Here's where the system breaks down, the very construct
through which I frame my usual blog updates (the "song standing in for an
artist's entire catalog") falls apart (as indeed it would for the Beatles,
despite my earlier appreciation of "Do You Want To Know a Secret?").
To try and boil down the Beastie Boys to one song, merely one out of the
hundreds of great and near-great songs they've ever done? Madness.
Sometimes I wonder if my love for the Beasties at this
point in my life is akin to my love for a contemporary of theirs, R.E.M., in
that at this point it's more about nostalgia for a time when both were at the
"top" and I was too young or distracted to appreciate then what I
appreciate now (i.e., the fact that both groups made some of the best music of
their or any era, and both groups are now in the past tense, R.E.M. through
simple exhaustion and the Beasties through the loss of Adam "MCA" Yauch).
Fact is, when I was a kid my uncle Heath (who isn't much older than me) had
tapes of the Beasties, Public Enemy, Ice-T, and other late Eighties/early
Nineties rap luminaries that he was seemingly listening to endlessly, and I
absorbed the music on its own terms without knowing anything about many of the
issues some of the more socially conscious acts were discussing (why would
anyone want to kill a cop or fuck the police, anyway?). I look back on the
hip-hop from that time with fondness, even as I acknowledge that it might not
have much relevance in a post-Biggie and Tupac world.
I guess I'm showing my age when I say it, but I can
remember a time when white guys doing rap was controversial, or at least
ridiculous thanks in no small part to "the Vanilla Ice occurance."
Some buddies and I were talking about Snow, a Canadian rapper who made it big
off the impossible-to-decipher "Informer" at around the same time as
Ice was setting back the idea of white-guy rap for a decade (Eminem was the
first credible white rapper since the Beasties). The Beastie Boys didn't fall
into the trap of "acting black" (by which I mean "acting like
white kids thought blacks acted, with no basis in reality"), and I'm
pretty sure they're more than happy to have had a nearly-thirty-year run in
music, not always at the top but never out of the spotlight, but I can recall
that "Sabotage" aside, there was a run there when they didn't make as
much noise, and I think it can be because perception was that their act was run
out. I concede that my knowledge of hip-hop history is lacking, but I feel like
the Beasties kinda scaled back around the time that Nirvana broke open the
world for grunge. They never went away, of course, and I have the last album
they put out, with the sure-to-be-classic "Make Some Noise" (the
music video of which could rival "Sabotage" as one of the funniest of
all time, and also a Beastie-Boys-anthology in highlight form). I also have the
"Sounds of Science" anthology, "Licensed to Ill," "Paul's
Boutique," and "Check Your Head."
"Sounds of Science" was a birthday gift from my
mom for my twentieth, she took me to Wal-Mart and let me pick out a CD and that
was the one I gravitated towards. She's always been supportive of my musical
education as such, helping me purchase the Beatles' second "Past
Masters" CD and a copy of "Pet Sounds" (though she was
bewildered by my sudden interest in the Beach Boys). I remember declaiming
loudly at the time (because I had been listening to the CD on the then-new
scanning machines that pumped a few songs at a minute's time into headphones
which would render you temporarily deaf until after you'd paid for the CDs)
that rap was really the "black man's music," but the Beasties were
more appreciative of that than other white artists because they didn't try to
"sound black." I think I got a nasty look from a black guy at the
Chinese restaurant we went to after Wal-Mart, when my deafness (and def-ness)
hadn't worn off yet. I assure you, wherever you are, sir, I meant no harm.
I think when it comes to race and music, we have what can
best be described as an interesting amount of cultural appropriation without
necessarily credit being given in this country. Elvis is the clearest example
of a white man who found success appropriating the "black sound" of
blues and R&B alongside his country roots, but he was altogether more
respectful of the black musical experience than such paragons of bad taste as
Pat Boone. When I read Alan Light's excellent oral history of the Beasties, the
whole question of authenticity did come up, and I know people who hate the
Beasties because they can't get around the thorny question of why it is that a
predominantly black form of musical expression first achieved mainstream
success via the very white three young men from NYC who played court jesters on
their debut album. Nevermind that they then spent the rest of their career
redefining the genre, expanding its musical boundaries and helping it spread
around the world in their own small way. For a lot of people (including David
Foster Wallace and Mark Costello in their otherwise great book "Signifying
Rappers"), the Beasties will always be musical carpetbaggers, all but
wearing blackface as they rob from the very mouths of the black artists who
came before them.
I understand that point of view, but it doesn't jibe with
mine. I don't know what it says about me that the Beasties are my favorite rap
group, perhaps it's a sign of my secret racism that is unknown to me at this
time (but of course, everyone has a little prejudice in them. I like to think
of my prejudice as being directed against the Swiss, simply because no one else
has ever expressed such a bias and I want to be unique). I like Public Enemy,
Jay-Z's big hits are awesome, and anyone who can listen to LL Cool J's
"Mama Said Knock You Out" and not want to start a riot is dead
inside. I love musicians who happen to be black (as opposed to the possibly
racist "some of my favorite artists are black!"), but I also love
white musicians as well. I was first drawn to considering music as something
other than background because of the Beatles, and so guitar-and-drum rock and
roll is my first love. It took me years to consider the Beasties and R.E.M. in
my pantheon of good music, simply because I couldn't recall a time when they
hadn't been around. The joy of discovery that came with the Velvet Undergound,
or Joy Division, or Al Green, wasn't there until I hadn't gone years without
hearing the Beasties or that Athens, GA.-based band.
I have never been a rap albums kinda guy (I still think
of it in terms of singles, because listening to the often heavily edited songs
on the radio is the way I was exposed to a lot of it), but "Paul's
Boutique" is a must-have for any music fan. "Check Your Head"
has to be close to must-have. "Licensed to Ill" and "Hot Sauce
Committe Part 2" I've not given much time to lately, but I doubt I'd be
skipping over a lot to get to "No Sleep Till Brooklyn" or "Make
Some Noise". Like I said, to write solely about one song, be it how
"Fight For Your Right" reminds me of my childhood or "Hey
Ladies" and my lack of ability with the opposite sex, "Shadrach"
and my Southern Baptist childhood, or any myriad of possibilities,
well...that's when the format crashes, the "does not suffice" message
comes into my brain because I can't reduce it to one or two songs or an album
that (like "Boutique" whenever I used it as "keeping me awake at
five in the morning" driving music, in this case to and from my job as a
hotel's breakfast bar guy). It's not possible. But I sure as hell can meander
down many a path to try and convey why a group that a lot of people either love
or hate (very few neutrals when it comes to the Beasties, it seems) means what
it means to me. You care about music, art, life, if you are alive at all. And I
care about the Beastie Boys. I wish MCA were still around. I look forward to
buying the rest of their albums, at intervals so I can appreciate each one. I
plan to pass on this love of the Beasties and other things that I care about to
others, any hypothetical children that I might have with the woman I still
believe I haven't met yet (or maybe I have; see again my mention of how I suck
at girls in various updates) or simply to my nieces, nephews, cousins, etc. Who
the hell knows? Anyway, go listen to the Beasties, even if you think they're
poseurs. You're wrong, but you won't be convinced of that until you listen to
them with open ears. I can't tell ya which song will open yours, you have to
figure that out on your own. Have fun with it.
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