In November 1986, I wandered into a mall record store with every intention of buying nothing. I browsed, and nothing caught my eye, except the Violent Femmes first album, but it was too expensive. Nothing stood out in the rap section, which at that time was tiny, so I left. As I stepped back out into the mall, a display in the window caught my eye. It looked a little something like this:
Now, with all due respect to Ben Shapiro, I had been a fan of rap/hip hop since I heard “Sucker M.C.’s” by Run-DMC in the seventh grade, and my early cassette tape collection included such artists as Whodini, The Fat Boys, and LL Cool J. While I heard “Fight for Your Right (To Party)” on the radio, I honestly didn’t consider it hip hop music. I also didn’t know that the Beastie’s had been around as a hardcore punk outfit for a little while. But there’s one thing I did know when I saw that poster in the window of Camelot Music at Cumberland Mall, and that my friends is this: The Beastie Boys were obviously the coolest guys that had ever lived. I hurried back inside the store and snapped up a copy of their Def Jam debut, “Licensed to Ill.”
Thus began a strange career for Adam Horovitz, Adam Yauch, and Michael Diamond, and my stranger fascination with it. For better or worse, their music influenced the rock-rap subgenre, but it’s unfair to categorize them with the bands they inspired. From Even when they venture into the hardcore punk of their youth, The Beastie Boys are a hip hop group. If Rap is a style of delivering lyrics, then hip hop is an attitude. The Beastie Boys, along with Run DMC and Public Enemy (among others), created music informed by Rock and other genres, but is definitively hip hop.
Starting with this post, I will attempt to dissect each of their studio albums, viewing them through the prism of my experiences as a somewhat rabid fan. Anyone that has a most favoritest artist in the world knows, the “relationship” between artist and fan is at times weird, with perceived betrayals, to joyous reunions, to moments when you’re sure you’re the only person that really “gets” said artist. Taken to its ridiculous, literal extreme, we’re talking Kathy Bates in “Misery”-weird. I hope you enjoy the series.
“Licensed to Ill.” Coolest. Title. Ever.
From the opening drums and pounding guitar, I was hooked. The Beastie Boys didn’t sound like anyone I had ever heard.
I’m not a connoisseur of classic rock and roll. I had no idea that was Led Zeppelin or Black Sabbath they had sampled on the opening track, “Rhymin’ and Stealin’,” I simply knew that my suspicions were confirmed about these three white guys. “Licensed to Ill” was a monster hit, crossing over racial barriers, but it was soon dismissed within the culture as a novelty hit. The Beasties, comprised of Michael “Mike D.” Diamond, Adam “The King Ad Rock” Horovitz, and Adam “MCA” Yauch, issued a string of awesome videos in support of their masterpiece, each one funnier than the last. They had previously made a cameo appearance in “Krush Groove,” as themselves; but I was not allowed to see the movie. Until “Licensed to Ill,” I just lived with that fact, but now I needed to see it, I had to see it. It was…kinda lame, a great story poorly told. Someone should remake it; it would probably be more effective today, as a “Boogie Nights” style piece of nostalgia.
I vividly remember never taking the tape out of the boombox I had gotten for Christmas in 1984. Etched in my brain is an argument I had with my mom. She wouldn’t let me go see them live because she heard something about an inflatable penis onstage. An inflatable. Penis. Onstage. Does it get any more sophomoric? Turns out, yes, it does. My buddy Capers went to see them at the Atlanta Civic Center and came back with a T-Shirt that said, “Stay off my d*ck.” (Our boss at the Austell Road McDonald’s told him to cover up that obscene shirt!) I saw them perform on MTV’s New Year’s Eve Special that year, and they were mesmerizing, dousing each other with beer, acting like lunatics. I had never seen anything like them before.
Lyrically, they were hilarious. Sharp storytellers, they were equally adept at ridiculous name-checking-non-sequiturs. MCA boasted that he had “More rhymes than Phyllis Diller,” and “more juice than Picasso got paint.” They rapped about smoking angel dust, skateboarding, and because they couldn’t actually say bad words, they rapped about saying bad words; they sampled the theme from Mr. Ed (which, yes, I recognized). They were everything a nerdy teenager like me wasn’t. They toured with Run-DMC, got booed offstage when they opened for Madonna, made a mockery of the Grammy’s (or some crappy awards show), and performed in and then…they sued their label and moved to Los Angeles.
It seemed like it was over. They were The Monkees, we were told. One hit wonders. Worse, they were suddenly, seemingly irrevocably, the least hip band (band?) in the world. They had lost something that was very important in the world of hip hop, something that is very difficult to regain: Street Cred. In the pre-Internet age, it was difficult for me to keep tabs on them once they headed west. Once they were completely, seriously – completely – forgotten, I read they had a second album due on a new label, Capitol Records. I can’t dig up anything about it, but I swear I also remember reading that Russell Simmons had hired Chuck D. (The incredible! Rhyme animal!) and the Bomb Squad to finish some Beastie tracks that Def Jam still owned. Purportedly it would be called “The White House,” and it was supposed to come out a week after the Beastie’s were to drop their unanticipated second album. I almost wish I could write about this alleged album next week, because I still love the idea of it. Instead, look for my post about “Paul’s Boutique,” which by all accounts was destined to be an artistic and commercial failure.
LICENSED TO ILL, 1985
BEST SONGS: Paul Revere, Rhymin’ and Stealin’, The New Style, Time to Get Ill, Slow Ride, Slow and Low, Brass Monkey
COOL SAMPLES: Mr. Ed, Moby Dick, Some song by CCR
POLITICAL REFERENCES: None
Cam’s Rating: In 1985, 5/5 stars. In 2010, 5/5 stars
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