J-Speaks: A Pioneer and Brooklyn Native Passes

Back in 1979, four young men set off on a musical journey in which they became pioneers in breaking down barriers in Hip Hop and Rap. These three young men from Brooklyn, NY made music videos that when you saw them seemed like out of control mayhem, but they made them into an art form that built them a legion of fans that made them one of the finest groups of all-time. Together drummer Michael Diamond, also known as (a.k.a) Mike D; guitarist Adam Horovitz a.k.a Ad-Rock and leader Adam Yauch a.k.a MCA who played bass recorded formed the group The Beastie Boys. They recorded eight albums and they received many Grammy, MTV Video Music and MTV Europe Music Award nominations and they won a few of those. Last month they became just third Rap group to receive greatest honor of all. This past Friday however, the leader who formed this group that put their names into Hip Hop lure lost his life.

Yauch passed away on Friday from cancer. He was just 47 years old.

Back in 2009, Yauch was diagnosed and treated for a cancerous parotid gland and lymph node in his neck.

“It’s only localized in this one area and it’s not in the place that effects my voice. So that‘s nice,” Yauch said back then.

He became a vegan under the recommendation of his Tibetan doctors, meaning he abstained from eating any food that came from an animal.

While Yauch fought the cancer with great bravery, it did not allow him to appear in music videos for the album “Hot Sauce Committee Part Two” and the subsequent music tour. It also delayed the release of the aforementioned album.

The biggest disappointment though was that the cancer did not allow Yauch to be with his band mates when they were inducted into the Rock “N” Roll Hall of Fame on Apr. 14. They joined “Run-D.M.C.” (2009) and Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five (2007) as the only groups to be inducted into the Hall.

Yauch leaves behind his wife Dechen Wangdu and their 13-year-old daughter Tenzin Losel.

The news of his passing rocked the music world and many shared their feelings about this major loss.

Via Twitter, actor Ben Stiller called Yauch, “A truly great musician and filmmaker. He stood for integrity as an artist.”

Former gangster rapper and actor Ice-T of NBC’s “Law & Order: Special Victim’s Unit” said on Twitter, “I’m going twitter silent today in honor of MCA. Rest in peace homie.”

Musician Lenny Kravitz also said on twitter, “ Rest in peace MCA. You are a legend. No Sleep till Brooklyn. ”

Yauch was born and raised in aforementioned Brooklyn, the son of Frances, a social worker and Noel Yauch, a painter and architect. Yauch’s father had been raised a Catholic and his mother was Jewish and he received a non-religious upbringing.

While attending Edward R. Murrow High School in the Midwood neighborhood of Brooklyn, Yauch taught himself how to play the bass guitar. He then formed the group the “Beastie Boys with John Berry, Kate Shellenbach and Mike D.

Their first performance was played on Yauch’s 17^th birthday.

After dropping out of Bard College in Annandale-on -Hudson, NY after two years, he formed the group the Beastie Boys in 1979 as a hardcore punk band. They supported Bad Brains, the Dead Kennedys, the Misfits and Reagan Youth at venues that included Country BlueGrass and Blues, A7, Trudy Hellers Place and Max’s Kansas City, playing at the latter venue on its closing night.

After Berry left the group in 1983 and was replaced by guitarist of “The Young and the Useless,” the band recorded and then performed its first Hip Hop track “Cooky Puss,” which is based on a prank cal the group made to Carvel Ice Cream that year. The song was a major hit in New York underground dance clubs and night clubs upon its release.

The groups big break came in 1986 when they recorded their first album Licensed to Ill, which was well-received becoming the best selling rap album of the 1980s and the first rap album to reach No. 1 on the Billborad album chart, where it stayed for 35 days. It also reached No. 2 on the Urban album charts. The album also was Def Jam Records fastest selling debut record to date and sold over five million copies.

The first single from the album (You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party!), reached the No. 7 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 and the music video became a staple on MTV.

Another hit from the album was one that Kravitz mentioned in his tweet to the passing of Yauch, which was No Sleep till Brooklyn.

In the years that followed, the Beastie Boys would record seven more albums Paul’s Boutique in 1988, Check Your Head in 1992, Ill Communication in 1994, Hello Nasty in 1997, To the 5 Boroughs in 2004, The Mix-up in 2007 and Hot Sauce Committee in 2009.

The amazing work by the Beastie Boys earned them 10 Grammy nominations winning two in 1999 and one in 2008. They won three MTV Video Music Awards (1998, 1999 and 2011) in eight tries and one MTV Europe Music Award in nine tries (1998).

Over the course of that span, they had four No. 1 albums and sold more than 40 million records and counting.

A big part of the Beastie Boys rise is to the all-time greatness, according to “Rolling Stone” magazine writer Simon Vozick-Levinson.

“That chemistry wouldn’t been complete without Adam Yauch. Without that sort of gravely raspy voice that he had,” Vozick-Levinson said.

“He had really just a incomparable energy. He had a really great sort of offbeat sense of humor.”

That incomparable energy allowed Yauch to have a second career as a filmmaker by building a recording studio called Oscilloscope Laboratories in New York City where he started an independent film distributing company called Oscilloscope Pictures.

In 2006 Yauch directed the 2006 Beastie Boys concert film, “Awesome; I ‘F-’ Shot That!,” although in the DVD extras for the film, its title character in “ A Day in the life of Nathanial Hornblower is played by actor David Cross.

Two years later, Yauch directed the 2008 film “Gunnin’ For That #1 Spot.” It was a film about eight high school basketball prospect at the Boost Mobile Elite 24 Hoops Classic at Rucker Park in Harlem, NY.

Yauch also produced Build A Nation, the comeback album from hardcore/punk band “Bad Brains.”

A year ago, Yauch received the Charles Flint Kellogg Award in Arts and Letters from Bard College, the place he attended for two years.

Besides being a great an all-time great artist and a solid filmmaker, Yauch was a practicing Buddhist. His involvement in his religion gave solid credibility in the Tibetan independence movement, which is one for independence of Tibet and the political separation of Tibet from the People’s Republic of China.

He created the Milarepa Fund, a non-profit organization that is devoted to Tibetan independence. It also an organization that puts together several concerts in support of the cause, which includes the Tibetan Freedom Concert, a series of rock festivals held in North America, Europe and Asia between 1996 and 2001 that took place from April to September.

The Beastie Boys were a music group that took their talents from Brooklyn, NY to the entire United States and beyond. Along the way they never forgot their roots.

Rolling Stone once said in headlining their early success from their first album License to Ill simply, “Three idiots create a masterpiece and what had begun in small clubs lead to a tour of arenas and a run that lasted more than a quarter or a century.”

They among all artists back then had the major benefit from the era of music videos.

The Beastie Boys became so popular that many years ago WABC use to have a show called “Hot Tracks” that aired from 1983-89 that was once hosted by former actors Darnell Williams and Debbi Morgan who portrayed super couple Angie and Jesse Hubbard on ABC’s “All My Children” from 1986-89, The Beastie Boys had their music videos showed regularly on the show.

Together they had seven platinum albums or better in an 18-year span. Worldwide they sold an aforementioned 40 million albums, “the biggest-selling rap group” since 1991. Their leader Adam Yauch created a group that made it cool to express yourself in a way that can be erratic, but exciting and something that fans, especially in the New York area gravitated toward. Along with that, he brought his creative imagination to the film industry and gave us a chance to see something different.

What the Beastie Boys and Yauch did more than anything is that they gave credibility to the rap music as well as the labels like Def Jam, Capitol and Oscilloscope, which allowed other acts like RUN DMC, Q-Tip, The Roots and Biz Markie to name a few to rise to stardom behind their own sound and lyrics.

“R.I.P. MCA from the Beastie Boys. He was an integral part of building Def Jam label that I am part of today. Condolences to the Fam [family],” Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, rapper and co-founder of Disturbing tha Peace, an imprint distributed by Def Jam Recordings.

Information and quotations are courtesy of 5/4/12 4 p.m. edition of WABC’s “Eyewitness News First at 4” with David Navarro and Liz Cho, report entertainment reporter Sandy Kenyon; 5/4/12 6:30 p.m. edition of “NBC Nightly News” with Brian Williams; 5/5/12 7 a.m. edition of “CBS This Morning” with Jeff Glor and Rebecca Jarvis, report from Brian Rooney; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beastie_Boys; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Yauch; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludacris.