Beastie Boys

In 1986, New York rappers Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz, Adam “MCA” Yauch and Michael “Mike D” Diamond did a naked cannonball (metaphorically speaking) into the climate-controlled pool of pop music. With the guitar-laced “(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party)” as their calling card, the Beasties were out for shock value, and it worked: Licensed to Ill had become one of the fastest-selling albums in the history of Columbia Records. They terrified grownups because their gift for writing hilarious, over-the-top lyrics about middle-class urban antics made their music feel contagious. For their next trick, Paul’s Boutique—an album with unprecedented layers of samples that dip in and out, like a jukebox having a nervous breakdown. It capped an unregulated era when rappers could use samples without legal restriction, and it’s still studied like the Talmud of sampling. By the late ’80s, a lot of pop culture had turned cartoonish, and the Beasties started to regret their jokes about violence and misogyny. On the eclectic Check Your Head, they transformed into a tight three-piece funk band in the mould of Ohio Players or The Meters, and rhymed over their own beats, while Ill Communication, which was highly influenced by Miles Davis, added jazz and hardcore punk to the mix and spun off “Sabotage”, an all-time great music video. MCA, in particular, was penitent about the misogynistic jibes of his youth, and he began to study Buddhism, which influenced him to write lyrics that pondered the transcendental (“Every thought in the mind is a planted seed,” for instance). He spoke out on behalf of the Tibetan people and created a charitable foundation to promote compassion. On Hello Nasty and To the 5 Boroughs, Beastie Boys aged gracefully into parenthood and responsibility without losing any of their humour, even rapping about their gray hairs, not to mention advocating for gun control and tossing gibes at SUVs, George W. Bush and the KKK. In the span of roughly 25 years, they built a catalogue that was hyperactive, witty, unpredictable and unmatched in rap history. It ended only with MCA’s death in 2012, at the age of 47.