Review Summary: Brass monkey, that funky monkey! Brass monkey chunky, that funky monkey! Braaaass!….
Rap is widely seen as a black man’s game, a black man’s music, a cultural staple of African-American culture, even. Ironic how three white boys were some of the founding fathers. The first hip-hop album to ever top the charts at #1,
Licensed to Ill opened the public eyes’ to a largely-shunned, unheard of, new musical genre. Despite being a rapcore album that sounds nothing like modern hip-hop,
Licensed to Ill was the catalyst that sparked the wide success of the rap game.
What matters in life? Well if you asked Mike D, MCA, or Ad-Rock, they’d probably tell you jugs (as in, breasts and containers of beer.) The crass humor on the album is infested with party oriented rhymes practically glorifying anonymous sex with beautiful women and getting absolutely hammered, but done in a way as such it wasn’t boring, monotonous, and/or infuriatingly unlistenable. The distinct white boy voices of the trio and the fun flows sync perfectly with the rock-tinged, percussion heavy beats – Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath being two examples of the rock band sampling – provided by Rick Rubin.
In essence, Beastie Boys opened the doors of The Hip-Hop Club to everyone, founded rap-core, and paved the way – sadly enough – for the idiots who utterly fail at mixing rap with rock (Lil Wayne, I’m giving you the stink eye right now.)
Licensed to Ill will not at all send the listener into a deep train of thought. Rather, the converse, as it is, in fact, party rap. While we may denounce party rap for its laziness, we can’t denounce this because, goddammit, this is party rap done right. And after all, you do have to stand up for your right to party.
