Beastie Boys
Licensed To Ill

THE REVIEW

There are some CDs that from the first listen make you sing praises to miracles, others that you simply can't stomach and hide in a remote corner of the house to avoid an acute bout of diarrhea from having spent money on them. And then there are those that on a superficial listen might seem to belong to the 2nd category but, with time, you start to appreciate until, in some cases, you end up idolizing them. This is the case of Licensed To Ill by the Beastie Boys, the first rap group composed of white members, who had a hardcore past and, having transitioned to Hip Hop, decided to blend rock with the genre created by the black community in New York (which at the time wasn't yet the very commercial genre it is today).

I have to say that rap is the genre most distant from my taste, but I decided to get hold of it after seeing the video for Fight For Your Right. The song really excited me with its crossover of a sampled hard rock base (in this case the amazing AC/DC) and the three crazy New Yorkers "rapping" over it. And then the choruses and the end of every verse sung by all three in unison… . HOLY SMURF WHAT A SONG WITH CUBIC BxxxS (and I really like their slightly nasal, slightly hoarse voices). Moreover, I love crossover. I bought the CD (discounted), put it in the player, and waited for a new gem to emerge: Rhymin & Stealin didn't disappoint me: the usual hard rock riffs with the fast-paced rap typical vocal style. But then came a song that made me scream scandal: The New Style is a pure rap song and, after a minute and a half, if you're not a fan of the genre, it causes severe boredom!!!! So I decided to take the CD out and put it aside! Some time later I took it out again and, out of pure curiosity, decided to listen to it all the way through at least once. And I changed my previous opinion: only 3 out of 13 are tough and raw rap songs (The New Style; Paul Revere; Hold It Now, Hit It). In fact, all the rest, starting from the 3rd She's Crafty, are crossovers. Some, like No Sleep Till Brooklyn, are more tied to the hard-rock+rap scheme typical of Fight, while others, like the fun Girls, are a very strange mix of unspecified elements (keyboards, guitar riffs, electronic drums, and much more) that form very beautiful songs. This was the first and greatest success in the Hip Hop field up to that time (4.5 million copies sold of this first LP of theirs from 1986), which brought them some trouble from the rap purists who thought they pandered too much to the charts.

It can be said that the only flaw of the album, besides the only rap songs, are the often too macho lyrics (Girls says that women should be relegated to tasks such as tidying up rooms, ironing, and doing laundry). Recommended for those who want to broaden their musical horizons.