Beastie Boys

What’s the time?

It's time to get ill

And what’s the time?

It's time to get ill

So what’s the time?

It's time to get ill

Now what’s the time?

It's time to get ill

Certain prodigies don't happen by chance. More often than not, there's a deliberate, predetermined path that makes them unique in their own way, a rich and improbable web of connections woven from characters who are often among the most singular around. The history of popular music is packed with small great miracles that seem sudden at first glance, all-consuming mass-media phenomena whose grip initially appears to defy any possible explanation. In this respect, the lightning-fast, chart-shredding debut of New York's Beastie Boys remains without doubt one of the most dazzling, terribly compelling cases ever known to the mainstream, one physiologically anchored to the historical context of its own era.

It's 1986, and the world is in total upheaval. Various tensions are stirring the international waters: from the Iranian crisis to the South American dramas, through the English social uprisings against the Iron Lady's intransigent politics, all the way to the countdown toward the imminent Soviet collapse. As a counterpoint to all this chaos, there's a city like New York flaunting riches left and right through videos that grow ever more bizarre and fascinating, but above all spewing hate, rage and disillusionment through the rhymes of the new urban bards: the so-called Masters of Ceremonies, MCs for short.

While it may still be too early to call hip-hop a global mass phenomenon, pioneers like LL Cool J and groups like Run-DMC had already stormed the streets with their fine arsenal of incendiary put-downs and rhythmic patterns that were simply impossible to resist. Still, something was missing to finally sweep the whole audience off its feet. The one who creates the right alchemy, piecing together the missing fragments of what would become a long and glorious story, is the undisputed genius of a producer like Rick Rubin. He's the secret behind the success of a recipe that would send America - and gradually the rest of the world - into a frenzy.

At the time, the Beastie Boys had already partly climbed New York's music star system, positioning themselves as a loose cannon in the middle of a ring almost entirely occupied by African-American beatmakers and MCs. The shrill voices and cheeky flow of Michael Diamond, Adam Horovitz and Adam Yauch swept away, in no time at all, everything that the previous five years had built through posses and urban guerrilla warfare among the various Black crews. The rock samples fused seamlessly from tracks like "When The Levee Breaks" by Led Zeppelin, "Sweet Leaf" by Black Sabbath and "I Fought The Law" by the Clash then add that touch of total distance from the generally slicker, funkier solutions of their peers. What makes it all the more bizarre - and in its own way absolutely brilliant - are the words themselves. Sarcastic one-liners fired off one after another like bursts from a machine gun whose clip simply refuses to run dry, such as: "Friggin' in the riggin' and cuttin' your throat/ Big biting suckers gettin' thrown in the moat/ We got maidens and wenches – man, they're on the ace/ Ah, Captain Bligh is gonna die when we break his face/ Most illingest b-boy, well, I got that feeling/ I am most ill and I'm rhymin' and stealin'", sink deep into the hearts of both white and Black America under Reagan.

Your mom busted in and said, “What’s that noise?”

Aw, mom, you’re just jealous it’s the Beastie Boys!

Rhymin' and stealin', then. A manifesto, in fact: a statement of intent. Putting things in rhyme and "stealing" from others - in broad daylight, mind you - are the main concerns of a debut the three Brooklynites had been dreaming of for at least five years. They'd sniffed out the mood of the times, put down their guitars, holed up in the studio with Rubin, and gone on tour with Madonna. They chose the sharpest rhymes, and in the meantime went on a looting spree. Stealin'. Which here means, first and foremost, stealing rap away from its African-American monopoly. But it also means lifting scraps of songs here and there, with a preference for rock drawn from their hardcore beginnings - a preference that inevitably brings about an implicit revolution that would one day be called crossover. It's the new style, literally "The New Style", the avant-garde footnote to the manifesto above, a jumble of musical and lyrical quotes and self-quotes that mixes the ingredients together and spits them out without a shred of restraint.

The Bounty mutiny evoked in the opening lines of "Rhymin & Stealin" is the final warning to unsuspecting listeners, destined to number in the millions within a matter of weeks: like the British sailors, the Beastie Boys want to change the course of things by self-appointing themselves captains of the ship. On board, true to form, chaos reigns: "Licensed To Ill" doesn't follow a single musical course, but rather a myriad of ideas stitched together one after another to prop up the whole. The glue holding it together is more conceptual than anything: the urge to have fun by making as much noise as possible, and at the same time the idea - which becomes almost an obsession - of going against established order, whatever that may be. The casus belli can only be "Fight For Your Right", the right to party that stands as yet another anthem of the glittering Eighties, and, following close behind, the now-legendary video in which the party the trio crashes spirals out of control and a friend's stern mother (in real life, too) gets a pie in the face. The guitar riff was kindly provided by Kerry King of Slayer, who simply happened to be in the studio at the time and was talked into laying down the part by the producer (who, of course, was once again Rubin). King does the same on the metal parody "No Sleep Til Brooklyn", whose title nods to other giants of the hard/heavy scene, Motorhead's "No Sleep 'til Hammersmith", while the lyrics recount life on tour through a series of highlights.

King's contributions are a drop in the ocean of samples that pack the songs on "Licensed To Ill". As noted at the outset, the trio flaunt their love for Led Zeppelin and rock on more than one occasion, starting with "Rhymin & Stealin" itself, which borrows the drum intro of "When The Levee Breaks". The guitar riff, meanwhile, belongs to Black Sabbath's "Sweet Leaf", curiously released the same year, 1971. Closing the circle is a quote from the Clash's "I Fought The Law". Zeppelin return (unwittingly) in the racy little tale of "She's Crafty", with the riff from "Ocean" accompanying the off-beat rhymes, and then again in the cartoonish jumble of "Time To Get Ill" (the "looted" track this time is "Custard Pie"), this time alongside the likes of Barry White, Steve Miller and Creedence Clearwater Revival.

When they stray from rock references, the results are even more striking. Sexist lyrics aside, "Girls" feels like stepping into an out-of-control video game of the era. "Brass Monkey" hints at an unexpected jazz streak. The rhapsodic "Hold It Now, Hit It" was released as the first single, perhaps precisely because of its disorienting - and thus telling - arc. The tropical vibes of "Slow Ride", meanwhile, are sampled from War's near-homonymous "Low Ride", further proof of the Beastie Boys' fascination with the Seventies.

That said, the tracklist doesn't lack a few chapters closer to a more "classic" idea of rap. "Paul Revere", with its slowed-down groove and flawlessly placed scratches, came about by chance the day Joseph Simmons of Run-DMC caught up with the Beastie Boys outside a recording studio and started telling a rambling story ("Here's a little story I got to tell you..."). Even earlier, the bare-bones (and brief) "Posse In Effect" finds the trio showing off a craft they came to late, but very much in their own way.

The Beastie Boys would go on to churn out plenty more compelling albums, such as the later "Paul's Boutique", "Check Your Head" and "Ill Communication", keeping up the quality of a proposition that was always intriguing and overwhelming, in its own way packed with improbable sonic twists, but above all full of irreverence, sarcasm, political incorrectness and sheer joy of life.

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15/01/2017