The Beastie Boys

Adam Yauch otherwise known as his Beastie Boys moniker MCA passed away last week.  I have been a fan of the Boys for years now.  I know their later material in particular has not been great.  I will admit this but still I’ve always been a fan.  I don’t know what will happen with his passing but I cannot imagine how Ad Rock and Mike D can continue on without him.

Back when License to Ill came out I was at a crossroads.  I went to high school in the suburbs and while a whole other scene was happening in the alternative world sadly all that trickled down to the halls of Argo High was Poison and the latest Motley Crue tracks.  I like my share of bad hair band tunes but I was never really a huge fan.  How and why I got into white boy rap I am still not sure.

I think RUN DMC’s Raising Hell was the first rap cassette I owned.  And I played the shit out of it in my Firebird’s tape deck.  Instead of having a knee jerk reaction to it I gave it a whirl and I got taken in with its infectious grooves and killer rhymes.  I can still rock out to My Adidas or It’s Tricky.  Most of my friends and family did not support me in my musical taste at the time but I didn’t care.  I liked it and I knew it was good. 

So, I started to experiment with rap.  I was soon jamming to Public Enemy and Ice T.  Eventually License to Ill came out and I was instantly hooked.  Looking back it sounds so different to what the Boys would eventually morph into and become. Yet the seeds were still there of fusing rap with a more rock and roll sound. They were young early twenties kids and they wrote and rapped about what most kids that age were doing, chasing girls, drinking and going to parties.  Here were three Jewish kids from Brooklyn rapping with the best of them.  But, there was something in those sophomoric rhymes that struck a chord with me.

As I got older and moved onto college a whole slew of different bands and genres came into my realm.  But, I still had that soft spot for bands like the Beastie Boys.  In 1989 the Beastie’s got together with the Dust Brothers and crated Paul’s Boutique.  To think that record is twenty three years old blows my mind. 

At the time I will be honest the record came out and it was widely considered a flop and didn’t have much of an effect on the music scene. By that point I had moved on to the Red Hot Chili Peppers and bands of that ilk. It would take some time but history will show Paul’s Boutique was a huge stepping stone in the hip hop scene.  Everyone was expecting a repeat performance of License to Ill and why not.  The record sold a gazillion copies.  It would have been easy and safe for the band to just put out a record that sounded just like it.  But, they wanted to get away from their party boy images and go a little deeper.  And they did just that.

It took me years to finally get that record.  But once my eyes were opened to its greatness I would never look at the Beastie Boys the same again.  I really started to get back into Beastie’s music around the time Check Your Head was released.  I heard it and I was taken aback.  They had done something and created a sound that I am not sure had been heard up to that point.  They perfectly mixed their hip hop roots with an almost punk sound. You hear songs like Gratitude that is now twenty years old and it is as fresh as ever. 

I was sold and from that point on I was a fan.  When Ill Communication came out, that cinched the deal.  That disc was on a permanent rotation in my Corolla’s cd player and was played and played again at all the parties at the house of pain.  I hear Sure Shot or Sabotage and my mind flashes back to a party at the house and grabbing a beer from the keg sitting in the 1890’s model utility sink in the basement.  Like I said after that while I still dug their music it did slip a tad.  But, I was still and always was a fan.

So, when I heard of MCA’s passing last week, it definitely saddened me.  He went way too young and with his passing I felt yet another part of my youth had passed along with him.  I can associate so many good times to the Beastie Boys music that I cannot help but get nostalgic and have a cheesy grin cross my face when I think of them.  Even though I moved on to other bands and listened to many other records over the years The Beastie Boys will always have a special place in my heart.  So rest in peace Adam, you made this world a better place and you touched the lives of numerous white boys in the burbs and opened their minds to a new musical genre that eventual exploded and became mainstream.  You will without question be missed.