Now here’s a little story that I’ve got to tell about three bad brothers you know so well.
Thirty years ago today, three Jewish goofballs from New York City made history by having the first rap album to reach No. 1 in the United States.
Although Michael “Mike D” Diamond, Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz and the late Adam “MCA” Yauch had been making music since 1981, “Licensed to Ill” was their full-length debut. It was released in November 1986 and would spend nine weeks at the top of the Billboard 200 chart after landing the No. 1 spot on March 7, 1987.
At the time, hip hop culture was vibrant, far from its humble beginnings in the South Bronx. To its growing and loyal fan base, rap was no longer a novelty, but an art form with its own superstars like Run-DMC and LL Cool J.
Still, hip hop lacked mainstream credibility in the early 1980s. Hit rap songs were so few and far between that Billboard didn’t debut its Hot Rap Songs chart until 1989. While the era has its own legends, hip hop was commercially and critically limited to an audience defined by race and class.
It says a lot about America that the first rap album to reach No. 1 on the charts was made by three loudmouthed, obnoxious white dudes. “Licensed to Ill” didn’t tackle social issues or feature R&B or funk samples that were typical of the genre in that era. In many ways, the album veered on the edge of hip hop parody. But behind the schtick was substance, which is why the Beastie Boys aren’t one-hit wonders, but a huge influence in hip hop history.
The samples used on “Licensed to Ill“might help explain how the Beastie Boys ended up with a crossover smash hit. Many of the samples are recognizable rock ‘n’ roll licks, like AC/DC’s “TNT” riff on “No Sleep Til Brooklyn” or Led Zeppelin cuts used on “Rhymin & Stealin” and “She’s Crafty.”
Rick Rubin, the producer of “Licensed to Ill” and co-founder of Def Jam, the Columbia Records imprint that released the album, deserves a lot of the credit for crafting the album’s mainstream appeal.
“We would start with the music, and then Rick would clean it all up,” Mike D told New York Magazine in 2011. “Rick had the ability to make things sound legitimate and bigger, to make it sound like a record.”
Rubin would go on to become a super-producer and music industry Svengali, working with artists like Kanye West, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Metallica, Frank Ocean, Adele and many more.
But when Rubin first met the Beastie Boys, he was an NYU college student making tapes and throwing epic parties in his dorm. “Licensed to Ill” not only marks the moment that hip hop landed with the masses, but also the beginning of Rubin’s ascension as one of contemporary music’s most influential figures.
“Licensed to Ill” would spend 73 weeks on the Billboard 200 and sell 9 million copies in the U.S. according to the Recording Industry Association of America. Since Nielsen SoundScan began tracking sales data in 1991, Beastie Boys have sold 20 million albums, making them the biggest-selling rap group in that span of time.
The Beastie Boys haven’t been active as a group since Yauch passed away from cancer in 2012, but Diamond and Horovitz have worked on other projects.
Diamond is a DJ and hosts a show on Apple Music’s Beats 1 radio called The Echo Chamber.
Horovitz has acted in several feature films and been a vocal anti-Trump activist. He recently designed and released sneakers that support Planned Parenthood.
Diamond and Horovitz are reportedly working together on an “unconventional” memoir that will look back at the early days of the Beastie Boys.
