i think of licensed to ill and really nothing more cuz it was so integral to hip hop infancy.
ReplyDeletelike i said i can appreciate pauls but for me the bbs start and end with that album. it holds a special place. after that i can listen and like the rest but thier first album just is damn perfect.
As CM Punk said on Twitter, *everyone* likes the Beastie Boys. RIP MCA.
ReplyDeleteI've played devil's advocate over Kurt Cobain being overrated dozens of times in my head. And the conclusion I've come to is that yes he was important, but he wouldn't be as important if he was still alive. You also have to factor in age, out of my 18 years of existence he's been one of the most influential musicians on me so far.
ReplyDeleteI haven't been this upset over a celebrity dying since Michael Jackson. Huge loss for music, and whether anyone wants to admit it or not, their Hip Hop royalty.
ReplyDeleteJust for S&Gz who would you consider Hip hop royalty? Coming from you personally. Id just wanna know who you consider.
ReplyDeleteMe personally:
Run-DMC
KRS-One (BDP)
NWA
Eric B and Rakim
Afrika Bambatta/Soul Sonic Force
DJ Cool Herc (regarded as creating hip-hop)
Grandmaster Flash/Furious Five (Flash created the break beat)
Grand Wizard Theodore (invented the scratch)
Beastie Boys
Even though they really couldn't be taken seriously, I'd add Kurtis Blow and Sugarhill Gang to that list for helping commercialize hip hop. Also Public Enemy and Salt & Pepa.
ReplyDeleteI won't disagree that Cobain died before he could be exposed the way, say, Axl Rose was. But I don't think his impact on music can be denied. The Seattle grunge movement was already on a downward slope by the time Kurt died, so his mark was already made.
ReplyDeleteYeah, Scott got the albums wrong. Pretty sure he meant License to Ill, which came out what? 85-86? He, like I, would have been in elementary school at that point, and I'm 35.
ReplyDeleteThey may have changed their tune on it, I'm remembering from something 14 years ago but I do recall them shrugging off Pauls as a failed experiment around the time of the Hello Nasty release. They may have come back around as the album is kind of a cult favorite now. Sorta like how Weezer spent so long disowning Pinkerton until they realized that everyone loved it so much.
ReplyDeleteThis one hurts. GOD bless you, MCA...and thank you for the music.
ReplyDeleteLL Cool J... Although he gets cut off at Mr. Smith
ReplyDeleteAlso, hip-hop is old enough that there's at least a second wave of royalty if not a third by now. Dre, Snoop, Tupac, BIG, DJ Premier, Nas, Jay-Z, and so on and so forth.
ReplyDeleteDe La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest need to be included.
ReplyDeleteMan, those posting in the Rolling Stone comment section are being real a-holes.
ReplyDelete"License to Ill" is one of the all-time classic party albums.
My friends and I used to worship them in junior high and wrote 3MTA3 on things (Eat Me backwards) after seeing it on the plane on their album cover. "Paul's Boutique" had the misfortune of coming out the same time as NWA. RIP MCA
I think that anyone that appeared in the 1985 movie Krush Groove gets to be hip hop royalty automatically. (Run DMC, LL, Kurtis, Fat Boys) The Beastie Boys had a cameo in that.
ReplyDeleteBasically that list + Sugarhill Gang
ReplyDelete