Reviews (page 11 of 14)
this being a lowkey concept album (maybe a better term is caricature album) is doing a lot of heavy lifting to get them out of "the girls i like are underage." lol. still undeniably full of classic bangers, very strong for a debut album. when will this website let me give half stars!!! 3.5!!!! faves: no sleep till brooklyn, posse in effect, slow and low (but slow and low, hold it now hit it, and time to get ill kind of all sound like the same song to me)
Shouty, innocent angry. All songs sound same.
Heard it before?: Yes Enjoy it?: Solid but not groundbreaking Favourite song: Track 7 - Fight For Your Right
Beastie boys are definitely a vibe, but I like more melody in my music. Girls is a great song though, so that'll earn this album 3 stars.
Exactly what I expected the Beastie boys to sound like.
Solid 3. Love the playfully lyrics and delivery with a few classics.
Not something I would willingly listen to but iconic
Top 3: #11 Brass Monkey #7 Fight for your Right #13 Time to get Ill
I like the idea of ' Fight for your right to party' - those were the days 😂 Also, I played it out loud in the office for a couple of secs as my headphones had disconnected! Crazy, silly, 80s mens.
It grew on me after repeated listens. I'd previously only delved into the Beastie Boys as far back as Ill Communication, and those extra few years of maturity and production values really help. This early work almost feels like a parody of itself... you couldn't fit a sheet of paper between the actual Beastie Boys and the white-man-rap parody group Morris Minor and the Majors, for example. But it still has some real bangers on it - Fight For Your Right and No Sleep Till Brooklyn, for example.
4 and 3 and 2 and 1! Call me Dave Grohl because I can't remember being more nostalgic for music video-era mtv first thing in the morning in a while. I don't know if I'd like it as much without it though. Rating 3.4 rounded down to 3 stars.
7/10, not my favorite BB at all but groundbreaking and essential
Love the energy and the instrumentals. Lyrics can be a little corny and haven’t always aged well.
Got a few bangers on this one, the rest I could take or leave.
Some good ones, but not my favorite album from them.
Couple of nice banger songs, mostly kinda meh.
A classic album but hard to return to.
I’m really shocked, because this is my third Beastie Boys album, and I’m not even 100 days into the generator yet. Paul’s Boutique was great, but they’ve gotten progressively worse from there.
Slightly chaotic, kind of all over the place but still some good sounds and lyrics sprinkled in
Always good to listen to this lot. It's scratchy and the production is sparse. It feels so different from what came later. Classic moments that lit me up throughout. Mmmm...drop!
Not as good as Paul's Boutique but probably the Boy's second best
I like a lot of Beastie Boys tracks, but damn man, so much of this is just irritating and repetitive. Some of the samples and beats are good. Fight For Your Right is a classic and I love it. No Sleep Till Brooklyn is good. 2.5 rounded up.
algumas coisas soam datadas e outras soam como classicos atemporais??
Overall, Licensed To Ill was a very mixed bag for me, There were some songs that sounded very good and the rapping was pretty cool but on the other hand some songs could get really annoying due to some of the musical choices. I mostly liked the songs that had more rock elements but some of the simple rap songs weren't bad either. It is not a perfect album by any means but I feel the good outweighs the bad Best Song: No Sleep Till Brooklyn Worst Song: Girls
Yes cool
I remember a point in high school where the punks and metalheads mentioned how much they like the Beastie Boys. I went to listen to them after this and thought, “Why?” I definitely went into them expecting something else at the time so wouldn’t have been a bit biased. Let’s listen with fresh ears today! Songs I already knew: (You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party) Favourites: (You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party), No Sleep Til Brooklyn First of all, that’s the most ridiculous use of brackets in a track name that I’ve ever seen. With that out of the way, I did quite enjoy this. As a teen, I felt they were just a rap group, but I can definitely recognise the angst odd punky elements now (I’m honestly not sure how I missed that as a kid). The album didn’t blow me away, but I definitely did find it to be good fun. Not sure if I’ll be listening again, but I enjoyed it today.
I wasn't expecting to start the 1001 albums off with some Beastie Boys but this was a great album to listen to before work. A lot of classic Beastie Boys tracks on here, great energy!
One wonders what the kids today make of this? Would they like it? Get the jokes? The contemporary fan base likely overlaps with that of Beavis and Butthead, JackAss and other such crown jewels of our cultural inheritance. Sure, it's fun and entertaining, but also embarrassing – and very well should be, hugely so in fact, for those who listened unironically then or does so now (those numbers are probably much higher than the Beasties would like to know). For all the fun (Zeppelin and CCR hooks, Abe Vigoda name drops), the whole thing is so massively derivative, almost every beat, to more than justify the accusations of cultural appropriation. Somehow, they were just clever enough to make it different enough to appeal to knuckleheads who didn't know much (maybe any) better. Still, the quick wittedness and entitled 'tude don't quite make up for the fact that they received far more critical acclaim and commercial success than they deserved.
Good dumb fun, very juvenile and tongue in cheek (presumably) - can't think I'll ever want to listen to again
Loved this album back when my brother introduced me to them but the rapping style does get a little repetitive for a whole album listen. Great instrumentals.
Tough to listen to unless I’m in the gym. I appreciate its importance.
It was okay
Sounds exactly what (I think) it was, some mates making an album of the favourite genre. Pretty fun listen but nothing I’ll revisit.
When they broke out of the usual 80s rap structure I thought they sounded great but a lot of this was quite straightforward rhyming pairs. Still the best Jewish origin hip hop I've ever heard.
Didn’t love this but I really respect them for the song about girls. Also no sleep till Brooklyn always goes hard
a little annoying
Some fun tracks, but overall a bit juvenile for my tastes.
overrated
enjoyed it alot. love the rock and hip hop elements. ist a 3.5 for me
Beasties were an all time great band. This was their first but def not their best album
3/5
Not my thing. Objectively great
These guys are the original "rock-rap" group. Sometimes their style of yell-rapping is hype and I'm really into it, other times it's really grating and I want nothing more than to turn it off. These guys still fall into the 80's "hippity-hop" flow, but it isn't as noticeable because of the way they perform and trade words in verses. This is an alright album and they are pioneers for the genre, but I got tired of their style pretty early on. This is good but not a 4. I'm feeling strong to decent 3/5 You can tell the person who made this list is one of those "I only like old school rap" type people because most of the hip hop albums have been from before 1993 which is crazy.
an fun album for sure. a handful of these tracks are iconic for good reason. that being said, outside of that handful, there's not a lot that i feel is incredible. not bad! just not the upper echelon. obviously a lot of the production of this album sounds like raising hell from run-dmc, and i find myself mentally making that comparison, and i feel like i appreciate run-dmc's flow better. idk there's just something about the party boy rap style that i just can't get past. also boy there are a few references that do not hold up in a modern context and feel pretty immature. still i thought it was a fun listen! favorite song(s): rhymin and stealin girls fight for your right slow and low
it’s fucking retarded of course but what are you gonna do? it’s not like they were trying to make something different
the best i think rap-rock can get. another genre i'm predisposed to hate but i enjoyed it more than i thought i would, the energy was contagious on every song and they all stood out besides one or two. hard for me to give this a great rating though. just can't be obsessed with the genre Rating - 6.0 Favs - Rhymin and Stealin - Girls - Slow Ride
- Listened to this before - Find it quite hard to rate this, I'd imagine if I heard it in the 80s I'd have loved it but it's aged quite badly - Some tracks still hold up and it's clearly very influential and worthy of making this list - Fav songs: Brass Monkey, Paul Revere, Fight for Your Right
Not the Beastie Boys’ best effort but it was still quite fun Of course a lot of the lyrics have aged like milk but you just have to accept that this was the 80s and times were different Still a very influential release for Hip-Hop Favourite tracks: Rhymin’ & Stealin’, The New Style, No Sleep Til Brooklyn, Paul Revere
No sleep t'ill Brooklyn is a classic, a mixure between rap and hard rock, they also include sample of led zep, black sabbath, AC/DC and CCR songs wich is cool. Fight for your right is of course the main track and i didn't know it was from them. I never been so much into rap music, but i known this iconic cover and considering it is their debut album, this is probably on of the best old school rap album of all time.
We used to listen to this album on the bus on the way to school. We were little and in love with rap.
I reviewed the wrong Beastie Boys album last time, but Ill Communication is their best
Overall 6/10 Favorite Song - Hold It Now, Hit It Overall not much of a Beastie Boys fan but still a fun listen
Hip to the hop rap
Realizing that my favorite Beastie Boys songs are the ones that don’t look like Beastie Boys.
There’s something about the Beastie Boys I just don’t like but if I hear them out in the wild and it’s a single, I won’t pretend like I don’t enjoy it. They’re obnoxious, they yell-rap for no reason, and have really immature lyrics and themes, but apparently had something to offer considering their legacy. 3/5 I wouldn’t listen to this album on purpose.
3.5
This was an old favorite from when I was a teenager. There are a bunch of good songs even to this day. There are a few songs on this album that if I never ever heard it again it would be too soon.
that definitely was music from the 80s
Some songs reminded me of Public Enemy with the vocals. The instruments are pretty cool especially the percussions. It was overall a fun album, I will continue to listen i think. Also love the lyrics
Young me would have given it a 5. As I’ve grown it’s just average (compared to the 1000 other best albums in the world).
gutair riff in she's crafty sounds familiar like oohhh.... cow bell tickles could feel the 🦅 in fight for your right "your mom threw away your best porno mag" no sleep till brooklyn was written about brookyln nine nine duh im sorry but all these songs are mushing together - stop shouting!! time to get ill is actually a fever dream - the background tracks are throwing me off so much
listened to again good start but not the strongest for these boys
Before Trump. Before the conspiracy theories. Before the antisemitism. It's easy to forget amongst all of his various controversies, that Kanye West was (is?) a rapper, and a good one too. He showed his promise on this debut album, with a charming, easy-going vocal style. There's some occasional wonky production, including on the hit single, but overall, an auspicious first effort.
A whole album of Beastie Boys is still a bit much but I enjoyed this one a lot more than Pauls Boutique
иногда прям 5, иногда 2
Welcome to Beastie Boys World: prepare to rhyme, steal and wank your way through adolescence, with the whole world at your fingertips as long as you shout loud enough. In their debut, Mike D, Ad-Rock and MCA are anarchic, riotous and ridiculous: it’s good fun, when it isn’t incredibly grating. I reviewed Paul’s Boutique a year or so ago (IN ALL CAPS) and was turned off by a perceived lack of range, depth, and the yelling… oh, the yelling. But after hearing “Licensed to Ill”, and then revisiting “Paul’s Boutique”, I realise what a progression their second album was, how much more sophisticated and exciting. By comparison, “Licensed to Ill” is a series of bellowed brags, with all the grace and subtlety of a gang of spotty and horny college brats. To put it diplomatically, it’s much more direct and to-the-point, proudly leaving its maturity at the door. The samples are based in the crunchy riffs of rock music, with barely a funk or soul track in sight. Led Zeppelin are a key point of reference: the whole album opens with John Bonham’s titanic drum beat from “When the Levee Breaks”, before “The Ocean” and “Custard Pie” both make appearances later on. There’s also a typically bracing, edgy lyric- “if I played guitar, I’d be Jimmy Page; the girlies I like are underage”. Wow. After an immediately attention-grabbing opener, “Rhymin’ and Stealin’” (admittedly a great start) my two biggest and best tracks come back to back in the middle: “Fight For Your Right (To Party)” followed by “No Sleep Till Brooklyn”. These best capture the Beastie Boys’ crossover with rock and emergent hip-hop, sitting comfortably in either scene right through to today. I’d also shout out “Slow Ride” and “Brass Monkey” for varying the mood very slightly with some brass samples. Elsewhere, though, the joke quickly wears thin as Rick Rubin’s relentless production and the gang’s strangled vocal cords allow for no breathing room. “Girls” at least shows some attempt at humour and levity, but is pretty puerile stuff. Throughout “Licensed to Ill”, the Beastie Boys revel in being obnoxious and crass: perhaps it’s a shared persona, or some kind of satire on adolescence, but not all of it lands forty years on. Just edging three stars on account of its best material and its place in music history, but it’s also one of the first times I’ve felt too old for an album on this list.
Some great tracks, some weird tracks. Everything I expected and more.
My favorite moments here are the ones that are denser with samples, which probably explains why I vastly prefer Paul's Boutique. This does still hold up pretty well, and it's much more consistent than a lot of the other mid-80s hip hop albums I've heard. In fact, some of my least favorite tracks on here are a couple of the singles (most notably "Girls," which I cannot abide), and some of my favorites are either non-singles or ones that I don't think caught the same level of airplay ("Rhymin & Stealin," "Hold It Now, Hit It"). "No Sleep Till Brooklyn" is pretty undeniable. Rick Rubin's career is pretty fascinating too in that he worked so well on this and Reign in Blood, for instance, but then churned out some of the worst-sounding music of all time with Californication (among others) some 15 years later.
i love this sm. bops most way through. good album to jam to.
I am, as I’m sure everyone is, very aware of the Beastie Boys by name but I had never heard any songs by them. I also recognise this cover as the large inspiration for Eminems ‘Kamikaze’ album which is not an album I hold in high regard, nevertheless I was looking forward to this. The main thing that through me off about this is the classic hip hop sound that the Beastie Boys go for, I really wasn’t expecting them to have that much lyrical focus. Honestly, for me the album starts off quite weak, the first 2 songs remind me so much of the intro to ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel Air’ at some points which I guess makes sense because of the time era, but I find their ecstatic tones to get a bit much at times. They really remind me of rap battling with your friends at lunch time at school sometimes. The 3rd song ‘She’s Crafty’ picks the album up for me due to the instrumental taking on a really cool guitar riff and the chorus being incredibly infectious, I just can’t help but say “she’s crafty!” every time. A similar theme runs on ‘Fight For Your Right’ as the rock instrumental stands out at the front which really brings some weight to the song and adds so much, also when all 3 sing on the chorus there’s so much power it’s great. Of course you see this on ‘No Sleep Till Brooklyn’ too which is just as catchy on the chorus. There are also a handful of cheeky songs on here such as ‘Brass Monkey’ that really utilises these funky brass sounds, hence the title. You also see this on ‘Girls’ which has this almost xylophone beat to it making it a very playful song. Overall, I do quite like a handful of this album but as an album it’s not something I’m going crazy for. It’s alright but the start does take away a lot for me and their vocals get a bit annoying after a while. Glad this came up though.
Bit conflicted over this one. I LOVED this when it came out, and the production still sounds fresh today. But some of the lyrics and general yobbishness are hard to digest now, no matter how much the Beasties latterly reinvented both their sound and their stance. The singles are forgettable, or maybe just overexposed, but Slow Ride, Slow And Low, Paul Revere and Brass Monkey are still up there sonically with any hip hop of that era. I guess we've all (hopefully) grown up a lot since this was first released.
Toen ik de Beastie Boys zag staan was ik eigenlijk heel pessimistisch. Maar dit album viel me nog mee. Misschien dat dit dan nog een relatief oké album is maar ondanks niet iets wat ik in mijn lijst zou zetten.
Debuutalbum van de Beastie Boys. Mijlpaal in de populariteit van hiphop, met o.a. de megahit "Fight For Your Right". Het album introduceert de stijl van de Beastie Boys goed en is misschien wel hun leukste album. leukste nummer: No Sleep Till Brooklyn Het album had bijna een cover van Beatles nummer "I'm Down" erop gehad zij het niet dat de Beastie Boys hiermee in de problemen kwamen met Michael Jackson, die de rechten bezat.
Our third from the Beastie Boys I believe, and I hope it's the last because this is the big one. Probably my last, best chance at enjoying their music. A handful of recognizable hits on here, especially "No Sleep Til Brooklyn." Some of the other ones like "Girls" and "Brass Monkey" are more of memes than actual hits, but "No Sleep" goes super duper hard. Quite a few Led Zeppelin samples on here, which is nice. But man, it really is just extremely basic hip hop. Sure, it's foundational, but the majority of this stuff just doesn't age well for me. A lot of the rapping sounds like Dale and Brennan in the Boats n Hoes video: "The Nina, the Pinta, the Santa Maria. I'll do you in the bottom while we're drinking sangria." There's no mistaking that these are white boys. I know I liked Paul's Boutique more than this one, it's definitely more advanced. And then you've got "Ill Communication," which is even more advanced production-wise but I really didn't like that one at all. My verdict is these guys are overrated. Still, this is a pretty solid album with some great bangers. I respect it more than I enjoy it, but I do enjoy a decent bit of it. I can't deny it was fun trying to recognize the samples, and hearing bits that have been sampled to oblivion afterwards. [Sidebar: this came out four years after Grandmaster Flash's The Message, which I think aged EXTREMELY well, I gave it 5 stars on a first listen. Clearly going for different things (funky beats and more lyrical rap vs. party beats and going dummy), but that explains why one is more timeless to me than the other. No one wants to party to this stuff anymore.] Favorite tracks: No Sleep til Brooklyn, She's Crafty, The New Style, Brass Monkey. Album art: Definitely iconic, so much so that Eminem ripped it off for his Kamikaze album. White rappers be sticking together like rice, huh. 3.5/5
The second half is more rock influenced and stronger than the first half, but overall it's very fun and light-hearted.
Very fun, if kinda stupid. The beats are obviously dated but some of these genuinely rip. Girls maybe brought the whole album down a point on its own. Best song: The New Style
Musically this is really nice album. Especially considering that "Licensed to Ill" was their first album. Unfortunately lyrics are not so much for me. Nevertheless this album has it's good moments.
It's fine
THE rap album. No one has come close to it. This is everything Kendrick wants to be. Hip hop started here. 3 1/2
a classic, the influence of this is crazy. probably a 3.4 for me
Very 80s rap with rock influences in some songs. Definitely a product of its time, but not quite as bad as you would think. Towards the end is quite a bit of filler and there are some weaker moments, but the highs are pretty good and it doesn’t overstay it’s welcome.
3.5
There are tracks that I regularly come back to from the Beastie Boys, and I know I've listened to this album at least once before. This time through I'm finally paying attention to and recognizing the music that was sampled from other artists on many of these tracks. I'm sure I've still missed something. There are tracks on this album that are iconic for the band. "Brass Monkey" is such an ear worm, but not the only one on the album. There are lines from individual tracks ("No Sleep till Brooklyn", "Paul Revere", etc.) that are like little memory bookmarks for me. I've heard "Fight for Your Right" more than enough times. I'm even less enthusiastic about hearing others call out the main line from that track. "Fight for Your Right" is a good example of why I'm not rating this album higher. There is a more juvenile point of view for many of the tracks that keeps me from wanting to revisit much of this album.
Oh, to be young and stoopid again.
I liked a couple ofthese tracks but the shouty approach on all tracks wasn't for me.
Licensed to Ill is the debut album by American rap rock group Beastie Boys. It shocked the world by being the first rap album to top the Billboard 200 Albums chart, and has since release been certified diamond (10x platinum). It is also considered one of the best hip hop albums of all time, and has received tons of commercial and critical acclaim. While I enjoyed this album overall, I don't think it's as amazing as all the reviews state. Perhaps I am too used to modern hip hop/rap, so this album sounds different, but I have to appreciate the OG's. This was an innovative album and the group obviously had a lot of fun recording it.
You know, it's the Beastie Boys. It's one of their most energetic, but also gets a little repetitive after the half-way point.
Hip hop ochentero con algún tema reconocido. Rítmico y con sintetizadores. Estilo parecido en cada una de las diferentes canciones
lot of hits, but not my jam
Highlights: "The New Style," "No Sleep Till Brooklyn," "Rhymin and Stealin" Not for nothing do these guys jokingly compare themselves to Jerry Lewis. That cuts both ways. It's appreciative musically. Some of these beats are really great for '86, with an inspired, intuitive ear almost like Madlib, flanging snares, reverse bass, jarring sample cuts dropping the bottom out of verses, swarming vocal panning and overdubbing. The use of noise and rock is also strong for the time. RunDMC was *referencing* rock with keyboard approximations of My Sharona and Walk This Way, but they lose the edge. They lose it in the vocal delivery as well. The Beastie Boys, meanwhile, are absolutely letting real guitar samples run amok and screaming their heads off like all their pop metal influences. But. I don't really buy their tongue-in-cheek approach all the way. It registers as satire for future periods, but in context it's more like racist bad faith. Especially when gun violence and pimping tropes were not at all the norm in hip-hop, it comes across as culturally toxic. Make that two counts, because 80s-90s get broadly characterized by a swell in "(mass) youth culture," and this definitely seems like a reference point for that predatory chimera. What is the *function* of the satire? Do we think that trying to name an album "Don't Be A Faggot" at the peak of the AIDs epidemic was the choice of some progressive allies who wanted to deflate stigma and break down boundaries? Just because Eminem joked about being Elvis in 2002 doesn't make it a joke. Just because Beastie Boys joked about being Jerry Lewis doesn't make it a joke.
Rock rap just ain't my thing
Interesting
good
Their act is a bit exhausting, but fun. And definitely deserves to be on this list.
un tantinet répétitif mais dynamisant
This is a lovely album, and I know it is a classic. Still, for me, it is not better than "Ill Communication" (far from it), so I'll keep one or two songs from it and keep going with the latest releases from Beast Boys, which only increased in quality over the years and are getting old like wine, always better.
This re-listen of Licensed To Ill was a nostalgia trip. I've listened to this album a LOT in my youth and I still know every song. I very much enjoyed listening to this incredibly fun and energetic album again. Listening and almost giggling to the bashful and playful lyrics. And it certainly belongs on this list due to the impact it had on music. But putting the sentiments of my youth aside - this is not a really good album by itself. Neither is it revolutionary. The music was a couple of white boys doing what Run-DMC had already been doing for years - and was doing better. This brought a bit more punky and ska ('Girls') feeling to it. A few standout songs are still on here, 'No Sleep Till Brooklyn' is still a catchy and hilarious rocky anthem that should bring a smile to anyone's face. 'Paul Revere' and 'Brass Monkey' are standout tracks on this album and are giving a glimpse of what brilliant madness is to come on Paul's Boutique and Check Your Head
Cool
Have to say a lot of Beastie Boys stuff doesn't hit the spot with me. I enjoy their delivery but I think its the accompanying music that I don't like quite so much. But its always fun though
I like the Beastie Boys, I appreciate the Beastie Boys, but I don't really often want to listen to the Beastie Boys.
Not my style but interesting album. For sure, an album you have to know and listen to. I can here some Led Zepp samples.
Not their best, but still a lot of fun
Efficient and annoying as it wants to be!!
Ik heb dit vroeger heel veel gedraaid en ik hoor nu nog altijd de toffe dingen in bepaalde nummers. Maar ik betrapte me er nu op dat ik het nu bij vlagen ook best irritant begon te vinden. Dat nasale geschreeuw. Ruwe diamant die op latere platen veel beter tot zijn recht is gekomen, gelukkig.
Start of a new sound? Perhaps, but I struggle to listen to much of the Beastie Boys because the singer sounds too much like Glibert Gottfried. Still, some great sampling work (which then got sampled).
Estrena discogràfica més destacada pel que va suposar en el seu moment que pels seus atributs propis. És refrescant i divertit i d'escolta fàcil, tres conceptes no fàcils de trobar en el génere. La multitud de samples i referències al rock també puntuen en el seu benefici
Classic of they're style. Interestingly listening back to it, the cultural knowledge alluded and referenced within lyrics is quite dense, but also much more white bread Anglo than I recall. I wonder if that contributed to their mainstream success. However, I'm not a mad fan of their overall sound. Like it's punchy and good, but for more than a couple songs it's a bit much.
A classic that probably is your Facebook using Uncle’s favourite
Never listened to a Beastie Boys album before but I recognised quite a few tracks. I thought it was pretty good overall, some great guitar riffs that work well with their rock rap style. Highlights were "Fight For Your Right", "No Sleep Till Brooklyn" and "Brass Monkey".
This is a pretty strong debut and some of these songs are classics I can't help but feel that Rick Rubin's production is probably the most innovative thing about this album. The Beastie Boys lyrics on this one are purposely aggressive, in your face, and puerile at times (just look up the original title for the album). Luckily for all of us (and their legacy) they evolved.
This is quite a debut. 3.5/5
I like this old school Album, not listening to it much but there is so much to find, the good kind of experimental.
This album hasn't grown with me. I remember hearing this when it was released and loved it. As I've aged, I'm not sure I appreciate it as much. I do appreciate the history and BB in general. 3 stars.
fun metal-hiphop fusion at times but dated and obnoxious at others
hahahah white boys go brrrrr (great production, great chemistry, great energy, some questionable lyrics) fav songs: Fight For Your Right, No Sleep Till Brooklyn least fav songs: Slow Ride, Girls
i didn’t love any specific songs but i can 100% see myself putting this album on in the car
An album that starts with John Bonham’s legendary drumming from When the Levee Breaks can’t go wrong, right? I don’t like rap music, and that’s an understatement, but the Beastie Boys are the exception because they show how rap can be done right: by quoting tons of quality rock music! [It’s a pity copyright laws prevent others from following down the Beastie Boys' path.] That said, the latter parts of the album features tracks that overstay their welcome, featuring mostly screaming band members and less brilliance.
IT'S THE BEA-STIE BOYS!!
hip hop é engraçado. eu não consigo levar a serio "IF I PLAYED GUITAR ID BE JIMMY PAGE THE GIRLIES I LIKE ARE UNDERAGE!" ironicamente tem umas coisas bem led zeppelin nesse album, por exemplo, rhymin and stealin tem uma bateria completamente bozo e she's crafty tem um lick que eu tenho quase certeza que é igual a o de uma musica do led zeppelin, so n lembro qual. enfim, hip hop n é meu negocio, então só ouvi o lado A, mas eu achei legal o uso de rock em cima das batidas e rima.
Классика, но с морально устаревшим звуком. Скретчей пиздец, аж заебывает. Гитарные рок рифы звучат круто, прикольно засемплированны. Ударки отстой.
Doesn't hold up to the test of time, mostly due to the casual misogyny that the band would later apologize for. Probably the most consistent Beasies record though - all tracks are listenable and close to "singles" vs. some of the later output that had a lot (a LOT) of filler. So I have to rate this in balance...
I heard this album a decade before I'd ever heard a Led Zeppelin song so it was surprising to discover the original cuts when I get around to Led Zep's catalog. I really like hip hop and The Beasties but this one is just OK. While it was a landmark release at the time, the beats and rhymes don't hold up.
7/10 REPETITIVE AT TIMES
ожидала большего. может опять же нужно сильно больше времени, так всё сливается и выглядит вариацией одной и той же песни
classic
It's fine. Not really my musical style. Very old school. Not really a fan of the rap rock though.
80’er hiphop, alternativ rap, punk-inspireret, indflydelsesrigt, NYC
Still remembered all the lyrics. They were Soo young. Party album
Stand-outs: "Fight for Your Right," "Slow Ride," "Slow and Low"
Meh
Je voulais vous prouver qu'Eminem s'était inspiré de cette pochette pour faire peur à Moby grâce à des éléments de preuve irréfutables mais deux espions de Robert sont actuellement à mes trousses. Je vous tiendrai informés dès que je les aurai semés.
J'ai beaucoup apprécié cet album des Beastie Boys, qui a fait s'échapper de moi les idées naziabondes précédemment inculquées dans mon cerveau par les totalitaristes de Laibach. La langue française sera donc de nouveau mise à l'honneur sur ma page 1001albumsgenerator, n'hésitez pas à me suivre pour ne louper aucune critique.
I subconciously recognised most of this album without realising
Its a fun album, its high tempo, energetic and makes you smile and bob your head.
3.25
Solid beastie, but not their best work
I've tried a few times and just can't get into beastie boys
Ok it's kinda outdated.
Beastie boys blir mye av det samme, spesielt nå som vi har hørt to albumer blant de 21 første. Siste halvdel av albumet har noen av de store, Girls, You gotta fight for your right to party, og disse er helt råe, men resten av albumet er ganske fattig.
Did not âge well
The first rap album to top the Billboard charts, Licensed to Ill is a supremely goofy tongue twister of a time. Though the Beastie Boys later apologized for the casual misogyny in some of the lyrics, it barely impedes the flow, and the selection and arrangement of samples is masterful,
some very fat 808 sounds. that was the best bit really other than the iconic record sleeve.
I fucked my first sex robot to this record. She malfunctioned and scorched the tip of my penis so badly that my cum was like molten lava for 3 weeks. I pumped my load up her so many more times.
Highlights: New style Girls Rhymin and stealin Brass monkey
Thought it was ok, unique sounding, haven't rly heard anything like it, especially within hip-hop. definitely worth a relisten
has No Sleep till Brooklyn and Brass Monkey i knew what to expect and that's what it was
Ill communication>licensed to ill> pauls boutique>intergalactic fight me.
Didn't listen to it but vaguely remember it
classic
Disco de rap que fluiu bem pela presença das guitarras.
Beastie Boys are iconic for a period in which rap slowly became popular in a broader public. Their controversial crossover with punk was new and exciting, and the lyrics were ballsy. They inspired many artists, but for me I can't help but feel like this was just a joke that got out of hand. That doesn't mean I don't enjoy the joke. I like hearing the album, but next day I've forgotten all about it again.
licensed to ill. silly. shouty. girls. porno mag. whiny. know some tracks. can see how as a debut it was different and interesting. feels like anyone can make music. fun though.
Third Beastie Boys in under three weeks. Middle of them, between Paul’s Boutique and Ill Communication
Some bangers. Also a few stinkers 3/5
At the time, fans liked it for all the wrong reasons. I disliked it for the same wrong reasons. Well played, Beasties.
Takes me back to high school
3/13, 23%
Licensed To Ill is poor until Fight For Your Right, then you get a couple of monster hits and the back half hit hard. Does it deserve a 3/5 on that basis? Yeah, probably.
45 minutes of the Beastie Boys is just too much. All the songs sound way too many similar, the slow rapping passed back and forth with the extended notes at at the end of every few lines gets grating after a while. This album takes a while to get going as well, not a great first few tracks, but then a couple of their best songs about halfway through. This gets a 3, relatively high 3 because it's got a couple of their best songs on it but it's really hard work to get through a whole one.
I like beastie boys but I'm not sure about this one chief it feels like a classic beastie boys album but smth dosent set with me and the girls track certainly didn't help
It was alright, some bangers, didn't feel like finishing
Funky beats and questionable lyrics
Liking the flow n beats of the boys. Started off strongly, lost my interest after the big hits.
Boats N Hoes wouldn’t be out of place on this. I can’t decide if that’s a good thing or a bad thing
The New Style: interesting beat breaks, very 80s hip hop. “Let me clear my throught” sample She’s Crafty: strong drum intro. Slow Ride: samples the George Lopez theme song. cowbell, woodblock, Congo Girls: very playful xylophone & kick/snare pattern. “Doing laundry & dishes” lol Fight for your Right: classic!
Immature album that was the springboard to a wonderful career
Slick!
I was surprised by how many songs I liked.
Some killer beats, but the vocals never really land for me. Standout - minimalist beat on Paul Revere
Seventeen year old me would waste no time enthusiastically rating this a 5. Fifty-two year old me thinks 17-year old me is an idiot. This album just doesn't hold up at all, and gets incredibly annoying after only a few songs. I'm almost embarrassed by how much I once loved this. But, as Red from The Shawhank Redemption might say, I was a young, stupid kid. I wanna talk to him. I wanna try to talk some sense to him. Tell him the way things are. But I can't. That kid's long gone and this old man is all that's left. I gotta live with that. I'll split the difference, since I enjoy the other Beastie Boys albums on this list, and for the 17-year old kid stuck in Hicksville, USA who wore out the cassette of this album from playing and rewinding "No Sleep Til Brooklyn" ad nauseum. That cassette wasn't meant to last, but it turns out the Beastie Boys were.
Not as good as ill communication
I am most I'll and I'm rhyming and stealing. Nostalgia at its finest
Yeah this is some OG white boy rap. Some good fun on this album.
I love what the Beastie Boys brought to the music scene; they are undeniably among the select few pioneers of the rap rock style in the late 80s and early 90s. It's impressive how solid they sound on this debut album -- it's like they had already been doing this for decades. That is only further exemplified by the fact that several of their biggest hits come off of this debut album. One of the amusing things about Beastie Boys has always been their ability not to take themselves too seriously. Half the time, it feels like they are joking around with each other and being stupid, and they're letting you in on the joke. I will say that objectively, this album does sound pretty dated by rap rock standards. But you know what? It's still just so old school cool. It was fun to listen for the various samplings throughout this album -- my favorite among them being Led Zeppelin's When the Levee Breaks and CCR's Down on the Corner.
Got better as it went. Sounded like a bunch of young lads just having fun. Contains some monotony. But pretty damned good at it's high points. Conor - 3 Bill - 2 Shannah - 3 (2.7/5)
Iconic East Coast rap album with some absolute classics. A couple of weak points though, which docks them a star or two. They still have more influence, relevance and authenticity in the tips of their little fingers than Kanye and his ilk ...
The Beastie Frat Boys.
shouting with cool beats
3/5
Ok, I think that's the last of the Beastie Boys for me on this list and that's 3 for 3 (boom, tish!). Faves: Fight For Your Right, No Sleep Till Brooklyn
Brooklyn frat boy rap at its best!
Bom.
I’m getting too old for this.
A bit corny at times, but fine.
This was quite an audacious debut by a bunch of Jewish kids from NYC who loved hip hop and rock. Brash and obnoxious lyrics delivered with an "in yo face" style. Sampling Black Sabbath and Led Zep on She's Crafty and When the Levee Breaks no doubt adds to their street cred. Eminem said this album changed Hip Hop and who am I to disagree.
Solid plata. Fullt þarna sem ég var búinn að gleyma.
3, some real jammers
Alguma músicas mais legais que outras. Ouviria vez ou outra.
Omd school hip-hop
Least fav beastie boys record. Kinda childish.
Pretty decent album. Some songs were great but some were sort of a slog. I liked it more than I thought I did, but I like their later stuff that has more going on instrumentally.
While influential, I don't think is this the best Beastie Boys' album. But there are definitely a lot of timeless songs that are on this record.
There’ll never be another like this (or Paul’s Boutique) for a long-ass time given the unique nature of sampling at the time, and that alone provides limitless intrigue for me. The samples are all over the place and though often primitive, exude the kind of creativity only ignorance can inspire. Despite the optics (you’ve seen that track suit promo photo), LTI sounds less like hip-hop cosplay and more like an early hip-hop laboratory. And even though it’s experimental by nature, these dudes really knocked it out of the park with a handful timeless classics (as well as a few duds). It’s lightning in a bottle marred by growing up dumb white kids. So yeah, it’s really fun to hear a buncha punks rifle through funk and classic rock’s greats, chopping em up with an 808, and finding mainstream success in an emerging genre with some of the weirdest (and yeah, poorly-aged) rhymes. As dated as this feels at times, the entire Beasties blueprint is right here. It just takes a little growing up before they perfect their craft. 3.5/5
Músicas para quebrar tudo!
only a complete douchebag would listen to this on a daily basis. some songs are fun, though.
I can't take the Beastie Boys seriously anymore. Andy Samberg/Lonely Island has retroactively ruined them.
Love a bit of the Beastie Boys, but I'll admit by the end I'd heard enough.
p546, 1986. 3.5 stars, not strong enough for 4. Wasn't expecting to like this as much as I did. Rap meets heavy rock riffs, bass and guitar. THE sound of twenty year old American white boys in the mid 80s, taking the piss of out everyone and themselves. Having said that... points deducted for Girls, which is just cheese - compare that with the next track, which is Fight For Your Right - and it is all a bit shouty and "samey".
Like beastie songs way more than albums
Most of the songs on here are obviously good to great, but the Beastie Boys style gets grating for me at album length.
more like 3.8
Lögin sem ég þekkti ekki bættu litlu við þau sem ég þekkti vel, en ágæt hlustun svona oftast.
It sounds suuuuuper dated, and looking back this is probably by far the Beastie Boys weakest album both for the frat boy lyrics and the dodgy musicianship. having said that, Fight for your right and No sleep til Brooklyn are bangers
It's easier to enjoy the Beastie Boys when all they're fighting for is the simple right to party, rather than for Tibetan freedom. Whilst the latter may be a worthy objective, the former is much more achievable. In fact, they nailed it here, on their debut LP. It may not be very sophisticated, but this is a big, fun, bombastic party in album form. 3.5/5.
lyrically interesting, with a good flow its odd you dont hear them much anymore
Very similar to Run DMC. Some good songs and it's nice to have something different but gets very samey.
Solid
Have genuinely never listened to this record. So, here we go... Man, that drum sound is H-U-G-E! Guitar tone is pretty killer too. I love how the Beastie Boys (and rap from this era, in general) always seems like such a team effort. Especially with the Beastie Boys. They always know when to underscore a punch line by screaming the lyric in unison. All that said, I just don't really care. I wasn't there and I feel like you had to be there. Or, at least, you really aren't in a position to "get there" when you're a 39-year-old dude from Grosse Pointe.
Fun! Not really my kinda music, don't get most of the references and don't gel with this style of hip hop, but I appreciate that there are some true classics/bangers in this album. Not a huge fan of the shouty-ness of it all. With the exception of one or two songs (fight for your right, hold it now hit it), I probably won't listen to it again but that's got more to do with my personal preference. Can see why this is on the list given it's "cultural" significance and pioneering style.
Beastie boys are like a cooler micheal scott got drunk and decided to rap Best song: no sleep till brooklyn Worst song: brass monkey ffs Honorable mention : low and slow
I have mixed feelings about Beastie Boys, because I find them both enjoyable and annoying at the same time. What I enjoy the most is the production value. The vocals can sometimes get irritating, but it's part of what separates them from the rest. The combination of energetic vocals, rock samples, and punk ethos all blend together in a perfect way that only the Beastie Boys could accomplish. Strangely, I found myself enjoying the deep cuts more than the hit singles. Not sure if that's due to hearing them so much, but they are some of the weaker tracks for me. Overall, it's mostly enjoyable, but a little goes a long way.
ill🤒est
I still struggle with this one. If this is the “proper” Beastie Boys, then I am obviously not the fan I thought I was.
Still wouldn't say I am a BB convert, my natural aversion to hip hop prevents me, but I enjoyed this FAR more than I thought I was going to. Can see how it has been so influential.
Very samey sound to all of the songs. Some diddly lyrics. Good in small doses.
Hot beats and casual misogyny. It's enjoyable but there is definite cringe
Quite listenable, I like it. And I recognized some samples and songs, which was also nice
My first rap album. As a pre teen white kid from rural UK this was a non confrontational way to get into hip-hop/rap whatever we called it back then. I don't think I knew it was unusual for 3 white kids to produce this as it shouldn't be but certainly made them stand out at the time. I only got the here the radio hits back in the day and took me to me students years a decade or so after to enjoy the full album. Not a favourite but a fond memory nether the less. 3/5
Great to hear the classics in context on this one. Suffers from the usual BB drawbacks (vocals on top of each other in the mix especially) but the production and guitar here still make for an entertaining LP
Still good fun!
Didn't like it. not really my thing.
Like this more and more, the samples are truly amazing, and the lyrics are so honest. Young adults wanting what they really want.
So different
I dig the humour that runs through the Beastie Boys' music, and there's plenty on display on this album, but the one-trick-pony nasal obnoxious delivery of these white boys does a number on my ears after an album worth. Glad to have ridden the train all the way but I won't be visiting this place again. (Though I may occasionally visit Fight for Your Right, as it's a perfect meld of their various styles).
Schon besonders aber halt beastie und nicht Beauty
I mostly know later Beastie stuff, so some of this sounded pretty raw. The rhyming schemes are great but lyrics are dated. You can see the budding genius though.
I grew up listening to the beastie boys so it’s nostalgic for me, but other than the hits this album is pretty underwhelming.
Not my thing, all seemed repetitive beats and similar rhymes, couple of songs i thought where clever like the girls song
I'm conflicted about this. Songs like Fight for Your Right and Brass Monkey are iconic and entertaining, but all of the rest sounds...the same. Same beats. Same flow. Plus two of the three Boys sound like Rick and Morty characters, which is not a good thing.
Some good classic tracks like fight for your right, many songs sound like the beat was made by a primary school child in music class through. Bit like a low rate white version of NWA
The trios ability to play off of each other’s rhyming and whatnot was awesome to finally sit down and listen to carefully over the length of the album rather than just listening to the more popular songs and seeing how it all works cohesively.
While this contains a significant number of Beastie Boys greatest, I found it challenging to get through—much as I did when it came out. Unlike many artists who seem to lose their spark as they age, Beastie Boys actually improved over the arc of their career.
The rock aspect and production are great but the lyrical content and structure feels juvenile.
So hard to rate. Some songs are classics, and some are absolute shite, but still somehow classics (e.g: Girls). And the black cultural appropriation is embarrassing (he says 'Aks' instead of 'Ask'). But then Fight For Your Right is such a classic, fuses punk with a more hip-hop style. Overall, as a whole album, pretty bang average, in fact not even that great. And yet because it has some classic tracks it has to get at least a 3.
There is do denying that this is an incredibly fun record. However, this much beastie boys in one sitting can get very grating, very fast. best enjoyed in smaller doses, for me.
You like men and we like beers... Yeah... Okay, 2-3 hits, kick it, you gotta fight for your right to hit the Kuhglocke. Am Stück ist es mir zu anstrengend, für zwei, drei Lieder 90s-feelig gern.
Listened to it in bed, decent, but wouldnt buy
prefer their later stuff
Some filler but still a cracking album in parts - no sleep Til Brooklyn rocks
Whew. I mean, it was a classic album alright. Similar to lauper, but obviously more streamlined and connected, the flow was great and the style was cool. A few parts felt cheap but. .. seems like the point. I mean, you wouldn't call hollywood undead stupid right? Cause thats part of the point. So .... i mean it gets a 3 for sure. wasn't amazing, wasn't super good, but wasn't bad. obviously the lyrical content is another thing. I won't go into that mess.
Fun listen, a bit more interesting than the other albums so far.
Tämä ei ollut ihan niin sekava pläjäys kuin aiemmin arvosteltu Beastie Boysin Ill Communication. Tällä levyllä oli myös muutama tuttu hittibiisi, mutta ei tämä siltikään noussut enemmän kuin kolmen tähden arvoiseksi. Huuto- ja lällättelyräppiä ei oikein jaksa määräänsä enempää, varsinkaan kädenlämpöisiä biisejä.
Not a bad debut, some duffers on here (looking at you Brass Monkey and Girls) but overall decent.
Bon son pour Peter des gueules ! Un peu de mal avec la voix !
Preferred 5ive's version
nlc
6
No está mal, pero no es mi rollo.
Lovely!
"Hold It Now, Hit It" Released: April 15, 1986 "Paul Revere" Released: August 13, 1986 "The New Style" Released: November 6, 1986 "(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party!)" Released: December 1986[4] "Brass Monkey" Released: January 5, 1987 "No Sleep till Brooklyn" Released: March 1, 1987 "Girls" Released: May 6, 1987
false
Hip-hop. Un poco rollo.
Very powerful, but not my cup of tea. It is an icon though
Jeg skjønner ikke helt om det er tull og jeg er uansett ikke med på spøken.
Not bad, but not a style I particularly care for outside of its comedic use (e.g. The Lonely Island).
Pretty cool album. 6/10 1. Rhymin' & Stealin' 2. Fight For Your Right 3. The New Style
Fun, party hip-hop. Hasn't aged particularly well.
Have heard that this album is so well liked by so many different types of people. I don't really see the greatness in this, but do find some of it catchy and a lot of it amuses me. I think these guys have a good sense of humor and it comes through in the music. The samplings of different things in songs are like Easter Eggs that make it more fun to listen to.
Its fine, i can tell why this was popular. I used to love the beastie boys but no songs from this album. Lots of energy. Didnt age super well
this album is hilarious. fight for your right, brass monkey, slow and low, no sleep till brooklyn, rhymin and stealin
Algum tem algumas músicas que tu nem percebe a transição.
I know it's all supposed to be lighthearted and silly rap, but it doesn't do much for me. It all feels juvenile but... at this point in my life I am not the target demographic for this. Even in middle school I didn't care about Beastie Boys though. I'm sure the legacy of this is probably 4-5 stars but for me it's only 3*.
Good album, really picks up steam in the 2nd half
My favorite part was how they mentioned White Castle in like half their songs
not gonna revisit it
Tasapaksumpaa kamaa kuin muut kuuntelemani Beastie Boysin levyt. Omituinen sekoilu on ehkä hieman vähäisempää, mutta myös parhaat biisit eivät ole ihan samalla tasolla kuin myöhemmässä tuotannossa. Ihan hyvä levy, mutta ei tätä tarvi varmaan uudestaan kuunteluun ottaa.
A lot of their hits but most songs sounded the same to me
No es lo mío
Ikke min kop te. Lidt for diskant, og enslydende
classic but prefer later work.
I'm glad this wasn't my introduction-in-a-record to the group, thanks to Ill Communication getting generated first. Reading about the album's context helps me understand the relative simplicity of the debut, but without the color grading of nostalgia, the flows, rhyme schemes, and most of all the screaming are a bit... harsh. Funny enough, the humor, which usually rubs me the wrong way, doesn't come across badly here. I understand why this is a classic and think I get the hype for the Beastie Boys more generally, but when they start to play around with form more the difference is night and day. See: the samples in the closing track. Brilliant breaths of fresh air, a bit too late.
1986. Key Songs: No Sleep till Brooklyn, Fight For Your Right, Girls
old school rap (probably one of the foundation), not my genre (even the modern ones) but i recognize why people would like this wait wait wait I actually ended up saving 3 songs, i like them a lot. I dunno why Slow Ride's intro sounds so familiar im sure ive heard it somewhere
Loud without being hype. They're better when they lean into the rock stuff, the guitar goes hard One of them sounds like Morty from Rick & Morty.
Enough of that.
Didn't realize White Castle was something to rap about! Not 1, not 2 but 3 call outs in 3 different songs.
C-, 32% The funniest thing about Licensed to Ill is that the Beastie Boys spend forty-four minutes behaving like the exact kind of men I would cross a bar to avoid, and every few minutes they accidentally make an argument for why I should have crossed faster. This is the famous joke, of course. They were taking the piss. Three Jewish ex-hardcore kids from New York, barely removed from playing actual punk, exaggerating dumbfuck rock-star masculinity until it became cartoon theater, spraying beer through the boundary between rap and metal while Rick Rubin stood behind the glass figuring out how few sounds a record could contain before it legally became percussion. I understand the joke. I even laugh at the joke. The problem is that sometimes a parody of three obnoxious little shits yelling about beer, girls, petty crime and their dicks becomes three obnoxious little shits yelling about beer, girls, petty crime and their dicks, and at that point the distinction between satire and the thing satirized is mostly useful to the person trying to explain why I should continue enjoying myself. Licensed to Ill is historically fascinating, intermittently fucking great, sonically meaner and stranger than its reputation as frat-boy scripture suggests, and frequently so juvenile that I feel like I should be grading confiscated notebook paper. The opening of “Rhymin & Stealin” is the strongest argument the record ever makes for itself because Jesus fucking Christ, Rick Rubin understood blunt-force juxtaposition. John Bonham’s drums from “When the Levee Breaks,” already among the most obscenely huge drum sounds committed to tape, arrive underneath a chunk of Black Sabbath until the entire thing feels less sampled than stolen with a crowbar, which suits a song where the Beasties are literally bragging about theft. This is not subtle production, thank God. Rubin’s genius at this stage consisted partly of realizing that hip-hop did not require filling every frequency. You could leave enormous dead spaces around a beat and make the emptiness itself threatening. The kick lands, the snare cracks, the guitar hangs there like industrial equipment, and the voices bounce between Mike D, MCA and Ad-Rock with that nasal, abrasive, playground-bully attack they had not yet learned to vary much. The track sounds like somebody drove a stolen Camaro through a drum machine showroom. It is ridiculous and fantastic. More importantly, it makes the album’s entire cultural collision physical. Hard rock is not being politely incorporated into hip-hop. Its corpse is being dragged behind the car. That collision mattered in 1986 in ways now obscured by the fact that rap and rock spent the next four decades fucking, fighting, producing children and eventually creating enough terrible rap-rock to make both genres consider contraception. Licensed to Ill appeared when Run-DMC had already kicked the door open commercially, “Walk This Way” had made the genre-crossing metaphor so literal Steven Tyler might as well have been holding a permit, LL Cool J was establishing what Def Jam minimalism could do with one enormous beat and a young man convinced the microphone existed specifically to document his superiority, and Rubin was developing a production aesthetic based on removing everything until whatever remained could kick you in the sternum. The Beasties were not inventing rap-rock from primordial soup. They were positioned at a moment when punk kids, downtown scenes, hip-hop, metal, clubs and MTV were rubbing against one another, sometimes creatively, sometimes opportunistically, sometimes because the record business suddenly realized white teenagers would buy rap if somebody put enough guitars and beer in the video. All of that ugliness is inside this record. So is the excitement. Pretending otherwise sanitizes the interesting part. Because these three do sound excited. That saves their asses repeatedly. Their rapping on Licensed to Ill is not especially graceful, and compared with what hip-hop was already becoming it can seem almost aggressively rudimentary. Rakim was about to make this stuff look like cave painting. The Beasties attack rhythm less like virtuoso MCs than like kids discovering they can use syllables as dodgeballs. They interrupt each other. They bark endings. They hammer rhymes because subtle internal architecture has not yet become the point. Their voices are distinct mostly through timbre and attitude, Mike D with that sneering nasal punch, MCA already carrying a little more weight in his voice, Ad-Rock sounding permanently like somebody just told him the liquor store closes in five minutes. The trade-offs create momentum through social chemistry rather than technical sophistication. You hear friends cracking each other up. You hear them stepping on each other. You hear the residual hardcore instinct that says if everybody yells simultaneously enough, perhaps arrangement will emerge through force of personality. Sometimes it does. “Paul Revere” is where the primitive materials become legitimately hypnotic. That reversed Roland beat is so wonderfully wrong-footed that the song feels like it is backing into you. The pulse seems simple until you try to settle into it and discover that its physical logic has been inverted, this sucking, backward thump with tiny electronic details hanging around it, leaving ridiculous amounts of open air for the voices. There is barely a fucking song there in conventional terms. Beat, story, three voices, attitude. Good. The sparseness gives their juvenile mythmaking somewhere to expand. The Beasties turn themselves into Western outlaws through a story that has exactly the relationship to plausible human behavior you would expect from three idiots making each other laugh, and suddenly their dumbness becomes productive because they understand that rap boasts are not sworn testimony. They are cartoons of the self. You can ride into town, threaten everybody, have a shootout, become a legend, whatever, because the beat has already informed us that normal physical law has been suspended. “Paul Revere” is genuinely clever about stupidity. The record is at its best when stupidity has form. This distinction is vital because “Girls” also contains stupidity and makes me want to put my head through a vending machine. Yes, yes, the misogyny is exaggerated, yes, the Beasties later repudiated this shit, yes, Adam Yauch eventually became so embarrassed by their early attitudes that “Sure Shot” contains an explicit apology for the disrespect toward women, and good for him, genuinely. None of that causes the song in front of me to stop sucking. The little mock-Chinoiserie melody prances around like a wind-up toy from hell while they chant about women doing laundry, washing dishes, cleaning rooms and generally existing as domestic appliances with tits. The joke is supposed to be how impossibly crude the persona is. Wonderful. I have now received the joke. The joke has twelve more repetitions remaining. This is the comedic equivalent of somebody putting a lampshade on his head and expecting applause each time he rotates. Satire needs either escalation, perspective or invention. “Girls” mostly has persistence. And it is not offensive enough to become interesting. That is almost worse. I am not sitting here clutching pearls because some twenty-year-old boys in 1986 said sexist shit. If misogyny alone disqualified records, large portions of twentieth-century popular music would have to be fired into the sun and streaming services would become considerably easier to navigate. The problem is artistic. “Girls” reduces women to a joke and then cannot think of a good enough joke. If you are going to be a sexist little goblin on record, at least bring me something grotesque, revealing, psychologically deranged, something that exposes the male creature in its natural habitat pawing at its own stupidity. Instead I get chores. Fucking chores! Three men construct an entire misogynist fantasy world and their erotic imagination takes them to laundry. This is not Caligula. This is a Sears appliance department with erections. That failure keeps infecting the album because the Beasties’ relationship to obnoxious masculinity is much more interesting historically than it is moment to moment. They were punk kids parodying metal assholes, except they also liked metal. They were mocking frat culture, except frat boys loved them because the songs were extraordinarily efficient at being frat culture. They were making cartoons of sexist drunkenness, except touring the cartoon apparently encouraged them to become some version of it. People love treating this as proof that the satire was “misunderstood,” but if everyone at the party hears “Fight for Your Right” and immediately knows exactly how to use it while the supposedly satirical layer remains undetectable without interviews, perhaps the audience did not entirely invent the problem. Satire does not have to hand out explanatory pamphlets, but there is a point where your parody of a beer commercial becomes a very good beer commercial. And “(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party!)” is a very good beer commercial. I hate that riff because it works. It has all the intellectual sophistication of somebody kicking open a basement door with a twelve-pack balanced on his head, and it works. The guitar is enormous, the snare is absurdly blunt, the vocal phrasing turns each complaint against parents and school into a slogan so immediately shoutable that millions of people who could not locate irony with a GPS were destined to bellow it while spilling Budweiser on each other. The chorus is engineered like demolition equipment. There is no interpretive labor required. You hear it once, your body knows what to yell. This is pop craft even if the pop craft is wearing a backwards cap and trying to set something on fire. I cannot deny that. I also never need to hear the fucking thing again. The irritation is partly overexposure, sure, but overexposure only kills songs already carrying a vulnerability. “Fight for Your Right” does not have enough internal strangeness to regenerate after familiarity. Its whole trick is immediacy. Once immediacy has been pulverized by decades of movies, sporting events, frat parties, commercials, karaoke and every dipshit who has ever screamed the chorus without realizing the Beastie Boys themselves came to despise what the song became, there is not much underneath except the joke, the riff and the terrifying realization that satire can lose a custody battle with its audience. Compare “Paul Revere,” whose beat remains weird. I can still enter that sound. “Fight for Your Right” arrives pre-chewed by culture. “No Sleep Till Brooklyn” fares better because it is louder, stupider and more musically excessive in ways that give the joke more meat. Kerry King comes in with a guitar solo that sounds like Slayer briefly received the wrong studio address and decided to kill whoever was inside anyway. That solo is hilarious because it understands the scale required. If you are parodying arena-metal grandeur, do not play tasteful guitar. Have Kerry fucking King show up and shred like Satan is double-parked. The song’s title riffs on Motörhead’s No Sleep ’til Hammersmith, the Beasties shout through road-life clichés, and the whole thing barrels forward with enough actual love for hard rock that the parody becomes affectionate contamination. This is the album’s central contradiction at its most enjoyable: they are laughing at rock stupidity while being genuinely thrilled by rock stupidity. There is no clean critical distance. Good. Clean distance would make this thing unbearable. That is also why the record sounds better when they are bragging about being criminals than when they are bragging about getting laid. Crime gives their cartooning an imaginative frame. Sex exposes how little imagination they currently possess about women. “She’s Crafty” has that loop from Led Zeppelin’s “The Ocean” doing most of the heavy lifting, and what tremendous lifting it is. Bonham and that riff carry a density the Beasties can bounce against without needing to provide one themselves. The story is stupid, the woman is a manipulative thief, and once again women principally exist as plot mechanisms in the continuing saga of Three Guys Who Cannot Believe Pussy Has Administrative Complications. But the track moves. Rubin’s production lets the sample remain recognizable enough that the pleasure partly comes from desecration. Rock’s sacred canon gets converted into playground equipment. Led Zeppelin fans had spent years treating those records like Tablets from the Mountain and here come three little bastards cutting pieces off them to rap over. That cultural impudence delights me even when the actual rap is making me want to sterilize the room. Sampling itself gives Licensed to Ill a historical dirtiness that later copyright regimes would make increasingly expensive. These songs belong to that window when hip-hop could treat recorded culture as raw material with a freedom that lawyers were already preparing to strangle. Zeppelin, Sabbath, AC/DC, James Brown, Kool & the Gang, Trouble Funk, all sorts of fragments and references get absorbed into beats and jokes. The record rummages through rock with none of rock criticism’s reverence. That is radical in a way the album’s adolescent content is not. The Beasties take sounds white rock culture had enshrined and reduce them to rhythmic objects. A guitar riff does not need to carry the spiritual essence of The Guitar Hero. It can be four bars you cut up because it sounds fucking good underneath a kick drum. This attitude has aged better than almost anything they are saying. Rick Rubin deserves enormous blame and credit for the record’s physical effectiveness. He produces the Beasties like objects thrown down a stairwell. The drums are dry and huge. Guitar enters as impact rather than atmosphere. Bass is frequently more felt as structural pressure than melodic personality. There is almost no decorative softness anywhere. The record has the interior design of a holding cell. This suits voices that never shut the fuck up. If Rubin had surrounded them with busy arrangements, the result would be neurological terrorism. Instead he gives the idiots space. The emptiness exaggerates every shouted rhyme. Listen to how often a beat stops, thins, or leaves the voices exposed. The record understands anticipation better than its performers understand women. “Brass Monkey” survives mostly because the groove is nasty enough to drag the joke behind it. The sample from Wild Sugar’s “Bring It Here” gives it that rubbery horn-and-bass strut, and the Beasties chant about a drink as though they have discovered both alcohol and chemistry in the same afternoon. This is one of the places where their obnoxiousness becomes almost endearing because the song has no pretension to insight whatsoever. Brass Monkey exists. They drink it. They yell about drinking it. Civilization advances another millimeter toward the grave. Fine. I can enjoy idiocy when idiocy knows its dimensions. The record’s weakest moments are not dumb because dumbness is bad, they are dumb while demanding that dumbness itself be the entertainment. “Brass Monkey” at least has a groove whose hips have received the necessary permits. The album’s drinking mythology is funny to hear from adulthood because teenage and twenty-something pop culture treats alcohol with the reverence suburban kids reserve for discovering a secret portal. Holy shit, you can become intoxicated! You mean several beers might make people behave differently? Call the newspapers. Actual intoxication is much less mythic. Sometimes it is exhilarating. Sometimes you make a friend in a bathroom. Sometimes somebody tells you the same story four times. Sometimes you spend twenty minutes looking for a phone that is in your hand. Sometimes you discover the profound spiritual truth that your stomach has limits. The Beasties on Licensed to Ill are still at the stage where booze itself is an event, and after a while their fixation has the anthropological charm of watching chimpanzees discover fermented fruit. Yet I would rather hear them yell about drinking than about sexual conquest because at least their relationship with alcohol sounds reciprocal. Women on this album barely get to exist independently enough to dislike them. They appear as girls to fuck, girls who refuse them, girls who clean, girls who manipulate, girls whose main dramatic function is confirming that the Beasties possess dicks. The album’s erotic imagination is so heterosexual it bends back around into being almost sexless. There is plenty of sexual language and almost no sexuality. Nobody seems overwhelmed by another body. Nobody seems frightened by desire. Nobody loses dignity in the interesting way. Sex is principally evidence entered into the case of Why I Am Awesome. I am a horny woman. You have to work incredibly hard to make me bored by people talking about fucking, and these three achieve it through pure administrative efficiency. The irony is that their voices together possess more intimacy than anything they say about women. The actual love affair on Licensed to Ill is between the Beastie Boys. Listen to how they hand lines around. Listen to the pleasure in synchronization, the constant reinforcement, one voice completing another’s rhythm, three identities becoming one obnoxious organism. That is where the album has warmth. These guys fucking adore being around each other, and you can hear it before you know anything about what the group would later become. Their friendship supplies a social energy absent from their sexual boasting. They sound happiest not when describing girls but when constructing some stupid shared fantasy and yelling it into existence together. That chemistry is what makes “The New Style” work beyond the famous “mmm, drop” break that would itself become sampled into oblivion. The beat is stark, the voices treat the track like a room they can rearrange by shouting, and their boasts have the wonderful meaninglessness of early rap braggadocio pushed through white downtown smartass humor. They are simultaneously participating in hip-hop conventions and making their own bratty little mutations of them. This is where discussing appropriation becomes unavoidable but also requires more precision than “white boys stole rap,” because the Beasties were not parachuting in from a corporate boardroom with a memo labeled URBAN YOUTH TREND. They were embedded in New York scenes, working with Russell Simmons and Rubin, touring with Madonna and Run-DMC, recording on Def Jam, learning directly within an emerging culture whose commercial infrastructure was still being built in real time. They were also three white guys whose whiteness made it spectacularly easier for huge sections of America to consume rap once their faces were attached to it. Both things happened. History can manage two facts without needing a referee. And the sales mattered. Licensed to Ill becoming the first rap LP to top the Billboard album chart was not some spiritually neutral achievement. It revealed the enormous commercial hunger available once rap could be sold to white suburban boys as rebellion with familiar rock signifiers attached. The Beasties could walk onto MTV carrying beer, guitars and the recognizable visual grammar of delinquent white masculinity, and suddenly audiences who might have treated Black rap performers as threatening could interpret the same swagger as comedy. That is not the Beasties personally inventing racism. It is America performing one of its oldest fucking tricks, deciding cultural behavior becomes charming once the right skin tone is doing it. The group themselves would spend years outgrowing, interrogating and complicating this position. Licensed to Ill is the album before the complication. That is simultaneously what makes it historically fascinating and artistically exhausting. I know what they become, and knowing it makes this record stranger, not better. They will make Paul’s Boutique, one of the great sample-collage hallucinations. They will become more musically adventurous, more rhythmically supple, less dependent on one persona. MCA will become a Buddhist and feminist activist, which is one of the more spectacular “character development” arcs available in American pop culture. But none of that retroactively sneaks into these grooves. I cannot give twenty-two-year-old assholes credit because their future selves eventually learned something. You do not grade a first marriage on the wisdom acquired during the divorce. “Slow and Low,” inherited from Run-DMC, exposes another limitation because you can hear how much the Beasties depend on attitude to make borrowed material theirs. The beat has force, the chant structure gives them somewhere to stomp, but the record is already running low on new dimensions of the same persona. Loud. Horny. Drunk. Criminal. Loud again. The sequencing starts to feel like being trapped at a party where three guys are individually entertaining for seven minutes and collectively impossible by midnight. I can admire their energy and still want them to go smoke outside. There is something almost impressive about how aggressively Licensed to Ill refuses vulnerability. No softness. No fear that is not converted instantly into bravado. No genuine romantic desire. No embarrassment the persona cannot metabolize into another joke. No interiority besides appetite. This is appropriate to the caricature, but caricature at album length starts becoming dietary. I need another nutrient. Even the violence is Looney Tunes violence. Guns, stealing, fighting, tough-guy threats, all delivered with the emotional consequence of Wile E. Coyote falling off a cliff and holding up a sign before impact. When the cartoon is good, I laugh. When it is not, I am staring at paint drying on an anvil. The record's saving grace is that the production keeps producing anvils worth staring at. There are tiny decisions all through Licensed to Ill that explain why it hit so hard despite how quickly parts of its worldview became embarrassing. The use of silence. The refusal to bury the vocals. The way rock samples are allowed to remain crude and recognizable. The drum machines do not imitate live drummers, they become architecture. There is no anxiety about whether the record sounds “authentically” hip-hop or authentically rock. Authenticity is for people selling belts. Rubin and the Beasties make the collision sound stupidly inevitable. Of course Bonham can be a hip-hop drummer if you have a sampler. He is dead and cannot complain. That irreverence is the part I want to keep. Not the frat anthem. Not “Girls.” Not the adolescent belief that shouting sexual entitlement becomes funny automatically if everybody involved knows they are assholes. The joy is in vandalizing genre boundaries, in hearing punk kids learn what a beat can do, in hearing hip-hop treat rock history not as a lineage requiring respect but as a warehouse full of shit you can steal. This record’s politics of sound are vastly more interesting than its politics of people. And I keep coming back to that because the music itself repeatedly threatens to become smarter than the Beasties performing it. “Paul Revere” has a structural weirdness they barely acknowledge. “Rhymin & Stealin” has this monstrous cross-cultural sample architecture underneath rhymes about pirates and criminals. “No Sleep Till Brooklyn” captures a genre collision more complicated than the joke announces. The beats are constructing a future while the lyrics are drawing dicks on a desk. Maybe that is Licensed to Ill in one image: somebody has broken into the most advanced audio laboratory available in 1986, discovered radically new possibilities for sampling, genre, rhythm, commercial youth culture and the relationship between hip-hop and rock, and used the equipment to make the machine say BOOBS. There is charm in that. There is also a fucking limit. I cannot hate the album because every time my contempt settles comfortably into its chair, some beat comes through and kicks the chair over. The opening of “Rhymin & Stealin” remains disgusting in exactly the right way. “Paul Revere” remains a little rhythmic miracle. Kerry King turning up in “No Sleep Till Brooklyn” still makes me grin because subtlety had already left the building and he decided to torch the parking lot. The three voices bouncing around each other occasionally produce that unique pleasure of hearing friendship become rhythm. But there is too much dead space between those jolts where all I am left with is the persona, and the persona is a twenty-year-old guy at a party who has decided volume constitutes a second personality. History turned him into an icon. His future self apologized. His beats changed music. His stupid fucking party is still going on in somebody’s basement. I am going upstairs.
Not bad, but not my jam.
It's so old school hip-hop. It's rhymin' and jivin'
un par de samples de travis. el álbum no me pareció recordable
Rappy and snappy. Contains the following classics: "Fight For Your Right" and "Brass Monkey".
Um grupo clássico que nunca me chamou muito atenção.. é legal a mescla de hip hop de batidas clássicas e básicas com o rock, o jeito de rimar até bem engraçado que lembra uma forma de “se apresentar” pra quem tá ouvindo, mas pra mim é um tipo de música que envelheceu mal.
Energetic and all but not my style Did not listen again, maybe will listen again
Minä ajattelin aluksi että jes, beastily boissei. Mutta kun oli aikansa kuunnellut niin väsähti
Juuh elikkäs. Beastie Boys on näköjään sopivissa annoksissa ihan hauskaa, mutta holy fuck rupes mielenkiinto loppumaan kokonaista levyä kuunnellessa. En oo koskaan oikein noiden poikien flowsta välittäny, jos sitä semmoseks voi sanoa. Rasittavan in your face ja melko äkkiä tulee selväksi miltä kyseiset kaverit kuulostaa. Biitit on isolta osin ihan hyvää retroa, vaikka vähän aikansa tuotosta hyvässä ja pahassa.
5/10 Hmmm no my cup of tea
fair i didnt really fw it
From the Vault #29 (January 8, 2026) Once again, I am returning with a pre-written review. This strategy has been working pretty well thus far. Hopefully it'll help me in the long run. Anyways, this is the first of Beastie Boys' included albums - one of the few hip-hop artists that I have some degree of familiarity with. I've only listened to "Intergalactic" from their main discography, but I'm familiar with Mike D's work from The Latch Brothers project, specifically the music they composed and remixed for Jet Set Radio Future. Everyone likes Naganuma's contributions to the JSRF soundtrack, but I honestly think the Latch Brothers outshone his contributions. The grimy sound fits with the aesthetic of the game far better than Naganuma's futuristic big beats. Their original output is pretty good. I like "Koto Stomp" and the killer "Ill Victory Beat", though their three remixes are their opuses. The dense, atmospheric, electronic sound of "The Answer" is engrossing and oh-so-cool. I always set it as my garage theme whenever I'm replaying JSRF. "Rockin' the Mic" is one of the few hip-hop tracks that I like. The lyrics are surprisingly quite clever. "The Scrappy" kicks so much ass. It's hard not to get into the air-headed, jocular energy of that song. It's also pretty memorable for how well it fits with the area that it plays in. The dank instrumental is perfectly paired with the grimy underbelly of the sewer level. Sorry, sorry. The JSR soundtracks marked the beginning of my music-listening journey. I had to write a essay about them at some point. I was disappointed by this album, truth be told. It bears a striking semblance to Run DMC's debut album at points, which may or may not be a correlation drawn from having listened to that album yesterday. If I were to properly compare both albums, Run DMC had better vocals, but lacklustre instrumentals and a tempo which was agonisingly slow. By comparison, this album has more refined instrumentals with a snappier pacing, but inferior vocals and a tracklist which is too long and too dense. I'm not exactly sure what irks me about the vocals here given my aforementioned appreciation for The Latch Brothers, but something about 'em just rubs me the wrong way. They come across as pretty disingenuous and hollow. The second side of this album also features much weaker material than the first, which left me entirely disinterested by the time the album reached its conclusion. Overall, this album isn't egregiously bad, though there's a lot to be improved. Book time. A significant pivot from the band's initial punk influence. Sold very well. That's about it. Wikipedia reveals that this was the first rap album to top the charts and was one of the fastest-selling debut albums for Beastie Boys' label (Columbia Records). Critically revered and generally considered to be one of the greatest hip-hop albums of all time. Yup, this album has a solid rap sheet. I cosign this inclusion.
3eme et dernier album proposé par le générateur. Je n'avais pas apprécié les 2 précédents (notés 2/5 - plus variés que les autres albums du même style mais toujours très répétitifs). Pareil pour ce troisième album : quelques samples sympas, mais les morceaux sont toujours très répétitifs. Je n'y reviendrais pas. =>2/5
White boys yelling gets really old. i hate the back and forth call outs it gets real annoying. The rock-rap fusion for the beats are fun. I dont think this stands the test of time compared to other rap albums of the era. I am just not a fan
Never felt that these guys were all that good.
outrageously outdated sounding; sorry, it's very hard for me to enjoy this. they have fun energy but, at least for today's standards, the flows, bars and cadences are extremely corny.
generous 2. some great/unique production. definetly wont be coming back to this
This album has a couple marks against it, perhaps unfairly. First, the mid 80s rap sound that's akin to the Run DMC sound isn't my fave. Second, I had a roommate in college that used "The New Style" as an alarm at an ear-piercing volume to wake up (or after a bar night, sometimes not) behind a locked door, and I grew to hate that song. So, I get that this album deserves to be on the list. It's innovative and fun for its time. It sold huge amounts. But this album for me is just their early growing up period; they didn't get interesting to listen to until their next album. It's an album that, while not dismal, I don't find all that great. And now I'm craving sliders after all the mentions of White Castle.
Fucking annoying!
Så sjukt corny men bra samtidigt. Inget jag kommer lyssna mkt mer på
Meh
The production is infectious, but I quickly fatigued of the repetitive shouting and sexist, outdated lyrics
I just do not like this at all. It’s not enjoyable to listen to in any way. To me it’s just a bunch of yelling.
Unfortunately it's the Beastie Boys at their Beastie Boysiest. I might be a little more generous to this if the list hadn't given me all 3 of their albums in the last couple months but it would have taken a lot to pull this above a 2. They really buried the hits in the middle of the album. Fight For Your Right isn't exactly a masterpiece but at least it's worth listening to. Jesus Christ you've introduced yourselves like 80 times already you don't have to "my name's Mike D and I'm here to say" multiple times per track