I know it's unusual for me to write so much on here (I am not the most attendent blogger), but I feel like the passing of Adam Yauch merits a few words.
When I was a kid, rap music was the unknown, sounds emanating from an urban landscape that I and my friends in rural South Carolina couldn't begin to imagine. What's more, it was made by black people, and you didn't just listen to black people music in the South at that time, unless you did it while no one was paying attention, because it was odd.
(Of course, black music, be it jazz or R&B or blues or early rock and roll, was integral to any Southerners' soundtrack in the old days, but my perception of that time is that black music, especially rap, was not to be listened to).
The Beastie Boys were white, but playing rap. And they were good at it. And after all these years, my childhood enthusiasm for them remains. Paul's Boutique was my soundtrack when I went to work at Anderson at five in the morning, cooking food for tourists staying at a hotel who wanted breakfast. Yauch had been battling cancer for a few years now, but it was still a shock to learn that he passed today. He will be missed.
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