Beastie Boys

Beastie Boys burst onto the popular music scene during the mid-1980s through rhymes about “The New Style” and shouts of “(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party!),” their bold celebration of pleasure resonating with both hip-hop listeners and suburban metal fans. The abrasive fusion of hard rock and rap that filled their first album Licensed to Ill left a durable mark on listeners, yet the three members Adam Yauch, Adam Horovitz, and Mike Diamond stayed young rebels and restless creators. They soon moved past pounding rap-rock toward the intricate sample-based soundscapes of Paul’s Boutique, the 1989 project they shaped with the Dust Brothers. Although Paul’s Boutique slowed their sales momentum, the record earned lasting admiration from hip-hop connoisseurs and helped define the genre-blending, self-referential pop culture that marked much of the 1990s. Beastie Boys shaped that decade from the start, launching with the 1992 punk-rap-jazz blend on Check Your Head that returned them to the Top Ten and cast the group as alternative rock standard-bearers. Ill Communication reinforced their resurgence in 1994, aided substantially by the hit single “Sabotage” and its playfully retro video from Spike Jonze. Music videos, frequently overseen by Yauch under the Nathanial Hornblower name, formed a central pillar of the group’s appeal, matched by their Grand Royal operation—an enterprise that encompassed a record label and a widely respected though short-lived magazine—and by their activism, most visibly through Yauch’s co-organization of the Tibetan Freedom Concerts in the late 1990s. After the 1998 number-one album Hello Nasty, Beastie Boys slowed their pace in the 2000s as the trio entered an offbeat middle age, pairing the old-school nod To the 5 Boroughs with the soul-jazz instrumental release The Mix-Up in 2007. While the members prepared their eighth studio album, Yauch learned he had cancer. The group completed and issued Hot Sauce Committee, Pt. 2 in May 2011; he died one year later. Horowitz and Diamond ended activity as Beastie Boys, yet they regrouped to recount their history in Beastie Boys Book in 2018, an account followed by the Jonze-directed documentary Beastie Boys Story in 2020.

All three Beastie Boys members—Mike D (born Mike Diamond, November 20, 1966), MCA (born Adam Yauch, August 5, 1965; died May 4, 2012), and Ad-Rock (born Adam Horovitz, October 31, 1967)—grew up in middle-class Jewish households in New York and entered the city’s punk scene as teenagers during the early 1980s. Diamond and Yauch started Beastie Boys in 1981 with drummer Kate Schellenbach and guitarist John Berry, and the band performed in underground New York clubs. The following year the group issued the 7" EP Pollywog Stew on the indie label Rat Cage, attracting little notice. Also that year the band encountered Horovitz, who had founded the hardcore outfit the Young and the Useless. By early 1983 Schellenbach and Berry had departed—later joining Luscious Jackson and Thwig, respectively—and Horovitz had entered the lineup. The revised ensemble released the rap track “Cookie Puss” as a 12" single later in 1983. Rooted in a prank phone call the members placed to Carvel Ice Cream, the single became an underground success in New York. By early 1984, however, they had dropped punk and focused on rap.

In 1984 Beastie Boys allied with producer Rick Rubin, a heavy-metal and hip-hop enthusiast who had recently launched Def Jam Records with fellow New York University student Russell Simmons. Def Jam formally signed the group in 1985, and that year they scored a hit single from the Krush Groove soundtrack with “She’s on It,” a rap cut that sampled AC/DC’s “Back in Black” and previewed the direction of their upcoming debut. Beastie Boys gained their first substantial national exposure later in 1985 when they supported Madonna on her Virgin tour. The group provoked audiences with profanity and met largely negative reactions. One further major outing, opening for Run-D.M.C.’s troubled Raisin’ Hell trek, preceded the late-1986 arrival of Licensed to Ill. A blend of street beats, metal riffs, b-boy humor, and satire, the album was viewed by many critics and conservative organizations as a crude, thoughtless party record. That perception did not halt its record-setting pace at Columbia Records, where it moved more than 750,000 copies inside six weeks.

Much of the album’s reach stemmed from “Fight for Your Right (To Party),” which became a major crossover single. Licensed to Ill in fact became the decade’s top-selling rap album, prompting criticism from some hip-hop listeners who saw the group as cultural outsiders. At the same time, factions on both the left and right condemned the Beasties’ lyrics as violent and sexist, while their live shows—featuring female fans dancing in go-go cages and a large inflatable penis reminiscent of the Stones’ mid-1970s productions—drew additional outrage. Throughout the 1987 tour the members faced repeated arrests and lawsuits and were accused of encouraging criminal behavior.

Although much of the Beasties’ exaggeratedly abrasive conduct began as humor, it had turned into self-parody by the close of 1987, so the decision to overhaul both sound and image over the next two years came as little surprise. During 1988 the group entered a contentious legal dispute with Def Jam and Rick Rubin, who asserted credit for their success and threatened to issue outtakes as a second album. The Beasties finally severed ties by year’s end and moved to California, where they signed with Capitol. While in California they met the production team the Dust Brothers and persuaded the duo to develop their planned debut into the Beasties’ own second album, Paul’s Boutique. Thickly layered with interwoven samples and pop-culture allusions, the retro-funk-psychedelia of Paul’s Boutique stood in sharp contrast to Licensed to Ill, leaving many observers uncertain how to receive it. Several publications praised the record, yet its failure to yield a single larger than the number-36 “Hey Ladies” led to its quick dismissal.

Despite weak sales, Paul’s Boutique built a devoted following, and its cut-and-paste sampling methods later received recognition as forward-looking, especially once the Dust Brothers applied similar techniques to Beck’s acclaimed 1996 album Odelay. Still regarded as a commercial failure in the early 1990s, the album did not deter the Beasties from constructing their own studio and establishing their own label, Grand Royal, for the subsequent release Check Your Head. Shifting among old-school hip-hop, raw amateur funk, and hardcore punk, Check Your Head proved less polished than Paul’s Boutique yet equally wide-ranging. The growing cult around the group turned the album into a surprise Top Ten hit after its spring 1992 release. “Jimmy James,” “Pass the Mic,” and “So Whatcha Want” achieved greater traction on college and alternative rock stations than on rap radio, restoring the band’s hip status.

Early in 1994 the members gathered their early punk recordings on the compilation Some Old Bullshit, which was followed in June by their fourth album, Ill Communication. Essentially extending Check Your Head, the record entered at number one and the singles “Sabotage” and “Sure Shot” helped it reach double-platinum certification. During summer 1994 they co-headlined the fourth Lollapalooza festival alongside the Smashing Pumpkins. That same year Grand Royal expanded into a full record label by releasing Luscious Jackson’s acclaimed debut Natural Ingredients, and the Beasties also introduced their Grand Royal magazine.

Over the next several years Beastie Boys stayed largely out of the spotlight while devoting energy to political causes and the operations of their label. In 1996 they issued the hardcore EP Aglio e Olio and the instrumental soul-jazz and funk set The In Sound from Way Out! Also that year Adam Yauch staged a two-day festival to spotlight the situation in Tibet, an event that became annual. The long-awaited fifth album Hello Nasty finally surfaced in summer 1998 and became their third chart-topping release. A longer interval preceded their next record, To the 5 Boroughs, which arrived in mid-2004. In 2005 Capitol released Solid Gold Hits, a 15-track overview of the group’s career. One year later the band issued the concert film Awesome: I Fuckin’ Shot That!, assembled from footage captured by 50 DV and Hi-8 cameras handed out to fans; the DVD version followed in July.

The instrumental album The Mix-Up sustained the group’s active streak in 2007 and earned a Grammy Award the next year. Beastie Boys returned to rap with Hot Sauce Committee, Pt. 1, portions of which surfaced during their 2009 Bonnaroo performance, yet the project remained unreleased after Yauch disclosed his cancer diagnosis. He completed successful surgery and radiation treatment, and late in 2010 the band confirmed that Hot Sauce Committee, Pt. 2—containing nearly all the material planned for the first volume—would appear in 2011. They delivered on that schedule; the album arrived in May and received strong reviews and sales. One year later, in May 2012, Yauch succumbed to cancer.