I was never much of a Beastie Boy fan. I didn’t even know any of their names until MCA died this past weekend. I never owned one of their albums or CD’s and I frankly haven’t thought much about them one way or the other. I listened to rap from Grandmaster Flash through Run DMC to KRS-One, NWA, and Cypress Hill. Then it got so commercialized that I lost interest. I liked a couple of Beastie Boy songs, but I wasn’t overly impressed with their talent or message. Another thing I didn’t realize until this weekend is that the Beastie Boys were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. To each his own, I guess, but I find that a little ridiculous. Still, in reading people’s reactions to MCA’s death, it appears that a lot of people my age and perhaps a bit younger were really attached to their music. So, I am not here to diss other people’s taste in music. I just think it’s ludicrous to call the president a racist because he commented on the passing of Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston and not on the death of MCA.
Aside from the difference in stature between the three musicians, when are these jackasses going to realize that Obama was raised by a white mother and white grandparents in a state that has like three black people. I don’t know why he is supposed to act like a stereotypical black man or why a stereotypical black man wouldn’t have respect for one of the most influential hip-hop artists in the country. I mean, I’m confused. Am I supposed to like the Beastie Boys because they’re white or dislike them because they made “black” music? Where’s my white tribal leader to give me some advice on how to be authentically white?
You might want to give Paul’s Boutique a try. It’s one of my all time favorite albums. I felt the way you did until I heard this album.
it’s a lot better than their first album, that’s for sure.
if you mean “license to ill”, you mean their second album. the first was “Polywog Stew”.
Actuall, if you take into account “Cookie Puss”, their third.
the BB’s were a huge part of my musical influences. fantastic musicians, great songs.
also, I am pretty sure the Beasties pre-date NWA by a long time. the were friends w/ run dmc (same producer, same label at first).
the only other thing I’d add is that Michael Jackson -the pedophile- and Whitney Houston -the crackhead- took themselves out. MCA not only was clean, he and his band publicly disowned their previous mysoginistic clowning, MCA was a buddhist, and was part of the Free Tibet movement.
No one says you have to like the Beasties.
And don’t forget MCA calling out, on MTV no less, the Muslim hate 3 or so years before 9/11!!
i wasn’t doing a chronology of rap, but a chronology of what I listened to and when i stopped.
The last rap album I bought was Ice Cube’s second solo album. That was probably about 1992 or 1993. It was already a dead genre to me at that point but I had to learn that by listening to that piece of crap CD.
Some of the Snoop Dogg stuff with Dr. Dre cracked me up but I never would have spent money on it.
After that, it was all about the phony gangsta lifestyle and I totally lost interest.
A lot of people I knew had Licensed to Ill and I heard it a lot. I didn’t really like it at all, although parts of it made me laugh. The Paul’s Boutique album is when they at least won my respect as people with real talent. But, I was more into Paris and NWA and and Cypress Hill and Public Enemy at that time. I also liked Digital Underground, Morris Day and The Time and acts like that.
i actually didn’t like “license to ill” at first, but that was because I didn’t like rap, period.
“License” grew on me, and so did a lot of other hip hop. My jams were Tribe Called Quest, KRS-1, De La Soul, but always Beastie Boys.
See, everything is so PC these days, but for my money Cypress Hill just broke it off when they came out. There were some iconic anti-police songs, like Copkiller from Ice-T and F*&# the Police by NWA, but Pigs was the best.
I lived in LA back then in those pre-riot pre-OJ days, and the police were just out of control under Daryl Gates. Someone had to say something.
When rap stopped being about things like police corruption and brutality, I lost interest.
One I forgot:
Hard to believe Ice-T is allowed to play a police officer on Law & Order.
I’d like to show this on Fox News and measure the blood pressure of the audience.
One last one for old times:
Just because MCA died of cancer doesn’t make his talent somehow purer than MJ or WH. You can still mourn the passing of a talent you love without making the death of other less than.
BTW, alot of great artist as you say “took themselves out” (Joplin, Hendrix, Cobain, Elvis, Morrison, etc) through drugs or alcohol and suicide. Does the fact that they “took themselves out” negate their talent in your eyes. I bet it doesn’t.
I get what BooMan is saying about MJ and WH. Putting aside the “person”…the talent was universal and international.
That’s not saying that the Beasties didn’t touch people.
yeah, that’s a good point. it was a disrespectful statement on my part.
I’ve never heard of the Beastie Boys (damn I must be old).
It really doesn’t matter whether he said anything or not. If he had, I imagine he would have been dinged for praising “gangsta” rap artists by someone on Fox News.
Well, if you don’t like them, that means more for me. Not much of a fan of their first record, but “Paul’s Boutique” (album #2) is definitely a classic:
http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/12671-pauls-boutique/
After that, “Check Your Head” and “Ill Communication” are rock-ier, and messier, but those are part of my all-time high school soundtrack.
Post-1995 they seemed to lose the killer instinct that drives all creative people, but YMMV. Yauch was a self-taught bass player so I identify with that big-time.
But really, you shouldn’t “like” something because someone said you’re “supposed to” like it. I know you know that, but it’s worth repeating.
Also worth repeating is that Washington Times article was full of shit.
You know, it’s not that I dislike their music. It just didn’t resonate with me at all. I had a bad first impression of them (knuckleheads), and then they got a little better and did some interesting things. I never thought they were that funny and the mixture of rock and hip hop just didn’t thrill me. It’s not like I’d tell someone to turn them off. But I would never put them on myself.
I got that, and it’s totally understandable. To some degree, I feel that way about the Grateful Dead.
Just kidding about the Dead.
Sort of.
Hmm, I feel that way about both the BBs and the Dead.
The appeal of each are mysteries to me. But that’s ok. I don’t have to understand everything, I guess.
Washington Times hit piece is just pure slime as usual. I would like to push back on thinking that it is ridiculous that they are in the Hall of Fame. They were a staple of hip hop for over 3 decades. Beasties have like 15-20 songs that everyone knows. Their beats stretched from generation to generation and their live shows were phenomenal. Future generations will be listening to their art.
Beasties were tremendous influences on pop culture, musicians and MCs. They definitely belong on the HOF.
http://rockhall.com/inductees/
I liked a couple of Beastie Boy songs, but I wasn’t overly impressed with their talent or message.
This is like saying you really liked Iron Maiden, Metallica, and Megadeth, and while Nirvana had some good sounds, you just weren’t impressed by Cobain’s guitar work.
No, MCA cannot hold a candle to KRS-One or DMC or Easy-E as a pure rapper, but the Beastie Boys were working within – inventing, really – a completely different genre.
And you like the Yankees too? Wow. Just wow.
Short answer:
YES… you should like the Beastie Boys.
Rick Rubin produced them.. he’s no dummy.
I am a fan of hip hop since birth basically, but I wasn’t a big Beasties fan. They were actually not even close to my fab artist on Def Jam Records (that woulda been Run DMC and LL Cool J).
But I was saddened by the news.
Obama was what in his late 20 early 30’s in the 80 and in law school right? It’s my recollection that at the time rap was the music of the “youth”, teens, maybe early 20’s, but I don’t recall it being the big draw for people in their late 20s and older (I’m 35 now, so I was between 5-10 in the 80s)
Thanks to MTV I knew who the Beasties was but as I said, I wasn’t really into their thing. As they broaden their scope later in life, I was aware of the hits, but I was still not much of a fan.
I think the main difference between MJ and WH is an international “celebrity” and in the case of MJ, spanned decades from the age of 8 until his death. For some MJ was Thriller, Bad, pedophile, etc, but for my moms and my aunts, he was that little boy on Ed Sullivan or Soul Train with the big afro. So yeah, his death was different for them.
I think that the age range that Obama was in. The same as my mother and my aunts.
I dont’ even think my mother knows what a Beastie boy is, and she is just 2 years older than Obama.
Another difference is that MJ and WH were solo acts.
MJ is in a league of his own. On my first trip to India, my Indian nephew there had two MJ posters on his bedroom walls and a single glove. I’m not what one would call a devoted fan, but I enjoyed his music and feel like we’ve been cheated due to his premature death.
There is definitely an age cohort effect. I remember the Beastie Boys with “(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party!)” in the 80s. But I thought it was just a fairly typical song that the “kids” of the time would like. Every few years, there’s a party song that comes out that gets a lot of attention cause its just fun to get pumped up – from Kool and the Gang to Black Eyed Peas.
But I lost track of the Beastie Boys because I had earning a living on my mind by the early 90s. As a consequence, musically I was stuck in the 70s and 80s. (The 70s are not a bad decade to be stuck in though for music.) I lost track of them just as the BBs were entering their years of greatest commercial success.
I was aware of them from the beginning but other than a few songs that were funny, I didn’t care for them (or much other rap – other than as Booman said – Grandmaster Flash and Run DMC and some minor players who were from NYC). They were good guys though and as they grew up their message became a really positive one. So, I guess the point is that it is sad that any one dies at 47 particularly a guy with talent and a positive message. But why would BHO know much about the Beasties or care? They certainly weren’t iconic in the way WH or MJ were to the mass audience. I didn’t much care for their music either but it is still sad how they died and that they died so young.
My attitude to rap is similar to Booman’s – I loved a lot of the early stuff, starting with Grandmaster Flash, but the emergence of gangsta rap and the wholesale commercially-driven culture of misogyny, unearned arrogance, and violence it glorified completely turned me off. I still like a few of the more thoughtful acts (check out Blue Scholars) and I know there’s a lot of innovating independent stuff going on, but I just never got back into it.
With that caveat, I was never that into the Beasties, but of course they belong in the Hall of Fame. Three decades’ worth of musicians and bands can trace their musical lineage directly to them, and you can make a strong case that it was the Beasties that got rap and hip hop into the suburbs and their white kids, leading directly to the decade or so where rap and hip hop were the only thing any self-respecting teen listened to. The BBs could have gotten fat and happy over their early successes and their status as pioneers of rock/rap fusion; instead they matured, got more musically adventurous, and got political to boot. You don’t have to be a fan to recognize their impact. I’d be perfectly content to never hear another song again by, say, the Grateful Dead, but I’d never deny that they were giants in their field for a long, long time. Two different things.
Speaking of different things, the quality of the music has absolutely nothing to do with how a musician or band conducts itself offstage. To pick only one of countless examples, I wouldn’t have made a lot of the life choices that James Brown made. But, damn.
Only James Brown could make black folks look white:
How it’s done.
i don`t know where I`ve been, but I never heard of them, never heard them, don`t listen to rap if that was their thing, & I`m still alive & don`t seem to have missed a beat.
What`s up with that.