DATE | WEEKS |
July 3, 2004 | 5 |
It was a big deal when I was accepted into Stuyvesant High School in the spring of 2000. Stuyvesant is considered the most prestigious of New York City's elite high schools. Many alumni have gone on to notable careers: Tim Robbins, Lucy Liu, Eric Holder, just to name a few. If you got into Stuy, you basically had one foot in the door of any university you wanted to go to.
Stuyvesant also boasted a sleek, modern building with all kinds of facilities. It was ten stories tall, and you had to take escalators if your classes were on different floors, although they were broken so often that it became a running joke amongst the student body. I loved the little capsules in the walls that paid tribute to both academic concepts and the school's history. But my favorite thing was the bridge spanning the West Side Highway you walked across every morning to enter the school. If there was ever a way to go to a smart kid school, this was it.
Except, I blew it. By the time I got to high school, I was already starting to burn out from the high expectations I set for myself, even if I didn't realize it then. Combine that with getting bullied for much of junior high, my parents' arguments becoming more constant and heated by the day, and the fact that I knew absolutely no one in my freshman class, and it was a recipe for failure.
The Beastie Boys are only tangentially related to Stuyvesant High School. The video for "Ch-Check It Out", my number one song 20 years ago this week, featured the entrance to Stuyvesant prominently enough that I immediately recognized it when I first saw it. It was a symbol of the deep connection the Beasties had with New York, but also a reminder of what could have been for me, had things worked out differently.
As for the song itself? Like most of the Beastie Boys' catalog, it's fun as hell.
Michael Diamond and Adam Yauch were both born in the mid-1960s in New York City. They came of age when punk rock had taken over New York City's music scene, and the two formed a hardcore punk band in 1981 with John Berry and Kate Schellenbach called the Beastie Boys. They played some of the legendary New York City clubs like CBGBs and Max's Kansas City, opening for notable hardcore bands of the time like Bad Brains, The Misfits, and Reagan Youth. Berry left the group in 1982 and was replaced by The Young and the Useless lead singer Adam Horowitz.
While the Beasties traveled in hardcore punk circles in New York, hip-hop was becoming ascendant in the city, and the Beasties took notice. In 1983, they released their first hip-hop single titled "Cooky Puss", in which they laid a beat over a crank phone call they made to Carvel Ice Cream.
It didn't take long for the Beastie Boys to incorporate rap more substantially into their music. When Schellenbach didn't want to go along with the new direction, she was fired from the group, and they went on as a trio, a decision Horowitz admitted he later came to regret. Schellenbach went on to join the New York band Luscious Jackson on drums, who had a moderate hit in 1997 with the pretty awesome "Naked Eye".
As for the remaining members, Diamond became Mike D, Horowitz became Ad-Rock, and Yauch became MCA. Rick Rubin, a New York University student at the time, was hired as a DJ for their sets. He had founded Def Jam Records while studying at NYU, and along with Russell Simmons, signed several consequential hip-hop acts of the 1980s. Run-DMC, LL Cool J, and Public Enemy, among others, all fell under the Def Jam umbrella.
The Beasties straddled both the punk and hip-hop worlds. Even as they were earning credibility in New York's hip-hop scene, they opened for artists like Public Image Ltd. and Madonna. It culminated in the Beastie Boys' 1986 debut album, the immortal Licensed to Ill.
License to Ill was a breakthrough for hip-hop in popular culture. It was the first rap album to top the Billboard album chart, and went on to sell over 10 million copies. You can credibly argue that they put a white face on a predominantly Black genre the same way Elvis Presley did in the 1950s, but I think it was the Beasties' fusion of hard rock with hip-hop that did just as much to make the record successful. And honestly, there's bangers up and down the album. "No Sleep 'Til Brooklyn", "Girls", "Paul Revere", "Brass Monkey". All of them are fucking classics in my book.
The most successful single from the album was "(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party)", which reached #7 on the Hot 100 in early 1987. The video for song, with it's no holds barred party and chaotic pie fight scene, got a ton of airplay on MTV. As you may have guessed, the most memorable part of the video for me was Ad-Rock's red Stuyvesant High School t-shirt. As it happens, none of the Beastie Boys actually went to Stuyvesant, though former member Kate Schellenbach graduated from the school in 1984.
The Beasties went down a more experimental path with their 1989 album Paul's Boutique, followed by 1992's Check Your Head. Neither album did as much business as Licensed to Ill, but they established the group's bona fides in both the hip-hop and alternative rock worlds.
The Beasties' 1994 album Ill Communication put them back on top of the album charts, anchored by the frenetic single and video for "Sabotage". That might be my favorite song by the Beastie Boys. The video epitomized the tongue-in-cheek nature with which the group carried themselves, with its parody of 1970s police TV shows. "Sabotage" only got to #18 on the Modern Rock chart, but I swear I heard it constantly on alt-rock stations years after it was released.
Hello Nasty was released in 1998 and was yet another #1 album for the group. It also has the unusual distinction of earning Grammys for Best Alternative Album and Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group for the song "Intergalactic". In the Alternative Album category, they beat releases by Tori Amos, PJ Harvey, Radiohead, and The Smashing Pumpkins.
To the 5 Boroughs was the Beastie Boys' sixth album, recorded in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and defiantly features a drawing of Lower Manhattan with the Twin Towers on its cover. While the Beastie Boys never shied away from taking political stances during their career, the record itself isn't political. It's not accurate to say that anything about the Beastie Boys' music is introspective, but I think the album is a reaction to the pain they, amongst everyone else in the city, felt on that terrible day.
"Ch-Check It Out" was the album's first single. It's built on a sample of Peggy Lee's 1969 cover of Otis Redding's "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay", a pretty good version. MCA starts the song by calling out "all you Trekkies and TV addicts" as well as "all you Klingons in the fucking house". Star Trek references in a hip-hop song? Beam me up, please.
To be fair, I probably didn't get most of the references in the song back then. Mike D raps in the second verse, "Like Mutual of Omaha, got the ill boat you've never seen before. Glidin' in the glades, and like Lorne Greene, you know I get paid." Unless you were familiar with Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom, or the unrelated Lorne Greene's New Wilderness, you probably had no idea what the fuck they were talking about.
There's no coherent message or story in "Ch-Check It Out", and there really doesn't need to be. It feels like something you'd hear freestyled at a house party in Brooklyn circa 1985. That's the main thesis of the song and perhaps the album as a whole: get your ass up and start partying.
The video for the song was one of many for the group directed by MCA under his pseudonym Nathaniel Hornblower. I referenced the part where they're on the bridge in front of Stuyvesant High School, but that's not at all representative of the anarchic spirit of the video. The members play many different characters in addition to themselves. When they're filming themselves in what appears to be Brooklyn, they're attacked by a old lady with a fish and a well-dressed man with a loaf of bread. A doctor shows a patient an x-ray depicting what appears to be an action figure up the patient's ass. Star Trek characters get into a fight and get vaporized. It's a fever dream of silliness and I absolutely love it.
"Ch-Check It Out" became the Beastie Boys' first and only #1 on the Modern Rock chart. It got nominated for a Grammy for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group, alongside Snoop Dogg and Pharrell's brilliant minimalist hit "Drop It Like It's Hot". They both lost out to "Let's Get It Started" by The Black Eyed Peas, something that should be considered a crime against humanity today. (Full disclosure: "Let's Get It Started" peaked at #28 on my chart. The Black Eyed Peas' biggest hit on my chart, 2009's "Meet Me Half Way", peaked at #12. "Drop It Like It's Hot" peaked at #10.)
The Beasties followed it up with "Triple Trouble", another fun, loose jam complete with another batshit video; this time, Sasquatch kidnaps the Beasties after they call him out at an awards show. That one got to #5 on my top 40. They also made a pretty cool video for "Right Right Now Now" that was filmed in Times Square, though the song failed to chart. Nowadays, any tourist with some money in their pocket can do that 360-degree effect in Times Square, which robs the video of some of its novelty.
The Beastie Boys' next album represented a sharp left turn for the group, a completely instrumental album called The Mix-Up that was released in 2007. That barely made a dent on the charts, but by then The Beastie Boys had earned the right to do whatever they wanted. They went back in a more traditional direction with 2011's Hot Sauce Committee Part Two. The lead single from that record was "Make Some Noise", and it got to #9 on my top 40.
That year, the Beastie Boys were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but the celebration was bittersweet. Adam Yauch had previously announced the discovery of a cancerous tumor near his brain, and was unable to attend the ceremonies. On May 4, 2012, Yauch died in New York of cancer at the age of 47. The Beastie Boys disbanded thereafter. In 2023, the corner of Rivington and Ludlow Streets in Manhattan, where the Beastie Boys shot the album cover of Paul's Boutique, was officially renamed Beastie Boys Square.
New York City means a lot of different things to different people. I grew up here, left, and eventually found my way back. I've seen exhilarating highs and the most depressing of lows while here. Sometimes I wonder if I'm meant to stay here. When I think about the Beastie Boys in that context, I think they're a reminder that the only way to make it in this city is to not take yourself so serious all the time. Sometimes you just gotta turn that motherfucking party out.
EXTRAS
Here's the Beastie Boys' memorable performance of "Ch-Check It Out" on The Late Show in 2004, performing the song as they walked from a subway station to the studio.
THE BEST OF THE REST
Yellowcard's dizzy emo classic "Ocean Avenue" peaked at #4 behind "Ch-Check It Out". I let its waves crash down on me and take me away.
Snow Patrol's jangly unrequited love song "Spitting Games" peaked at #6 behind "Ch-Check It Out". It leaves me numb, and I'm not sure why.
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