” No doubt the book will also touch on the Beastie Boys’ later years, including the tragic death of MCA in 2012”. “ A description on the Beastie Boys’ website called Beastie Boys Book as “a panoramic experience” and “a book as unique as the band itself.” It will cover the entirety of the group’s career, “revealing and very funny accounts of their transition from teenage punks to budding rappers their early collaboration with Russell Simmons and Rick Rubin the almost impossible-to-fathom overnight success of their debut studio album Licensed to Ill that album’s messy fallout their break with Def Jam, move to Los Angeles, and rebirth as musicians and social activists, with the genre-defying masterpiece Paul’s Boutique. The reason I am bringing up the Beastie Boys’ work now is that their memoir, Beastie Boys Book, is out on 30th October: I still get the same feelings and effects at the age of thirty-five.

It remains untouchable and, when I heard it around age eleven, I could not believe all these samples and sounds fusing together to create something cinematic, biblical and head-melting. Their 1986 debut, Licensed to Ill, contained their hits, Fight for Your Right and Brass Monkey – stone-cold classics that could be chanted, sung and hummed without too much disciplinary backlash! Paul’s Boutique – the 1989 masterpiece that, at first, divided critics – seemed to suggest what Check Your Head would be but, in a way, reached further than any Beastie Boys album. and their ilk would open my eyes in a very different way! Check Your Head fascinated me because of its sheer number of tracks (twenty) and the fact it possessed economy – there were short numbers and no song really drags.Īfter having something genuinely thrilling to talk about in the playground I went back and ‘caught up’ on the Beastie Boys. I would be greeted with the opposite end of the spectrum a bit later down the line: Public Enemy, N.W.A. They combined wit and humanist outlook with something less controversial and more colourful. outfits that were more ‘Flower Power’ and peaceful in their mantras. My only exposure to Hip-Hop and Rap at that time was with the likes of Arrested Development and De La Soul – two U.S. Stormers like Gratitude and Jimmy James were atom bomb-sized mindblows that sounded unlike anything else I had ever heard. There were some who felt the vastness of the cross-pollination was, at times, confusing – they admired the ingenuity and boldness. The album – the third from the clan – was met with critical praise and acceptance. I first discovered them when the band’s album, Check Your Head, was released in 1992. We might not be able to locate that first moment when music stuck in the mind and the world seemed like a much more interesting place! I can recall the sort of music I was listening to when I was in primary-school but, by the early-1990s, there was this strange, awesome force of nature: the Beastie Boys. The sounds and albums that struck our ears at a very young age.

Brass monkey beastie boys remix