From The Vinyl Vault
Album: Licensed To Ill
Artist: The Beastie Boys
Original Release: November 1986
Label: Def Jam
Before shit jewellery, shit cars with shit spinning rims, shit collaborations with even shitter flavour of the month pop stars, Krunk, Pimp Juice and Snoop Dogg dressing up like Willy Wonka for a Katy Perry video, there was hip hop. More importantly, there was The Beastie Boys.
During the mid-1980’s, American guitar music was drowning in a sea of hairspray and acid wash denim. Fortunately the streets of Harlem, Brooklyn and Queens had the cure to this horrific overdose of Axl Rose and Bon Jovi.
Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five, Kurtis Blow and Run DMC took funk loops, drum machines and flawless MC’ing and brought about the most exciting musical revolution since punk fucked up the rulebook in the mid 70’s.
Ironically, it would be the punk revolution that inspired Mike D, MCA and Ad-Rock (there’s no need for real names is there?) to become The Beastie Boys, after MCA attended a Black Flag gig at the Peppermint Lounge in March, 1981. It would be two years and an appearance on punk compilation New York Thrash later that The Beasties finally incorporated rap into their act with the recording of ‘Cooky Puss’.
Fast forward another three years and The Beasties had aligned themselves with Def Jam co-founder and producer extraordinaire Rick Rubin and were in the studio creating their immature masterpiece.
From the opening hollers of “Because Mutiny on the bounty’s what we’re all about” on ‘Rhymin and Stealin’ you’re transported away from Adidas shell toes and basketball to Lydonesque chanting over Sabbath’s ‘Sweet Leaf’ and Zeppelin’s ‘When The Levee Breaks’. Then, if that wasn’t enough, The Beasties break down into a chant of “Ali Baba and the forty thieves!” It’s as if three nerdy white kids decided to record a punk album in a White Castle burger bar. Actually, that’s not that far removed from what actually happened.
From the now legendary MTV classics of ‘Fight For Your Right (To Party)’ and ‘No Sleep Til Brooklyn’ (which features Slayer’s Kerry King on guitar, no less) to the inane ramblings of ‘Brass Monkey’ (“Brass Monkey/ That funky monkey/Brass Monkey junkie/ That funky monkey”) and ‘Girls’, the most endearing quality of this glorious nonsense is how innocent it all is.
There’s no status in The Beastie Boys music. No rep to protect or enemies to threaten. No bragging necessary. Licensed To Ill is the most unashamedly fun record you’re ever likely to hear. The lyrics are hardly air tight, in fact, a lot of the time they can be downright bollocks, but that’s what makes Licensed . . . such an essential piece of work.
This is an album that on paper, should not work. It’s three scrawny white boys making black music by blending it with punk and heavy metal. They spend the entire 44 minutes and 33 seconds of the album rapping about girls, cartoons, pirates and getting hammered.
Yet, it’s such an unapologetically refreshing blast of surrealism that it works outstandingly well. Rolling Stone put it best in their review of the album with the headline “Three Idiots Make a Masterpiece”. And that’s just what The Beasties were, and still are, in the greatest sense of the word, idiots. Not smack peddling gang members done good, but idiots with an ear for a tune and the confidence to do whatever the fuck they want.
Licensed To Ill became an overnight phenomenon. It was the first hip hop LP to hit the number one spot on the Billboard 200 chart and is still Columbia Records best-selling debut to date, with sales of nine million and counting. Not to mention being the only album by a white hip hop act to earn The Source’s coveted Five Mics rating.
In the modern world of soulless, “I’m worth more than you” rap music, Licensed To Ill is a striking testament to how important an art form hip hop can be when done properly. As Melody Maker so perfectly summed up Licensed . . . upon it’s release, “It’s an unshakably glorious celebration of being alive.”
Until next time,
Keep on Keepin’ on,
Baia
X
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