Beastie Boys Overview

In 1981, New York witnessed the formation of the first successful white hip-hop group. Mike D, Ad-Rock, and MCA emerged from the hard-core punk scene of the late 1970s and fought for our right to party to a different sound. Their... [more]

In 1981, New York witnessed the formation of the first successful white hip-hop group. Mike D, Ad-Rock, and MCA emerged from the hard-core punk scene of the late 1970s and fought for our right to party to a different sound. Their "Licensed to Ill" sold 720,000 copies in six weeks, making it Columbia's fastest-selling debut ever. It all started one day when a 14-year-old Adam Horovitz met up with Adam Yauch and Mike Diamond, all children of wealthy New York families. In 1982, they released their first EP, "Pollywog Stew," on the independent label Rat Cage. They embarked on their first rap attempt, "Cookie Pus," a year later. Soon after, the three young artists teamed up with Rick Rubin, who would start the Def Jam music label in his college dorm room. The threesome began to take their music seriously, laying middle-class sensibilities over the beat. 1985 saw their first big live show as the opening act on Madonna's "Virgin" tour. The following year they toured with Run DMC on their "Raisin' Hell" tour. In 1987, they headlined a tour and struggled through a year full of lawsuits, arrests, and media-fed scandals over the allegedly violent, obscene, and sexist message of their music. "Check Your Head," released in 1992, broke into the top 10 despite its stylistic hopscotch: tracks jumped from hip-hop to funk to punk. In 1994 The Beastie Boys hit the road with the Lollapalooza tour. The Beastie Boys returned to New York City in 1997 to produce and record the album Hello Nasty. The album displayed a substantial shift in musical feel, with the addition of Mix Master Mike, who added to the Beasties' sound with his kinetic DJ style. Released July 14, 1998, Hello Nasty earned first week sales of 698,527 in the U.S. and went straight to #1 in the U.S., the UK, Germany, Australia, The Netherlands, New Zealand, and Sweden. The album achieved #2 rank in the charts in Canada and Japan, and reached Top Ten chart positions in Austria, Switzerland, Ireland, Belgium, Finland, France and Israel. During 1998, rumors, seemingly generated by comments from the band, pointed to a possibility that they were to release a country album. Both Michael Diamond and Adam Yauch are credited with interview comments that piqued interest in whether or not an album would be released. Since they had long been notorious for pranking the media, it was difficult for anyone to take these comments seriously until tracks became available, most notably on The Sounds of Science anthology album. Adam Yauch published the following in the liner notes: "At some point after Ill Communication came out, Mike got hit in the head by a large foreign object and lost all of his memory. As it started coming back he believed he was a country singer named Country Mike. The psychologists told us that if we didn't play along with Mike's fantasy, he would be in grave danger. Finally he came back to his senses. These songs are just a few of many we made during that tragic period of time." How much is fact or fiction is difficult to determine, but when the album surfaced on eBay fans scrambled to get their hands on what had proven to be a rare album. The band increased its level of political activism after the September 11th terrorist attacks in 2001, organizing and headlining the New Yorkers Against Violence Concert in October 2001. Funds from the concert went towards the New York Women's Foundation Disaster Relief Fund and the New York Association for New Americans (NYANA). In 2002, the Beastie Boys started building a new studio facility, Oscilloscope, in downtown Manhattan, New York and started work on a new album. The band released a protest song, "In A World Gone Mad", against the 2003 Iraq war as a free download on several websites, including the Milarepa website, the MTV website, MoveOn.org, and Win Without War. It became the most downloaded track during April 2003. The 19th and 20th Tibetan Freedom Concerts were held in Tokyo and Taipei, the Beastie Boys' first Taiwan appearance. The Beastie Boys also headlined the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. Their single, "Ch-Check It Out," debuted on The O.C. in "The Vegas" episode from Season 1 which aired April 28, 2004. To The 5 Boroughs was released worldwide on June 15, 2004. It was the first album the Beastie Boys produced themselves and reached #1 on the Billboard album charts, #2 in the UK and Australia, and #3 in Germany. The first single from the album, "Ch-Check It Out", reached #1 in Canada and the US Modern Rock Tracks, #2 on the world internet download charts, and #3 on a composite world modern rock chart. The album was the cause of some controversy with allegations that it installed spyware when inserted into the CD drive of a computer. The band has denied this allegation, defending that there is no copy protection software on the albums sold in the U.S. and UK. While there is Macrovision CDS-200 copy protection software installed on European copies of the album, this is standard practice for all European releases on EMI/Capitol Records released in Europe, and it does not install spyware or any form of permanent software. The band stated in mid-2006 that they were writing material for their next album and would be producing it themselves. Speaking to British music weekly NME (April 26, 2007),[16] Diamond revealed that a new album was to be called The Mix-Up. Despite initial confusion regarding whether the album would have lyrics as opposed to being purely instrumental, the Mic-To-Mic blog reported that Capitol Records had confirmed it would be strictly instrumental and erroneously reported a release date scheduled for July 10, 2007[17] (The album was eventually released June 26, as originally reported). On May 1, 2007, this was further cemented by an e-mail[18] sent to those on the Beastie Boys' mailing list - explicitly stating that the album would be all instrumental: "OK, here's our blurb about our new album -- it spits hot fire! -- hot shit! it's official... it's named The Mix-Up. g'wan. all instrumental record. "see i knew they were gonna do that!" that's a quote from you. check the track listing and cover below. you love us. don't you?" The band subsequently confirmed this in public, playing several tracks from the album at the 2007 Virgin Festival at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore, Maryland. They won a Grammy for The Mix-Up in the "Best Pop Instrumental Album" category at the 50th Annual Grammy Awards in 2008. [show less]