So why is Beastie Boys’ Licensed to Ill on this best 1,000 albums ever thing?
Licensed to Ill is one of those albums for me that’s weirdly less about the music itself in some ways and more about a fundamental thing – a musical artifact, I guess you could say – that has both been with me, or maybe more accurately part of me, for my entire life. And then it has also played a larger role at specific and significant moments.
Let’s go through a few scraps from this scrapbook.
As a kid growing up on Long Island in the ‘80s, there was a time period where I genuinely believed that there were a grand total of two musical acts who rapped on the planet: Run-D.M.C. and the Beastie Boys.
In my mind’s eye I can recall my elementary school classmates meticulously busting out the lyrics of “Paul Revere.” I’d bet money that they had no idea who the historical figure Paul Revere is, but they could absolutely get with:
I did it like this, I did it like that
I did it with a wiffleball bat
So I’m on the run, the cop’s got my gun
And right about now it’s time to have some fun
Here’s another anecdote that I felt a bit sheepish revealing, but then realized that that made it sort of oddly important to include in the midst of this sprawling and deeply personal project.
So here it is: when I was really young, I went through a phase of being pretty dismissive about the Beastie Boys. I even developed a theory that Licensed to Ill was overly simplistic, and I “proved” this by pointing out the dearth of instruments used on any particular track. I even think that I briefly flirted with thinking that The Beatles were also “too simple” but I can’t even comprehend the version of myself that could believe this in any way so I’m going to “flashy thing” myself a la Men In Black so that it’s gone from my memory now that I’ve disclosed this on the Internet.
If you think that’s funny – and I think it’s funny for what it’s worth – cut to my bar mitzvah, the party for which took place in my backyard. We had a DJ, who must have been playing hard to the 13-year-old demo as I recall my friend Doug – who later became a radio DJ and musician in his own right – and I scream-singing “Fight For Your Right” from the “stage” (read: patio).
Fast forward to the five-week post-college road trip that I took with my man Adam – the road trip that eventually led to my moving to California, meeting my now wife, and changing the course of my life – and I recall driving up the I-95 on the east coast on the final leg of the trip, bleary and road crazed and Mountain Dew-addled, screaming hoarsely and joyfully over my Mazda Protégé’s speakers:
NO SLEEP ‘TILL BROOKLYN
Nothing beats ending a five-week road trip when your car is actually pointing at Brooklyn to bust out “No Sleep Till Brooklyn” at maximum volume for mortal human ears, I can assure you.
Speaking of college – Binghamton University in the early ‘90s – “Brass Monkey” was very much a mainstay, even though the brilliant Check Your Head was the dominant Beasties album of the era.
Now zoom forward a large number of years, and a much more melancholy memory surfaced. My family was going through a painful experience, which I’m purposefully not going to get into the details of here. My wife and I were staying at a hotel in Colorado Springs, and I had time to kill so I went down to one of those weird and tiny little gyms that some hotels have. I got on the elliptical machine and my subconscious must have been crying out for comfort, so I dialed up Licensed to Ill on Spotify, turned the volume up to max, and ran it through from “Rhymin & Stylin” to “Time to Get Ill” while elliptical-ing for all it was worth.
While I always dug “The New Style” well enough, I came to appreciate the deliberately slow-ish tempo from the studio version all the more after I later became obsessed with the blistering live version that appears on the (all kinds of amazing) No Alternative (#110 of best 1,000 albums ever)compilation album.
Licensed to Ill was the very first rap album to top the Billboard charts in the spring of 1987, cracking open hip hop’s crossover into the suburban mainstream. It proved three white kids from New York could channel punk’s bratty energy into hip hop swagger, while importantly it helped open the door for hip hop and rap music to permanently become embedded into mainstream music and popular culture.
Overall, I still have tremendous love for Licensed to Ill because its energy is infectious, aggressive yet playful, silly but also serious in its musical intent at the same time. And as a writer and someone obsessed at the art of being clever, these three beer-soaked rap bros are endlessly clever.
I mean, no one on the history of planet Earth – and I’m including all the ChatGPTs and AIs for infinity to come, could ever come up with a line as concise and clever and hilarious as this one, for example, off of “Posse In Effect”:
I got a girl in the Castle and one in the pagoda
You know I got rhymes like Abe Vigoda
Does anyone under 40 even understand that the Castle means White Castle and that Abe Vigoda was a beloved character actor who played Fish on Barney Miller in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s? Doesn’t matter – it still works perfectly well nonetheless.
A lot of the lyrical content on the album are obviously pretty juvenile, all part of the shtick of these three young white dudes from New York City having a ball playing it up like the young hip hop innovators that they were (with lots of help from Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons, it should be noted). “Girls” is a prime example of the fellas being particularly naughty – something that Adam Yauch, Mike D, and Ad-Rock diligently apologized for and attempted to distance themselves from in subsequent years – though I will fully admit that musically it’s ebullient and catchy as hell.
Part of what made the Beasties ahead of the hip hop curve was their ability to sample other artists freely and widely – and this goes for Paul’s Boutique as well! – as their artistic whims demanded. This website lists the bands that are sampled on Licensed to Ill, and it is a long one.
And it’s not even so much that they sampled a lot or even that they ingeniously deployed a treasure barge’s worth of iconic classic rock and soul cuts as the basis of their hip hop, it’s that they did it exceptionally well. As good an example as any: the exquisite use of the incredible guitar from Led Zeppelin’s “The Ocean” on “She’s Crafty.”
I know just enough about music theory to know that “The Ocean” uses an unusual time signature which alternates a “4/4 bar” with a “7/8 bar,” meaning that when you listen and count from one to seven, you immediately go back to the “one,” which plays against our rock-trained ears to hit that “eight” beat before going back to the one. It gives the song an unusual rhythm that plays against expectations, and therefore when translated to “She’s Crafty,” it also receives those benefits – and Jimmy Page’s gorgeous guitar riff as well, of course.
Some stats & info about Beastie Boys – Licensed to Ill
- What kind of musical stylings does this album represent? Rap, Hip Hop, East Coast Rap, Underground Rap, Alternative Rap
- Rolling Stone’s greatest 500 albums ranking – #192
- All Music’s rating – 5 out of 5 stars
- When was Licensed to Ill released? 1986
- My ranking, the one you’re reading right now – #41 out of 1,000
Beastie Boys’ Licensed to Ill on Spotify
A lyrical snippet from Beastie Boys’ Licensed to Ill that’s evocative of the album in some way, maybe
No sleep ‘till Brooklyn.
What does the “best 1,000 albums ever” mean and why are you doing this?
Yeah, I know it’s audacious, a little crazy (okay, maybe a lot cray cray), bordering on criminal nerdery.
But here’s what it’s NOT: a definitive list of the Greatest Albums of All-Time. This is 100% my own personal super biased, incredibly subjective review of what my top 1,000 albums are, ranked in painstaking order over the course of doing research for nearly a year, Rob from High Fidelity style. Find out more about why I embarked on a best 1,000 albums ever project.