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Here's Craig Hengler. with a story. In nineteen eighty seven. Three white Jewish boys from New York City were the most fascinating phenomenon in the burgeoning rap music scene. No, really.
The Beastie Boys, barely out of their teens, had just released License to Ill, which quickly reached number one on the charts. The first hip-hop album to achieve that exalted status. And true, it was the fastest-selling debut album in the history of Columbia Records under the Def Jam label. But everybody knew that these three knuckleheads who were clever enough to come up with the shtick that clicked with MTV Loving Suburbia were just a novelty act. It's a little Story I got to tell about three bad brothers you know so well.
Started way back in history with that rubber and me. My team! The cartoonish trio consisted of Adam Nca Yauk, Adam Adrock Horowitz.
son of prominent playwright Israel Horowitz. and Michael Mike D. Diamond. 3MCs from NYC started out as a hardcore punk band opening for legendary punk groups like The Misfits. And the Dead Kennedys in some of the most legendary clubs in the world, such as CBGB's.
In 1983, they released a track that was basically a crank call set to a hip-hop beat. It became an underground favorite. But in order to play the song during their live sets, they brought in a DJ known as DJ Double R. Rick Rubin was a long-haired NYU student who would temporarily become the fourth white Jew of the Beastie Boys. But Rubens' DJ stint would be short-lived and he left the group in order to focus on his small indie rap label called Def Jam Records, which he started and was run out of his dorm room with his friend Russell Simmons.
Here's Rick Rubin. Uh The very baby stages of hip-hop was just starting. completely underground movement. I don't think many people knew about it outside of Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, or Harlem. I would see these groups live.
And there was an energy in the room that was uh a very specific feeling. And then the records that would come out didn't have that feeling. And saw an MC, it wasn't that, it was a DJ scratching and it was beats. I didn't know anything about the music business, I didn't know anything about contracts, I didn't really know what a producer did. I just felt like it was possible to make a record that felt more like what the club felt like.
9-9 Records was a record story I hung out in and they put out their own records. Through them, I learned the process of making our own records, where to have the sleeves made, where to have the labels made, and started putting out records. The logo was a big D and a big J, and it really was about the DJ's place in hip-hop. being in a way equal to that of the MC. Just as the Beasties were beginning to bubble on the punk scene, they transitioned to rap.
a significantly less popular form of music at the time.
So insignificant, you could count on one hand the number of known rap groups at the time. and on that one hand none of them were white. Major labels were not looking for wrappers, and definitely not white ones. That is, until Rick Rubin offered the Beasties a deal in 1984 on his dorm room operated label. Ruben took his metalhead music background and his passion for rap music and infused it into these three teenaged boys.
Here's Beastie Boy Mike D. That he pretty much I guess in that sense kinda introduced us 'cause we kinda came from like punk rock like alright forget about that. We just wanted to you know do hip hop and he kinda definitely brought that That kind of ends in a big way. I mean, definitely, we got. real into it and got into the idea of like Led Zeppelin having beats, or you know, ACDC having grooves or beats, whatever.
Here's Ruben. It was just an interesting cross-pollinization of cultures, taking all the stuff that we grew up with and figuring out how to mix it all together in these elements from all different places. After releasing some buzzworthy singles, the group went on to open for pop legend Madonna on her virgin tour. Their popularity grew. Here's MTV in 1985 asking the 22-year-old Rick Rubin where the Beastie Boys video was at.
The only reason that we haven't done a video yet is because as soon as we do, they're going to have to change it from MTV to Beastie TV, because that's all they're going to show all day long, all night long. The Beasties survived the Madonna Tour with their love us or hate us attitude, and then joined the rap legends Run DMC on their groundbreaking Raising Hell Tour. where acceptance was much more coveted. But going on tour with Run DMC didn't guarantee success with their almost all-black audience. Here's Friends of Rubin and the Beasties, Rick Manello and Adam Dubin, and former host of YoM TV Raps, Dr.
Dre.
So when they first walked on the stage, it was like, whoa. You white guys saw the rap. On stage. A white guy had to earn his stripes, and no one had done that yet. It's like if you went to the Apollo and you were a comedian, the audience in the rap and rap at that time was just like the audience, the black audience at the Apollo, which a white audience sits there and goes, okay, entertain me.
A black audience goes, What you got? What you got, sucker? Basically, because they want to be entertained. And when the Beasties first came on, they were not greeted with widespread approval, but usually by the end of their set, they would have won the audience over. And they did that pretty quickly.
We did a show in Virginia, and you had 5,000 little black girls screaming and hollering, trying to get to them. Wanted to have a good time and loving the guys just generally because they were real with what they were trying to say. They weren't trying to be black. They were trying to be the Beastie Boys. And it worked and it translated.
The music translated, not the color. The beats were very aggressive.
So in hip-hop, we always loved aggressive beats as far as stuff like from Aerosmith, stuff like from Queen, ACDC.
So those kind of beats were kind of similar to what they were doing with the alternative beats. But the big drums and the big papa boom boom bap, and all that craziness. All we did is just scratch it.
So you heard the zigga zigga boom boom dap.
So we always used the same like similar beats.
So it was kind of like right there on the same thing. But it was the commentary and the delivery that was a little different. Here's Hip Hop Pioneer Fab5 Freddie and Daryl McDaniel from Run DMC. And I remember these guys coming out. And doing hole did not hit it, and the crowd went crazy.
I was backstage at the time, and I remember run came back and said, Yo, the Beastie's about to come on. And everybody rushed to the side of the stage to watch them. That's Rakim. LL, Kooje, Modi, Houdini, everybody on the tour came to the side of the stage because everybody felt like they were their little brothers. They were open up for us.
It was like the black audience, and we could be like down in the south, down in Texas, or down in South Carolina, in some really southern black Negro town. And when the Beasties came out, and Dr. Jerry was scratching, and they came out jumping around, screaming, rhyming, it wasn't like people said, All right, let me go get a prank. People stood there and was like, Yo, these white boys are ill. These white boys are dope.
These white boys are good. Say, ho, ho. Here's public enemies, Chuck D. They was almost like the flip side, like Jackie Robinson was to baseball. The Beastie Boys went to rap music.
Left yourself. Here's Beastie Boys, MCA, and Mike D. When we first came out making hip-hop, People were just like mainly surprised because no white kids were really up on hip-hop or doing it too much. Like, I guess a lot of kids would just check it out and just be surprised to even hear that we were making that kind of music and just be like, what? You guys are white.
Like, they would think we were Puerto Rican or something and just not figure that we were white. People were really freaked out that all of a sudden, number one, we were having concerts where there were black groups and white groups performing on stage. You had black kids and white kids coming together in a way that they probably never would have for any other group at the time. And you've been listening to our own Greg Hangler tell the story of the Beastie Boys. I love that comment at the end.
They were Jackie Robinson in reverse. What Robinson did was integrate baseball black to white, and here was white going into, well, tough black holes that didn't exactly necessarily want or covet. white hip-hop artists, but they earned their keep. And drove the crowds crazy. Three MCs from NYC, three white Jewish boys, and they had what turned out to be.
the fastest selling debut album in the history of Columbia Records, one of the great record labels, iconic record labels in American history.
Well, when we come back, more of the story of the three white Jewish boys from New York City, the Beastie Boys, here on Our American Stories. Spending time outdoors, then let's talk about skin cancer. Non-melanoma skin cancers, or NMSCs, including basal cell carcinoma and cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma, are the most common cancers in the U.S. and can become harder to treat if left undetected. That's why sun protection and timely detection matter.
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And CUA insured. Uh Do you remember in school when your teacher had a favorite of everything? A favorite marker, a favorite element, and even a favorite student who wasn't me, so let's just move on. I want to talk about their real favorite thing: Kleenex tissues. According to teacher lists, Kleenex is the number one facial tissue trusted by teachers.
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Let's return to the story of the Beastie Boys and to our own Greg Hengler. From the beginning, the Beastie Boys kept a foot in both worlds, one in the hip-hop world and the other in the pop-rock world. But keep in mind that the boys achieved all the success before they even put out a full-length album. The band was perfectly positioned, right on the edge between clever and stupid. And all this momentum culminated into the headline from the Village Voice.
Three jerks make a masterpiece. The Beastie Boys released their rap metal fuse debut LP that's sampled from the likes of Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, The Clash, ACDC, and CCR to name just a few. We all know the name of the album, but nobody says it better than the legendary talk show host and comedian Joan Rivers. Their newest album is called License to Kill, and it went platinum after only eight weeks. License to Kill, right?
Oh. That's ill, Joe.
Well, I'm telling you, I've got my stupid contacts in. Hold on. Yeah.
Okay, sorry about this. Their album is called Life is the Ill. That's a stupid name for him. They know the jealousy of your voice, though? Kenny would have gone platinum in four weeks.
Anyhow, it didn't go platinum in four weeks, but it did become the first rap record to hit number one on the Billboard charts. It also hit number two in the R and B charts. Rap charts had yet to exist. Once again, afoot in both worlds. Here's Hip Hop Pioneer.
Adams. I remember Adam and I were walking down the street before the record came out, and he says to me, He goes, This is gonna be so great. We're gonna be, you know, on American Bandstand, and we're gonna do Soul Train, and we're gonna be hanging out with Don Cornelius. And I looked over to him, I was like, You know, you're crazy, nobody's gonna do that. And the record came out, and it exploded.
And literally, in two months, we were in LA on Soul Train. Adan Cornelius, and I just couldn't believe that America just embraced them in the way that they did. Licensed to Ill went triple platinum and became the biggest selling rap record of the 80s and was certified diamond in 2015 for shipping over 10 million copies in the United States. To this day, the album still sells over 10,000 copies a week, a true rarity in the ever-changing world of hip-hop. Def Jam, under the direction of Russell Simmons and Rick Rubin, tried to take the success of the Beastie Boys to the big screen.
A tactic used with both Run BMC and the Fat Boys. But the Beasties rejected the offer and left Def Jam in New York for Capitol Records in LA to work with the Dynamo production team of the Dust Brothers and Matt Dyke on their sophomore album. Fans expected License to Il Part 2, but instead of rehashing their biggest hit, the band returned in 1989 with the album Paul's Boutique. The most sample-laden LP in the history of hip-hop. using around three hundred samples from funk, soul, rock, rap, jazz, and everything in between, from the Beatles to Johnny Cash to the Eagles.
The Head Spinning Epic was one of the most counterintuitive albums ever made. Rather than give the fans more of the same, the Beasties gave them more... Powbell. With their Commodore's powered single, Hey Ladies. which was sampled from Jeanette Lady Day's Come Let Me Love You.
Damn! Here's rock critics Alan Light and Joe Leviatt. Paul Goutif really didn't sound like anything that anybody had ever done before. Where the Dust Brothers were in terms of sampling technology on that record, nobody'd heard that before. People didn't know you could make a record sound like that.
It's just this beautifully layered record, very deep in its musical texture, very deep in its lyrical texture. as funny as can be. They sampled Cheap Trick. They sampled David Bromberg. They had these wide ears.
They were open to everything. And you could never make that record today. It'd be way too expensive. You could still use recognizable samples in 1989 and not have to pay millions and millions of dollars for them.
So it hit a lucky time where there was this new technology that they could really exploit and really play around with. With the release of Paul's boutique, the Beastie Boys had reinvented their sound. It was another masterpiece, but it was also a commercial disaster and cost some Capital Records employees their jobs. It barely earned gold status. Here's music critic, Nelson George.
Pause with chick. cleared away all the pot people and left them with their real core fans. And those are the people who were going to grow with us. And what happened is the people who they got with Supreme Boutique then became their new audience.
So it's that they really made a transition. and who bought their records and who were their fans. Ten years after the release of Paul's Boutique, it went double platinum and was recognized worldwide as a landmark achievement and one of the greatest hip-hop albums of all time. Rolling Stone would describe the album as the pet sounds and dark side of the moon of hip-hop. Fast forwarding to 1992, their next album was ready.
But with the emergence of grunge rock and the dominance of gangster rap, Nobody knew how the public would respond to their third album, Check Your Head. It was the first record released under the band's own label, Grand Royale, and the first album featuring instrumentation from the band. A move that brought them back to their punk rock roots. Check Your Head was different from Paul's boutique, as that album was from License to Ill and as groundbreaking as either one. The album was led by the psychedelic sounds from the single, So What You Want?
The records blend of punk, funk, and rap went triple platinum. They did two tours to support the album, one with the Rollins band and one with Cypress Hill. One foot in the rock world, one foot in the rap world. The combination of rapping, DJing, and live instrumentation was a Beastie Boy's invention. Setting the stage for groups like Corn, Lincoln Park, and Rage Against the Machine.
The Beastie Boys had become the ultimate tastemakers and cool hunters. The Beastie Boys fans range from those of highbrow to lowbrow. Chew. More No No. Brow.
These guys are good dancers. Yeah.
I wish I was more like them. Yeah, me too. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, Use of the term mullet to describe the hairstyle was coined. and certainly popularized. by American Hip Hop Group.
The Beastie Boys. Of course, the Beasties didn't invent the actual hairstyle, but it wasn't until the Beastie Boys released their song Mullet Head on their next album, Ill Communication, in 1994, that the hairstyle actually gained its name. Ill Communication entered the charts at number one. The Beastie Boys spent 27 years in the rap game Selling over 26 million records in the United States and over 50 million worldwide. With one diamond and seven platinum albums, these three Jews from New York City make up the greatest rap group of all time.
And a terrific job on the production, editing, and storytelling by our own Greg Hengler. And what a story you just heard from that first record, which was, well, indiscriminately called by Joan Rivers, licensed to kill. And then she made fun of the title. And of course, the Beastie Boys had the last laugh. That album would go on to sell 10 million records.
Their second album, Paul's Boutique, would be called The Pet Sounds, the Dark Side of the Moon of hip-hop. Didn't sell well, but the Beastie Boys kept their core audience and grew things from there. For 27 years, these guys did it all and sold over 50 million records. Three Jews from New York City. making up what many people believe to be the greatest hip-hop act of all time.
The story of the Beastie Boys here on Our American Stories. Spending time outdoors, then let's talk about skin cancer. Non-melanoma skin cancers, or NMSCs, including basal cell carcinoma and cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma, are the most common cancers in the U.S. and can become harder to treat if left undetected. That's why sun protection and timely detection matter.
Our sponsor, Regeneron, is raising awareness about advanced NMSCs. Learn more and take the pledge to see a dermatologist annually at let's getreal about skincancer.com. Upgrade to Elite Checking from America's Christian Credit Union and earn up to 4% APY, plus everyday perks and access to your paycheck up to 2 days early with early pay. Don't settle. Choose checking that rewards you and aligns with your values.
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