Beastie Boys Book: No Sleep till read it!

The Beastie Boys are legends. Three white guys from the Brooklyn Jewish bourgeoisie in love with hardcore punk who in the early 80s, led by producer Rick Rubin and Run DMC, end up forming a hip-hop band and making music history with Licensed to Ill, the first disco rap to climb the charts and sell 9 million copies. In almost thirty years of career, Adam "MCA" Yauch, Adam "Adrock" Horovitz and Michael "Mike D" Diamond have produced an incredible amount of hits, from "No Sleep till Brooklyn" to "(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party!)", From Sabotage to An Open Letter To NYC, From Intergalactic to Body Movin', all characterized by innovation and constant stylistic research in rap. Their adventure, abruptly interrupted in 2012 with the death of MCA, is now revived in the pages of Beastie Boys Book, a memoir written by the surviving members of the band, full of special contents and, most importantly, many anecdotes.

We present to you 5 things that you have to know about them and about the book:

#1 "Beastie" stands for “Boys Entering Anarchistic States Toward Internal Excellence”. It made no sense. It had even less combined with "Boys", since the acronym already contained that word and was also wrong, since they had a girl as a drummer (Kate Schellenbach).

#2 British Airways has accidentally helped the group transition to hip-hop. The airline used one of their songs, Cooky Puss, in an advertisement, with its share of earnings Adam Horovitz bought a drum machine. "I had no idea that we would ever really do rap music, but for some reason I said f__k it ..." - he will tell - "Maybe they were the forces of nature, but this looked really fantastic. have one. "

#3 They ran their own clothing line, a magazine and a record label. In the G-Son complex in Los Angeles they gathered, recorded their music and played basketball. X-Large was their clothing store, where they sold pieces of designers they loved and then garments created by themselves. The Grand Royal label gave space to cult publications by artists such as Luscious Jackson and Atari Teenage Riot, as well as the super-cool compilation of At Home With The Groovebox, while the sister magazine helped to spread the word of the Beasties.

#4 They were internet pioneers. In 1995 they opened an online space and, to manage it, they hired a fanboy who in 1993 had launched a FAQ about them.

#5 According to Ad-Rock "Hello Nasty" is their best record. His reasons? Intergalactic, the cover and because it represented the end of an era.