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Beastie Boys rapper Adam Yauch dead at 47

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dejay

Banned
I'd be more afraid of Oprah's top and that hair. I was around back then, and I remember some outrage - funny I'd forgotten that.
 

Tashi

343i Lead Esports Producer
Sitting here listening to Pass the Mic. What a fuckin song!

Well I'm on, to the crack of dawn. I'm mowin down MCs like I'm mowin the lawn!

So great
 
I will always remember the Boys for never changing and making amazing fun Hip-Hop records. Never giving in to whatever fads was going in the 90's and 2K's....Props.

Funny thing is, they probably helped create more fads in hip-hop than follow them.

"I'm taking doody rhymes to the brand new height
I shine on the mic like UltraBrite
Created a monster with these rhymes I write
Goatee metal rap please say goodnight"
 
Just picked this up today, gonna wear it to The Avengers today.

456417_3981282609615_1207170104_3787239_1296990803_o.jpg
 

Shaneus

Member
Vh1 rockin Beastie vids hard right now.
Man, I'd kill for some kind of tribute to be playing on Australian TV right now. The main music video show (Rage) is normally pretty awesome for that kind of thing, but maybe they didn't have the time to do it (though you'd think that 18hrs would be plenty). A little disappointed, considering who's *currently* programming it. It's Gaving Rossdale :(

Hopefully there'll be some way to either get the VH1 tribute or there'll be an Australian one soon.

Side note: This really pisses me off for some reason... that mentioning someone's passing in a music store is somehow some kind of cash-in. Too tired and emotional to write any more about it (it's nudging 4am here) but man, just gets my goat.
 
So I was at a buddy's place last night. I told him that Adam had died, and so I spun Sabotage. He hadn't listened to Beasties before (so I thought Sabotage would be a good intro), and he quit the song halfway through to put on some collegehumor video. I just about walked out of his house.
 

Shaneus

Member
So I was at a buddy's place last night. I told him that Adam had died, and so I spun Sabotage. He hadn't listened to Beasties before (so I thought Sabotage would be a good intro), and he quit the song halfway through to put on some collegehumor video. I just about walked out of his house.
With all due respect, Sabotage really isn't a great track to start with if you're introducing them. I would've erred on the side of Sure Shock, Shake Your Rump or even the newer stuff like Intergalactic or Check It Out. I'd have probably done the same thing he did!
 
I love the Beasties, but Sabotage isn't even in my Beastie Boys Best Of playlist. Should have played some Hey Ladies.

Same here. I find that most of their big hit singles are the tracks that I end up listening to the least. Hey Ladies was great though, but personally, I don't think that was the best track on Paul's Boutique.

B-Boy Bouillabaisse still blows me away. 12 minutes of pure amazing (especially "A Year And A Day").
 
Still hurting.

The original RollingStone "Pauls Boutique" review

Like this summer's block-buster movie sequels, the Beastie Boys' second album was anticipated with some hope tempered by much dread. On their bratty 1986 debut, Licensed to Ill, the Beasties — Adam "Ad-Rock" Horovitz, Adam "MCA" Yauch and Michael "Mike D" Diamond — established themselves as the Sultans of Swagger. Thanks to the heavy-metallic single "Fight for Your Right (to Party)," the album went multiplatinum and helped bring rap to a wider (whiter) audience.

But Ill was often credited solely to scratch-meister producer Rick Rubin — and seemed destined for the one-shot-wonder bin. When the Boys weren't being called Monkees for not playing instruments, they were being called Blues Brothers for plundering a black music form and making more louie off it. Compounding the usual pressure of a follow-up, the Beasties split from Rubin and his label, Def Jam, over a royalty dispute and set up shop in L.A., far from the urban blight of New York that fueled the pillage-and-anarchy lyrics of their debut.

Yet with the dense, crafty Paul's Boutique (produced by the Dust Brothers, including Tone-Loc helmsman Matt Dike), the Beasties reinvent the turntable and prove they're here to stay. Gone is Rubin's wailing guitar (and with it, probably, the chance of a crossover hit single), but in its place is a nearly seamless set of provocative samples and rhymes — a rap opera, if you will, complete with an Abbey Road-like multisnippet medley called "B-boy Bouillabaisse." If the misogyny, hedonism and violence of the first album bothered you, the sequel shows little remorse — merely replacing beer with cheeba — but it's a much more intricate, less bludgeoning effort.

Paul's Boutique — named after a Brooklyn store whose radio ad is tossed in the mix and whose picture graces the cover — surprises from the get-go. Instead of opening, as Ill did, with wall-to-wall drum wallops, it creeps up on you like an alley cat: A quiet organ and snare fade up as a mellow DJ voice dedicates the ensuing set to (who else?) the girls of the world. Then, of course, drums rat-a-tat, and we're back in naughty-boy land. "I rock a house party at the drop of a hat/I beat a biter down with an aluminum bat," snarls Horovitz on the opener, "Shake Your Rump." But even in the midst of this obligatory strutting, the Boys slyly acknowledge their tarnished public image: "I'm Mike D, and I'm back from the dead," brags Diamond.

"A puppet on a string, I'm paid to sing or rhyme," adds Yauch.

That out of the way, they're back on the streets, dissing and snickering. The next song, "Johnny Ryall," set against a blues-riff loop and dissonant guitar solo, spray-paints a wry, detailed portrait of a bum living on Mike D's block. This runs into "Egg Man," a nightmarish cartoon of shell-cracking hooliganism that starts with the slinky bass line from "Superfly," features echoey shrieks on the choruses and closes with a slice of the theme from Psycho, which jarringly snaps off like a TV set. (In the midst of the vigilantism, the Boys do sneak in this tip: "You made the mistake you judge a man by his race/You go through life with egg on your face.")

Each track brims with ideas and references too numerous to catalog, veering in new directions at every verse: "The Sounds of Science" builds from a casual, smartass schoolboy singsong to a breakneck chant against repeated guitar strums from "The End," by the Beatles. Here and throughout, the songs are buoyed by the deft interplay of the three voices and a poetic tornado of imagery.

In terms of lyrics, the posturing that dominated Licensed to Ill is still in evidence — witness "High Plains Drifter" and "Car Thief" — but it's been leavened by an approach that's almost, well, literary. Sure, Paul's Boutique is littered with bullshit tough-guy bravado, but it's clever and hilarious bullshit: Who can be put off by claims like "I got more hits than Sadaharu Oh" and "I got more suits than Jacoby and Meyers"? In the catchy, Sly Stone-based "Shadrach," this would-be terrible trio compares itself to biblical heroes Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego.

And while the Boys' rap references range from Magilla Gorilla to Dickens, their musical samples are equally far-flung, including Johnny Cash, Hendrix and Jean Knight's "Mr. Big Stuff." (Acrostic-minded listeners should know that Jerry Garcia, Sweet and George Carlin are also allegedly in here somewhere.) Though the group seems most proud of the twelve-inch-vinyl version — the cover of the first pressing is an impressive eight-fold wraparound photo — Paul's Boutique seems mixed especially for a Walkman. The voices shimmer around the listener's head in an artful dance, and the musical "steals" effected by the Boys and Dust Brothers Matt Dike, John King and Mike Simpson are much more complicated than the first album's, changing speeds, inverting or abstracting themes until they're virtually new. If you can recognize them, fine, but they stand on their own; it's no more thievery than Led Zep's borrowing from Muddy Waters.

In the works for a year and meticulously constructed, Paul's Boutique retains a loose, fun feel. The infectious "What Comes Around" (in which they taunt skinheads, rapping, "You're all mixed up, like pasta primavera/Why'd you throw that chair at Geraldo Rivera?") winds up with a wild Beastie version of scat humming. The Boys kick off side two by hollering at one another over a hillbilly hoedown called "5-Piece Chicken Dinner." There are abundant inside jokes — a line delivered by a blow-hard New York TV weatherman, references to close friends and local events like Brooklyn's Atlantic Antic — but they are never made in an off-putting way. The Boys are just being themselves, thrashing about in a reality ignored by too many mainstream white-rock acts.

In "Three Minute Rule," Yauch says, "A lot of parents like to think I'm a villain/I'm just chillin', like Bob Dylan." May they stay forever def.
 
The cross-pollination of styles on Check Your Head is confusing at times, yet the album achieves distinction because of its ingenuity. Beneath the seeming chaos, the Beastie Boys have created a harmonious playground out of their musical fantasies.
 

highrider

Banned
my man mca got a beard like a billy goat.

rip. i'm so blown. he was a great artist and he and his bandmates were legit in every way a hip hop artist can be. glad i got to see their last tour.

he put his root down.
 
Same here. I find that most of their big hit singles are the tracks that I end up listening to the least. Hey Ladies was great though, but personally, I don't think that was the best track on Paul's Boutique.

Hard to find a bad track on Paul's Boutique. That CD was, and still is, so amazing.
 
Hard to find a bad track on Paul's Boutique. That CD was, and still is, so amazing.

I'm not saying there ever was a bad track. This is one of those albums that I can listen to from start to finish without skipping anything. I really like the lack of cynicism and preachiness, it's a good groove album.
 
Me and a buddy weredrinking 40s of Olde English and we poured some out for our homie in the sky (because he was the eagle).
 

Shaneus

Member
I follow @nealbrennan on twitter and he uploaded a Beastie performance that never aired from the Chappelle Show.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=cPLLEIUYnlk
Man, thanks a ton for that, just a crazy video. Still more flow and energy than kids half their age. Great tribute to them to be able to perform like that with no stage or mixing decks or producers, just the four of them, three mics and a couple of turntables.


In other news, bought this today:
h5vIO.jpg


$38AU which I didn't think was too bad, but even more easily justifiable given it comes with a download code for the full album, bonus 7" (no idea what it is, I think it might be one of the tracks in an older form when it was destined for part 1?) and iron-on transfer. Don't even know if I want to break the seal, TBH.
 

Shaneus

Member
Fucking awesome, man. Great to read something I can relate to more than a lot of the stuff that's mostly from the US, practically mirrored my initial reaction to it as well, crying included.

Edit: Reading through the comments is almost even better still. I'd kill for the ABC to air a Beasties-programmed Rage. No idea if they did more than one, but any would be amazing. Invite a few friends over, crack a few beers and celebrate.
 

666

Banned
Fucking awesome, man. Great to read something I can relate to more than a lot of the stuff that's mostly from the US, practically mirrored my initial reaction to it as well, crying included.

Edit: Reading through the comments is almost even better still. I'd kill for the ABC to air a Beasties-programmed Rage. No idea if they did more than one, but any would be amazing. Invite a few friends over, crack a few beers and celebrate.

Thanks man, it was pretty therapeutic to write about it. It's amazing how big of an impact his death has had. So sad and untimely.

As for rage I recently applied to be the programmer producer for rage so if I somehow swindle that Its on!! I'll speak to the dude in there now and see if they're planning it.
 

Shaneus

Member
Damn (re: buying Paul's Boutique from the BB website):
Hi Shane. Thanks for your email. I'm sorry to hear that you are having some trouble purchasing. It appears that the artist's team has made the offers on the Paul's Boutique Beastie Boys page no longer available for purchase. We do not have any insight on whether these offers will be made available in the future, and apologize for any confusion. Please refer to the artist's website for any updates regarding the future availability of these items, if they become available later on. If you would like to purchase the digital files at this time, you will need to order from a different retailer, as they are not available for purchase from the Beastie Boys website. Thanks for your patience and support for the Beastie Boys.

Kind regards,
Jonny
Thanks man, it was pretty therapeutic to write about it. It's amazing how big of an impact his death has had. So sad and untimely.

As for rage I recently applied to be the programmer producer for rage so if I somehow swindle that Its on!! I'll speak to the dude in there now and see if they're planning it.
Oh man, that's great news about the Rage thing! And while I wasn't as influenced by them as you were when young (bit of a late bloomer in that regard) it still easy to see why thy affected so many people... they matured at exactly the same rate as their fans and their albums echoed that. Young and reckless as kids, evolving and experimenting, growing into mature adults but still having a laugh and a good time. Most of all, it's a testament to the three that the only thing that can stop them or their music is something like death. That's what hurts the most I think, that if it weren't for that we'd still have things to look forward to from them. Honestly can't think of another group like that... one that remained so "normal" for the entire lifespan of their band (that happened to last almost 30 years).
Damnit, I'm rambling :( Typing on a phone doesn't help either, so apols if it sounds disjointed or doesn't make sense.


already blocked by Viacom so I didn't get a chance to see it :(
I downloaded it :D I'm heading to work now, but when I'm back home in 12 hrs or so, I'll upload it back on YT or somewhere else for you and others :)
 

wetwired

Member
I was actually pretty late to the beastie boys. I'm 32 and my first intro was hello nasty. I liked it but it wasnt until to the 5 boroughs that I really got into them. Its not the type of music I would normally listen to but it just clicked for me, it wasn't about gang bangers and shit like that. It was some normal guys would could rap.

Hot sauce committee I loved, would I enjoy their older stuff or is a product of the time?
 
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