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BEASTIE BOYS ::
FROM PUNK ROCK TO RAP
a
Hear the Beastie Boys' trademark
oomphed up rap &
punkified street
beats in thier new release
To the 5 Boroughs.
a
Published in PRESS
Magazine
July
2004
Their mix of heady grooves, smart samples,
outrageous punkery, and absolute partying have put the Beastie Boys on the map
as one of the bands who helped usher rap into the mainstream. With songs that
function equally as mosh pit anthems and intense dance floor gut-punches, the
Beastie Boys have proved to be responsible stewards that pushed the genre's
sound to its limit, evolving lyrically, pushing political agendas and reigning
at the top of the charts without selling out to pop conventions. And while it is
true that the Beastie Boys have become 40-something-year-old men rapping in a
kids’ market, the trio still sound as invigorated and energetic as ever as they
deliver their lyrics in a Run-D.M.C. pass-the-mic style and return to the music
scene after their six-year hiatus with their sixth full length LP that pays
tribute to New York City, To the 5 Burroughs.
From Punk Rock…
It all started way back in 1979 when Michael Diamond met
up with Adam Yauch at a gig of the widely respected Washington DC black hardcore
punk band Bad Brains, when still in their early teens. Sharing a common interest
for punk rock, a musical genre that not a lot of people from their school at
that time were into, Diamond and Yauch started to hang out and go to clubs to
see bands together as they were both younger than most people at the gigs they
frequented.
In 1981, Diamond and Yauch formed the Beastie Boys as a
goof with drummer Kate Schellenbach and guitarist John Berry and played at
underground clubs around New York. None of them really took it seriously as they
just wanted to start a hardcore band because there weren't any such bands in New
York by the time. The following year, the Beastie Boys released their first 7”
7EP entitled, Pollywog Stew on the indie label Rat Cage which they
recorded on a single winter weekend in 1981, in a studio of the same building as
the Rat Cage record shop, where the Beasties hung out a lot instead of school.
While the release of the EP in early 1982 failed to do anything on the charts,
it did make them a following. Oddly enough, though, the group celebrated their
first record release by splitting up, with John Barry leaving the group first.
Adam Horovitz - known as King Adrock – replaced him, joining straight from the
punk group, “The Young And The Useless.” Soon, they moved over into the rap
kingdom and continued to devour hip-hop throughout 1982 and 1983. Since Kate was
not into in the same way as the other Beasties were, she left the band just
after a few months John did, before going on to join Luscious Jackson.
…to Rap
In 1983, the revamped group
composed of Mike Diamond a.k.a. Mike D. on drums, Adam Yauch, a.k.a. MCA on bass
and vocals and Adam Horovitz a.k.a Ad-Rock on guitar and vocals, who all came
from wealthy middle-class Jewish families in New York and had become involved in
the city's punk underground when they were teenagers in the early '80s became
the Beastie Boys that they are known now. The first release of their new trio, “Cookie
Puss,” a 12" single, was a mix of rap music with samples of a prank phone
call the group made to Carvel Ice Cream that became an underground hit in New
York marking it as the highest point of the Beastie Boys’ career in the
early-‘80s. Cookie Puss caught the ear of DJ Rick Rubin or DJ Double R
who introduced them to high-flying Run-D.M.C. manager Russel Simmons, both of
whom had recently founded hip-hop label Def Jam in 1984, with the Beastie Boys
as the roster's first signings, whom the label officially signed in 1985. Upon
Rubin’s insistence, the trio abandoned punk and turned their attention to rap,
which eventually led to their first Def Jam release, the four-track, Rock
Hard EP that included “Beastie Groove” and “Party's Getting Rough.” That
same year, The Beastie Boys appeared in the rap movie "Krush Groove,"
contributing "She's on It" to the soundtrack. The Beasties also received their
first significant national exposure later that year when Madonna chose the
Beastie Boys to open the show for her Like A Virgin tour, though their on-stage
antics coupled with taunting the audience with profanity caught the world by
surprise and were generally poorly received.
Slow Rise To Fame
In the summer of 1986, the
Beastie Boys went on their second tour as the openers for Run-D.M.C.'s ill-fated
Raisin' Hell Tour, together with record label friend LL Cool J. Later that same
year, they finally released their first full-length album Licensed to Ill.
Produced by Rubin, it became one of the best selling debut hip-hop albums of the
‘80s, moving over 750,000 copies in its first six weeks and spending seven weeks
at the Billboard pop chart. Much of that success was due to the album’s first
single “Fight For Your Right (To Party)” which entered the charts at number one.
A massive crossover success, MTV caught the Beastie Boys’ video for the song and
brought it into heavy rotation for the duration of the year. An amalgam of
street beats, metal riffs, b-boy jokes, and satire, Licensed to Ill rose
to the top of the charts and by early 1987, it hit #1. The singles from the
album, "She's Crafty," "No Sleep Till Brooklyn," "Brass Monkey" and "Paul
Revere" gained the band a place in the rock scene and a near-iconic status as
the first and at that time only white hip-hop act to garner and maintain
mainstream acceptance as the first rappers to reach No. 1 on the Billboard 200.
In 1988, the Beastie Boys
became involved in a lawsuit with Def Jam and Rick Rubin, which led to them
switching labels to Capitol Records, resulting to the trio separating from their
friends and family and relocating to Los Angeles, California. In California,
they met the production team of the Dust Brothers whom they convinced to use
their prospective debut album as the basis for the Beasties' second album,
Paul's Boutique. Densely layered with interweaving samples and pop culture
references, the retro-funk-psychedelia, Paul's Boutique, released in
1989, was a bolder move into the realm of experimental rap, but extremely
innovative and an ahead-of-it's-time sampledelic CD with energized confusion and
East Coast-West Coast contradictions whose sound was more psychedelic mixed with
70's funk staples that would soon give the world of rap a new and more popular
direction with the mainstream. While sales were nothing compared to Licensed
to Ill, despite its poor commercial performance, with the album going
platinum only 1998, Paul's Boutique gained a cult following. Eventually,
at around this time, the Beasties built their own studio and founded their own
record label, Grand Royal, for their next record, Check Your Head. Kate
Shellenbach's band "Luscious Jackson" was among the first signings.
Three years later, in 1992,
the Beastie Boys refined their eclectic approach and released Check Your
Head, which did very good and entered the charts at number one. An album
well-respected both by the critics and the fans, it alternated between
old-school hip-hop, raw amateurish funk, and hardcore punk, it put the Beasties
back to their roots as an instrument-wielding band.
Early in 1994, they collected
their early punk recordings on the EP compilation Some Old Bullshit,
followed in June by their fourth album, Ill Communication which debuted
at number one upon its release, and the singles "Sure Shot" and "Sabotage, " the
first single from the album which earned several nominations at the MTV Video
Music Awards, helped send it to double-platinum status. During the summer of
1994, the Beastie Boys co-headlined the fourth Lollapalooza festival with the
Smashing Pumpkins, and that same year, Grand Royal became a full-fledged record
label as it released Luscious Jackson's debut album, Natural Ingredients.
The Beasties Boys’ Grand Royal magazine was also launched that year.
In 1996, they released the
hardcore EP Aglio e Olio and the instrumental soul-jazz and funk
collection, The In Sound From Way Out! Also that year, Adam Yauch started
the Milarepa Fund, an organization to help the people and culture of Tibet.
Organizing a two-day festival to raise awareness and money about Tibet's plight
against the Chinese government, the first Tibetan Freedom Concert held in San
Francisco over two days in June 1996, had artists such as Rage Against The
Machine, A Tribe Called Quest, Björk, The Smashing Pumpkins, Beck, De la Soul,
Foo Figthers, Biz Markie, The Fugees, Red Hot Chili Peppers and of course The
Beastie Boys themselves playing. Eventually, the festival went on to become an
annual event.
In the spring of 1998, the
Beastie Boys launched their fifth full-length album, Hello Nasty, which
produced two hit singles, "Intergalactic" and "Body Movin’.” A more computerized
and "clean" album, it did not included any punk songs since they had all been
released earlier on the punk-rock ep Aglio E Olio. Rather, the music could be
associated with people like Santana and different Jazz and Bossanova musicians.
In 1999, they released their first greatest hits package, "The Sounds of
Science." A two disc Anthology with a 84 page booklet with comments written by
themselves about every song on the Anthology, it featured rarities, misses, hit
songs and three previously unreleased tracks. While the new Beastie style
gained the trio millions of new fans with the album selling over five million
copies, the Beastie Boys were forced to close their record label Grand Royal in
2001 due to increasing debts, though they eventually built their own studio in
Manhattan where To The 5 Boroughs was recorded.
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