Licensed To Ill

Forgot how many of these songs were buried in my brain. Three mentions of White Castle, name-checking Phyllis Diller and sampling Led Zeppelin; this is unique and good to the last drrrrrrrrop.

Stealing a line with another review..."more amusing than good."

Esse álbum é muito Jake Peralta de Brooklyn 99

Really enjoyed the last Beastie Boys album I had. Partly because it surprised me with how creative it was. That was a later album and this is their first album, so curious to see how I view this. There’s a lot of well known classics of theirs on this. This sounds like what I think the Beastie Boys sounds like. Old school Group rapping over some fun hard rock. It’s such a defined sound nowadays like you know when you hear them who it is. It’s kinda dated but it’s also very fun. Some of the samples are fun and there’s a bit of variety between that funky sample style and harder rock music backing the rhymes. Slow Ride is awesome. Girls is fun. This might be a classic. Didn’t even get to the biggest hits yet. The classic songs still hold up. That mix of hard rock and hip hop works great. This is close to a 5. At least a 4. Maybe it’s just a hit of that old school hip hop that never disappoints. Some of the rhymes are cheesy and their vocals aren’t always great. But it’s all part of the style. The New Style, Slow Ride, Girls, Fight For Your Right, No Sleep Til Brooklyn, Paul Revere, Brass Monkey. A number of good songs. It could use a trim of a few songs but it’s still so good and fun. Music should be fun. This is 40 years old and is as fun today as it probably was then.

What is there to say about License to Ill in 2026? It still feels fresh and somehow not like appropriation even though it really should.

Spoko, nie moje klimaty

Two songs in... bro these lyrics are so ahh. If I played guitar, I'd be Jimmy Page? The girlies I like are underage? Like what??? The beats are interesting for the first minute and a half, but that's all you get; there's hardly any variation or anything interesting added. I can't tell if they want to be rockers or gAnGsTaS... I wish they would choose. The hits on the album I've found are just when they actually try to do something interesting; all the other songs, they're just doing the bare minimum. Favs: Rhymin & Stealin, Fight For Your Right, Brass Monkey.

Its nice sounding

certified classis. drums a little rough, but overall a fantastic album

Lets go!!!

Absolutely amazing album from start to finish. This album also had to be quite revolutionary for its time. Also, the song 'Fight for Your Right' was a lot of kids anthem even through the 90s, years after this album came out.

Before becoming one of the most creative groups in all of rap music, The Beasties had much more of a rock influenced style. Well, after that also to be honest, but here the riffs have a lot more presence and are a lot more prominent. Combined with the wild, energetic vocals and hard drum breaks this thing sounds pretty out of control. The instrumental are good, but a bit repetitive, there is not a whole lot of variety. I would say the exceptions are Slow Ride and Girls, but those are actually my two least favorite songs here. They sound goofy and have not aged well. The strongest moments here are the ones that have this almost punk urge to them - like the run Fight For Your Right - No Sleep Till Brooklyn - Paul Revere. I also love The New Style and Brass Monkey. The other songs I could take or leave.

Não haveria Rage Against The Machine sem Beastie Boys. Para quem não é muito do rap, mas curte rock, eis uma mistura divertida e que te faz voltar a escutar mais vezes.

Fun album. Didn’t know they were from the mid-80s!

This was released in 1986? It barely sounds dated at all. The drums still hit hard, the guitar riffs are huge, and the Beastie Boys bounce off each other with so much energy that the whole album feels immediate rather than historical. 𝗙𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗥𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 is the obvious highlight for me: loud, stupid in exactly the right way, and almost impossible not to shout along with. But the album has that same reckless charm throughout. It sounds like three guys having far too much fun and somehow turning that into a genuinely great record. For something nearly forty years old, 𝘓𝘪𝘤𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘐𝘭𝘭 still feels ridiculously alive.

If you can't get past the juvenilia, you just won't like this -- jog on. If you can hold both Beastie identities in your head at once -- that this is all an elaborate joke about the self-serious braggadocio of hip-hop and also that they take their craft deadly seriously and they brag about it eloquently --you'll experience the sheer nirvana that is Licensed to Ill. Three MCs deliver rhymes as one. The best samples are combined with the best samples (look no further than the opener, 'Rhymin' & Stealin'', sampling Zepellin's 'When The Levee Breaks' and Sabbath's 'Sweet Leaf' at the same time). The whole thing makes you body involuntarily move. This album is worth buying a good record player so that you can buy it on vinyl and listen to it without paying some asshole in Sweden. 5/5; listen to it twice if you're not sure.

not for me

Bad good

Glad that this is the last album I’m receiving from this group. I’m not wowed, but I definitely think this is the best of the 3 on this list

Fun album. The shouting together gets a little repetitive though.

I get this is an album targeting white American frat boys from the 80s, so obviously I’m far from that and as such I was often left with a feeling of what the hell was that lyric or song? I appreciate that for the target demographic this felt fresh and relevant with Rick Rubin's heavy rock sampling, but I found the album resolutely average with only a couple of decent songs like Fight For Your Right and No Sleep till Brooklyn. 5/10

I always find beastie boys a tough listen. The hits are certified bangers, but I can’t get away from the sound of every song feeling like a sample put on repeat for 5 minutes while white guys yell annoyingly in my face.

Nice rap :)

The Beastie Boys are a group that dares to ask: what if hip-hop was white?

Just don’t get the hype. And their voices just go through me. Awful

Hard to rate this. A whole beastie boys album is not for me. But there are a lot of hits. The more "song" there is, the better they fare.

I go around in life pretending to be an actual adult - an honest-to-God professional, a college graduate, a husband, a father, a guy who pays his bills on time. And yet whenever this album comes on I am reduced to my teenage self - or rather, my teenage self bubbles to the surface again, and I'm left to bang my head at the classic-rock samples and bob to the tune of "Girls" and giggle at the gloriously sophomoric lyrics on display here. This snotty, punky, funky, clever blast of an album gets me every time.

One of the greatest albums ever. I've been in love with this album since I was a kid, playing Guitar Hero or watching their music videos. In my teenage years I'd play this in my car over and over again. The beats are fuckin crazy good, and their style of rapping as a unit, trading lines and finishes each other's sentence, is just so cool. MCA's death was the first celebrity death that really got to me, RIP

A tick above Paul's Boutique for me. Classic after classic, with a few sleepers mixed in.

There's so much to say, but you know it. Changed the culture of hip hop because it opened the door to mainstream, mainly white kids. Not my favorite BB album, but it's impact on music & pop culture cannot be talked about enough.

- very fun very silly - genuinely sounds like it was made ironically - MUCH more fun when i’m listening with my mama - not bad but idk if i would ever listen on my own volition

this album has the most fun sound the guys sound like they are having the best time making this, they of course would go on to bigger and better things but i still love the sound of this and easy recommended its fun great sounding and a must hear

Legend of an album for sure, but you are voluntarily having men shout in your ear for an hour about partying and hot girls.

It's just not for me. I get why they're important but meh

meh

It was the Beastie Boys. Has some classics though not my all time favorites. It like well executed juggling. In the best possible way.

хороший альбом

Que verga, los dos temas mas conocidos o "mejores" son rock porque su estilo de rap hip hopero es una pinga, y ni asi son buenos. No logro entender el hype por esta banda.

One of the worst things Ive ever heard

It was a cool listens I just think i was listening to it in the wrong setting so it didn’t fully resonate with me. This is pure hype music, not sitting on your couch playing video games background music.

rym 3.53 Mid-School Hip Hop/Rap Rock 很生猛的音乐，某种原始冲动，结合专辑发行的年代，几乎让我形成了一点点刻板印象。整体制作干燥到有种错位的不适应感，另一方面来说也十分带感。 pick: Fight for Your Right, Brass Monkey

I think this is a good album, and it was one of the first to really blend rap and rock. There are some all-time great tracks on here, but there are also a few misses that are more bland than good. Overall, I think this absolutely belongs on the list because of how influential it was. The Beastie Boys showed that hip-hop could borrow heavily from rock without losing what made it hip-hop, helping pave the way for the rap-rock and alternative crossover that became much more common in the years that followed.

This is a non-stop party from stem to stern. They use just long enough samples to get the recognition of the source, and then shape it for their own purpose. Yeah, this is very early in their career, so some of it's juvenile, but not so much that it's annoying. Lots of fun, not really deep. Don't think too hard about this one and just roll with it. My Rating: 10/5

1/13 songs saved. Good historical and cultural insight but this album has aged horribly. Extraordinarily misogynistic through and through, and it only takes one song before "the girlies I like are underaged" is dropped without a hint of irony.

gostei

Certainly a unique sound, but for sure not for me. If I was dating someone and they told me Beastie Boys was their favourite band it would be a huge red flag.

Beasties absolutely destroyed out the gate with this debut. Seismic. I can’t tell if I’m head-banging, head nodding or laughing harder. The three boys have ridiculous presence and delivery. The lyrics are stupid and hilarious. The mash-up of rock and hip-hop is inspired and ground-breaking. It’s an all-timer. And I love Paul’s Boutique even more.

Gear: Hifiman HE6se v2 SE Artwork: 🇺🇸✈️🎨 Production: 🎧🌋🌟 Music: ✊⚖️🥳 Rating: 🕶️🕶️🕶️🕶️/5

Impressionnant le nombre de flows actuels que je retrouve dans l’album, en plus d’un peu de rap rock

you know what this also gave me male enrgy confidence boost okayyyy

Very loud and annoying but I was trying to read, may be more fun pre gaming

Own it (CD) - This album begins with a sample of one of the most iconic drum tracks ever laid down: "When the Levy Breaks" - and punctuates with a Black Sabbath guitar riff. The rhymes laid down over these beats, with the signature Def Jam scratches and hits...these guys arrived fully formed. The end of Side 1 - "Girls" and "Fight for Your Right" followed by the killer run of tracks on Side 2 - "No Sleep...", "Paul Revere", "Hold it Now...", "Brass Monkey" - just genius production. I remember hearing "Girls" as a kid at the neighbor's house and thinking it was hilarious. I love the aggression in "Fight..." and "No Sleep..." and the contrast in the sparse production of "Paul Revere" and "Brass Monkey" - that backwards effect in PR - so cool. Overall, just fun and listenable start to finish - 4/5

Legendary

I already loved this album and still didn’t expect to give it a 5 until I actually put it on. It’s so fun.

Never actually sat and listened to a full Beastie Boys album. Great fun, iconic, actually good lyrics for 80s hip hop so can't complain. Can hear the influence they've had on a lot of shit since then, it's the boyyssss

Svakeste Beastie Boys plata. Energisk, men barnslig. For likt annen hip hop fra den tiden, men en og annen godlåt er det.

Liker mye her! Men syns albumet som helhet e tungt å komme gjennom fra A-B. Sterk 3er

Anerkjenner dette som en viktig plate. Men gud hvor tidens tann har herjet med den. Det høres bare parodisk ut i dag.

Blir for masete, både beatsene, tekstene og stemmene. Et par gullkorn og gromlåter redder treeren.

Its not my type.. but loved few songs

Great beats and work on the edits. Lyrics maybe a bit cheesy

So many Led Zeppelin samples! Good fun. 3.5 stars

The mixing on this album is very good for a album released in 1986 some of my favorite tracks are "Fight for Your Right (To Party)", "Slow Ride", and "Posse Effect" they were all good with cool beats and good lyricism and flow. I like the use of very basic drums in some songs like "Hold it, Now Hit it!" they take those basic drum parts and make a complex beat with a lot of mix in there too to add a funky type beat. "Brass Monkey" is also a very fun listen. One of my only issues is that there is a lot of songs most of them being 3-4 min which makes the album feel a little slow to get through but overall a very fun listen. (8/10)

So many bangers, dude.

MID

surprisingly enjoyable huh

Not a huge rap fan and had never listened to this entire album. I was pleasantly syrprised with how much I enjoyed it.

Better than Coldplay

Kinda never really feeling it with BB, this is one of those albums that kinda in the- just because it existed and surprised white people, does not make it great -box. Like there is nothing really interesting about really any of the lyrics most of them are annoying i would say. They ya ok they decided they were going to be the first white boy MCs and talk about white castle, drinking and girls. Like kinda who cares.

It was ok 3

On one hand, it's far from my favourite by them, on the other, I am of an age where I can rhyme along with a very large percentage of it. Whatever it was and however badly it has aged, it's had massive reach.

Stupid. Sometimes fun stupid, sometimes rude stupid.

I've always thought they were fun, but a little goes a long way. A whole album in one go is too much.

Immature and dumb, but they have thoroughly atoned. I like how it shows their punk and class-clown roots, with flashes of their future brilliance.

MOLTO SPERIMENTALE PER IL TEMPO, PUR RIMANENDO MERDA AL MIO ORECCHIO. ROCK E HIP HOP GASA. NESSUNA CANZONE MI E' PIACIUTA. DO 2 PERCHE' MI PIACE LA VARIETA' DI SUONI PRESENTE. 2/5

Fun album, pretty rudimentary but joke-heavy so it balances out

Phenomenal album that showcases the bridge between rock and hip hop. Hip Hop music made by three Jewish boys.

Noise

This album has some pretty solid bangers back to back towards the middle. Some of the edge tracks the flows and stories get a bit stale, but I really liked this over all. 4/5

continuing to enjoy the beastie boys which may be my biggest surprise from this whole process

I can recognize it's influence, but it was a bit much of the same,. Some very cool funky moments though

8 stars!

Some good tacks but bit chaotic and the opening is kinda rough

Horrible. I have no idea how these guys made a career. I have my suspicions though.

Still sounds fresh and clever.

Absolute classic from a great band. No brainer this one!

I want to like them more but god their voices are so goddamn annoying

Muy bueno, el album lo dice todo

Nice

Brass monkey is banger

My whole life I've barely regarded the Beastie Boys as a rap/hip-hop group because the punk rock side of their music has always been what appealed to me most, and it's very exemplified on this record. I don't hate it, but I prefer some songs way more than others here; notably the ones with a guitar riff in the instrumental. Whether that's a reflection of my own biases - and it very possibly is - it doesn't change the fact of the matter of how much I enjoyed the album. Even with that, it gets a bit repetitive too with the lyricism and delivery; take even just a sip of your alcoholic beverage of choice whenever you hear the word "girlies" or "White Castle" and you'll be plastered by the time this is done.

Not my thing especially. I can see how influential it was, but the content is a bit puerile and sometimes straight up offensive, as the band themselves later acknowledged.

9.5/10

Meh. Like all the stuff from this era, overrated and overhyped that has been shoved down our throats.

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.

Aaaah schwierig. Hab ich sogar als CD im Schrank, ist auch die Platte der Beasties, die ich mir am besten am Stück geben kann. Hier sind für mich mit "The New Style" und "Hold It Now, Hit It" zwei 10/10-Rap-Classics dabei, mit "Paul Revere" auch noch ein schöner Storyteller. Gleichzeitig probiert die Platte noch so viel mehr, wofür man ihnen Respekt zollen muss. Die Idee, Led Zeppelins "When the Levee Breaks"-Drums mit den Riffs von Sabbaths "Sweet Leaf" zu kombinieren und darauf zu rappen, war damals sicherlich bahnbrechend. Heutzutage klingt das Ergebnis eher dürftig. "Fight for Your Right" und "No Sleep Till Brooklyn" haben zwar ebenfalls etwas Staub angesetzt, klingen aber als Novelty-Hits immer noch witzig (der arme Kerry King, der die Gitarrensoli spielen musste, hat es leider gar nicht gefühlt). "Girls" ist so ein Song, bei dem ich mich jedes Mal von Neuem frage, ob der jetzt genial oder total beschissen ist. "Brass Monkey" nimmt viel von dem späteren Miami Bass-Style vorweg, den ich mit Das Bo und Frauenarzt assoziiere. Die Texte sind großteils Quatsch und hier und da vielleicht auch etwas problematisch, aber trotzdem steckt mehr Rap-Skill drin, als man den Beasties oft zustehen möchte. Spätere Alben sind musikalisch sicherlich noch anspruchsvoller und deutlich variabler, aber so einen Hit-Dichte wie hier hatten sie nie wieder. Und wenn man sieht, wie viele Rap-OGs und sonstige Stars des Genres Songs von diesen 3 weißen Dudes als NYC gesamplet haben, dann kann man den Einfluss nicht mehr kleinreden. Aber mit 3 Ausfällen muss ich dann doch zwangsläufig einen Stern abziehen.

Was für ein Banger von einem Album. Das geht einfach hart!

Geiles Ding. Ich kann nachvollziehen, warum das für einige ein Meilenstein ist. Es macht auch einfach Spaß. Einen Punkt Abzug dafür, dass sich gefühlt zu viele Lieder in ihrer Struktur zu stark ähneln. Wären das noch mehr, würde das Album für mich stark abfallen.

Das macht komplett Spaß, zumindest merkt man komplett dass alle Beteiligten hier ne Menge Spaß hatten und sich nicht zu ernst nehmen. Mir persönlich sind aber wie bei viel zu vielen Hip Hop Alben aus der Zeit die Beats zu monoton. Hier hat man jetzt den Crossover Aspekt der viele Songs besser altern ließ, aber eben nicht alle. Die die gut gealtert sind, sind dafür zeitlose Klassiker.

Coupla tracks are cringeworthy, but there are easily 8 or 9 tracks that hold up still. The musical production and performance quality are great. The rap style and content will thankfully get better in follow up records, but the seed is planted and growing even here.

I feel like I'm at a high school pep rally for a third rate school. The sampling could be cool, but the constant shouting really drowns it all out. Favorite Song: Girls, Fight for your Right, No Sleep Till Brooklyn

Enough of that.

4.5 Classic, of course.

Didn't realize White Castle was something to rap about! Not 1, not 2 but 3 call outs in 3 different songs.

I'm not into this type of Rap, understanding the background for the release of this album, they made a descent job. It was influential but is not an album that I would make it to my favorites Rap albums rack.

Friday, 21 August, 2026 A legendary album made by sophomoric fools. This is the soundtrack of my youth.

Потрясающий альбом, который, вероятно, сегодня невозможно было бы создать из-за обилия сэмплов. Классика рэп-кора. Кстати, ощущение от прослушивания: такое чувство, что на меня кричала куча детей в течение 40 минут. И да, теперь весьма понятно, откуда сперли "ХХХИРНР". Отдельный респект за Girls. Заказан СD. Beastie Boys "Licence to ill", 1986, 9/10

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.

This is what sellout hippies from the 60s listened to in the 70s to feel like they hadn't sold out. But they had.

I don't know what to rate this thing. There is obviously a lot of good stuff here and then there's some frat rap nonsense that I'm not real fond of. Is Brass Monkey good or has it just been locked in my head for 40 years? This is my least favorite of the early Beastie records. 3.5/5

Oof is this what other ppl hear when they listen to brockhampton? Not only did I not enjoy this, I actively hated it. So weird cuz I liked the other BB albums… Okay saw it’s from the 80s god this era of rap sucks

Making future verses to acknowledge problematic behavior doesn’t excuse them but proves Tim Robinson was right when he said, “people can change.” That being said it’s a funky fresh good time.

It's fun, but they get better with age.

unpleasant from start to finish

Du "Rock rap" ça s'écoute très bien mais pas vraiment mon style. Sûrement du à mon manque de sensibilité à ce genre je trouve qu'un certain nombre de morceaux se ressemble. Mis à part certains qui sortent vraiment du lot

8/10 Album so good it made me retroactively rethink the last Beastie Boys album

Tricky one. The good songs are incredible. They take me back to when I first heard BB and still sound as good now as then. The rest of the album is a little underwhelming in comparison……

Not bad, but not my jam.

It's so old school hip-hop. It's rhymin' and jivin'

A really interesting one. When I saw it was classified as hip hop and then heard it was a white group, combining it with rock, really had a new feel. Also idk, it reminded me of something Gumball would feature in so bonus

Juvenile. Ridiculous. Rusty. Stupid. This album is a work of art and its significance is profound. I love this album, I love what it stands for it rap and I love how it contrasts the rest of the Beastie Boys catalogue. Hilarious lyricism, really creative beats, just so much fun.

By the Beastie Boys own admission, some of the lyrics here do not age well but there is also a lot of fun youthful energy. 3.5/5

un par de samples de travis. el álbum no me pareció recordable

i have an issue with the way they rhyme and rap for most of here. it's such an 80s thing that it feels outdated and boring. But despite that, if what i saw about the influence of Rick Rubin on Music, you can see how important this album is and how ubiquitous is to music in general, with that rap rock and riffs as sample style. Also, they are wild, in the lyrics and how blatant and obvious are, more than bragging, being so explicit in how they critique certain things using the bragadoccio to punctualize that. it's really interesting to me. Sadly, i must say, i enjoy more their other stuff. it's a good debut, but the rest is better, i think

Rappy and snappy. Contains the following classics: "Fight For Your Right" and "Brass Monkey".

A good debut album for what would quickly become a pivotal hip hop act in the 80s and 90s. I don't think it's their strongest as they were still finding they're sound, but it has memorable tracks.

This is a really fun album, and groundbreaking for its time. I remember hearing Fight for your Right to Party on the radio as a 16 year old and my head exploding. I heard more of the album and didn't quote know what to make of it, but loved it all the same. I still do to some extent. It probably makes me an immature asshole but I just don't care.

They really hate women and want their girlfriends to be their mommies

Nice rap album. -1 star for the song "Girls"

Some iconic tracks but not everything lands for me

cool album. while it can be repetitive and annoying (they’re always screaming and shouting), it is forward-thinking. invented a lot of new things. have a few favourites including no sleep till brooklyn and brass monkey. 6/10.

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.

somehow i dont think ive ever listened to beastie boys before and i thought this was just fun! but a little tiresome!

The Beastie Boys before they figured out who the Beastie Boys were. Brilliant in parts, but overall it is pretty juvenile. Look! The plane says EATME! Huh huh, good one.

I can tell why this album was so controversial but so loved amongst youngsters. Was a very fun listen however don’t think it has that much replay value

Energetic and all but not my style Did not listen again, maybe will listen again

sounds ahead of its time, but not sure it aged well. can be quite annoying

Classic. My 4 year old enjoyed it.

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.

Aquele guilty pleasure.... ain vey que mscs são essas

Hell yeah.

Somewhat cheesy by today's standards but revolutionary for hiphop

everything i hate abt hardcore combined with everything i hate about hard rock with three white dudes rapping over it, one of whom has the most annoying voice i've ever heard. the production is cool i guess but ughhhhhhhhhhhhh 1/5

I've listened to this album many, many times. It came out when I was in high school. One of my friends had just gotten a car and his driver's license and I think we listened to this on cassette tape in his car on the way to and from school almost every day for a good chunk of 1986 and 1987. Listening to it today, it's definitely not as good as some of the later Beastie Boys stuff. But this album was groundbreaking. It brought rock and hip hop and rap all together for the first time. It was cheesy, but it was fun. And I still know almost all the words. Great Saturday morning listen for me!

5/10 Hmmm no my cup of tea

AMAZING!!! I knew this was a great album but didn’t know what to except. Only ever heard Fight for your right before this. So many bangers here. Rhymin & Stealin is the perfect way to start an album and hooked me in straight away. She’s crafty is another one that hit me straight away. Girls was a complete change of music and pace and it works really well. Had to say WTF is this, but in a good way. From there everything is great No Sleep till Brooklyn has an infectious chorus you have to sing along too. I think Slow and Low is the catchiest song though. Get this in my collection ASAP

it just keeps going

Probably the best of their albums that I've had on this list. The raw youthful energy is infectious.

I like my sugar with coffee and cream. This is the cream of the crop of rhe Beastie Boys catalog. I love this album.

Beastie Boys probably had a status in the US it may be difficult to appreciate from the other side of the pond and with the passing of decades. The hits are definitely enjoyable and tracks that use samples are good - the Beastie Boys had good taste. Listening to a whole album is a bit much but, credit where credit is due, this band deserve their place in the history of popular music.

KICK IT!

Going through the beginning it feels repetitive, then there is a string of absolute bangers in the middle starting with girls and ending with brass monkey.

Not a bad debut, but I prefer the two straight up rock tracks to any of the hip-hop.

In my view, this record hasn’t aged particularly well, though I still enjoyed it on a purely nostalgic level.

While it’s not my favorite Beastie Boys album it’s still fantastic and hints at how clever they really are despite being hidden behind a frat boy persona.

2.5

Some good. Some bad. Kind of drags on.

Repeat listen

Classic

It's all very noisy.

I always get this and Ill Communication backwards. I like this, but it's the most immature of their records, aping frat boy culture, where a lot of people missed the joke. It's still a solid Beasties record, but it's not the best of the best. 3.5*

fair i didnt really fw it

Nu e un album rau, chiar mi-a placut in ciuda faptului ca nu prea e stilul meu.

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.

A great east coast hip hop album, playful and danceable, groovy, repetitive and catchy. Only some tracks feel a bit empty, but it's fine

Big fan of the beats on this album. Love that one on Rhymin & Stealing in particular, that mash-up of When The Levee Breaks and Sweet Leaf works really well. The vocals and lyrics can be a little hit or miss but generally still pleasant. Not bad

The When the Levee Breaks sample to start the album is nuts. Pretty good

Favorite Song: No Sleep Till Brooklyn Least Favorite Song: Paul Revere Enjoyment: 8 Replayability: 6 Cohesion: 6 Flow / Pacing: 7 Artistic Merit: 8 Weighted Score: 7.1

not sure i'll ever be in the mood to listen to an entire album of straight NOISE

Enjoyment: 5/10 Replayability: 5/10 Cohesion: 6/10 Flow/Pacing: 5/10 Artistic Merit: 4/10 Weighted Average: 5/10 Review: This Beastie Boys album was better than the last. It had more variety, and I felt more nostalgia for the songs I already knew and appreciated. But again, if you've heard one of their songs, then you've heard them all. Great for a party mix, but if you add too many, it'll get stale. Liked Song(s): Girls, Fight For Your Right, Brass Monkey Disliked Song(s): The New Style, Slow Ride Recommend? Yes Heard Before? Partly

Rocking fun. I love how obnoxious the Beasties sound. Must have really scared some of the squares. The beats slam. The big songs are all-time bangers.

nao ouvi tudo mas achei gostosinho as batidas

Incredible 5* album. Didn't realize so much was zeppelin. So many call-outs to other rappers and songs. Complex. Fun. Wow.

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

Важный альбом, который ввел хип хоп в мейнстрим. Звучание до сих пор модное

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

Beastie Boys - Licensed To Ill (1986) Absolute masterpiece of album bangers after bangers, drawn closer The New Style and Time To Get Ill the instrumental went crazy rhmes crazy 5/5

6/10

Probably my least favorite Beastie Boys album thus far, but still a good time. Favorite tracks: Girls ; Hold It Now, Hit It

Listening to Licensed to Ill conjured up multiple connections in my mind of artists with similar qualities, and career “growth.” Musically the album’s best moments come when they embrace an AC/DC approach. Riffs that were heavy, spare and containing a groove, made a few songs thump along nicely with the dumb shouts of the trio. They dabble in samples, but not the amazing collage of subsequent records, nor the controlled chaos of Public Enemy. At best they have a basic heavy metal appeal, but a large number of songs failed to reach even that level musically. Their rapping and lyrics recall Gilbert Goffried and Adam Sandler in their abrasiveness, New Yorkese and third-grade humor. As these comedians did, the Beasties would grow in every way throughout their career. Here they just grate on me, something the comedians would continue to do with a few exceptions. Dialing back the personal effrontery would have to wait for the future. For now, annoying your parents, hefty references to White Castle and Jerry Lewis are the best they can do. Artistry and critical acceptance would have to wait for everyone mentioned in this review. At least the Beasties scaled higher in that area than all of them.

Never felt that these guys were all that good.

I like the music and humourous lyrics but the vocal delivery grates after a while. The two tracks with real guitar (Slayer apparently) are highlights.

An important album but not a great one. I hate 'fight for your right' but there are some good rhymes and beats here with nicely placed guitar chords.

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.

Yeah, this album is completely goated. Unbelievable production for 86. I have to imagine this was mind-boggling to listen to as a young adult back then. Angsty bars, some offensive shit, top notch, storytelling the writing and the delivery really has it all. This is up there with some of the best debut albums ever and the first hip-hop album to go number one absolutely legendary shit.

Really fun album with creative beats and infectious hooks. They really invented white boy flow

generous 2. some great/unique production. definetly wont be coming back to this

I’m a beastie boys sucker. I think Paul’s Boutique is their real magnum opus and this a step below it, but it’s still a 5 for me.

I’m not a big fan of hip hop, but the Beastie Boys are legendary. Mad respect. Great album.

I've never been a Beastie Boys fan, but I was sleeping on this. Much better than I expected.

This was awesome. Exactly what was needed on a Friday morning; a perfect pick me up to help get me going. What an amazing debut album - talk about introducing yourself to the world with a bang. A fun listen from start to finish.

One of the best rap albums from start to finish. Mic drop. The Beastie Boys have a unique style of delivering their genius and it’s on full display with License to Ill. They are story tellers at heart whose fun lyrics are even more entertaining when their passion and iconic intonation are thrown in. This was a real treat.

A stone-cold, straight from my youth classic and, although the lyrics haven’t exactly aged well, here are my top 5 lines from the album: 5. You're a fake wearin' sucker whose gold got rusted, Cheaper than a hot dog with no mustard 4.. Her pants are tight and that’s okay. 3. I got a girl in the castle, one in the pagoda, you know I got rhymes like Abe Vigoda. 2. I did it like this, I did like that, I did it with a wiffle ball bat. 1. Girls with boyfriends are the kind I like, I’ll steal your honey like I stole your bike.

For fun I imagined myself as today me listening to this album for the first time back in 1986. I would have rolled my eyes and dismissed this as juvenile trash while lamenting the state of music, a low 2. What I learned is that today me is lame AF. Monster album, nearly every track on this album was a hit single. The guitars riffs, the hooks, the dj, and of course those crazy ass rhymes. The energy on this album is off the chain, if you have a pulse this will get you moving. Ground breaking album, but unlike others ground breaking albums on this list I'm not taking thay into account in my review because I dont have to. Licensed To Ill needs no help, the album is as awesome today as it was when it came out.

Not really my thing but I liked it more than I thought I would The hits here are pretty strong but the rest of the album didn’t stand out to me very much, I could definitely see myself coming back and enjoying this album more For now it gets 3/5 Favorites: Paul revere, fight for your right, no sleep till Brooklyn, brass monkey

I think that, although there are some classic songs on here, this does little more than showcase the potential that they had. There's a very childish nature to this album, and I think they managed to keep the fun of the album while maturing a lot in their later releases. That being said this is a really fun album, and the sampling is pretty exceptional. But it just doesn't do it for me the same way that their other stuff does. Favorites: Rhymin' and Stealin', No Sleep Till Brooklyn, Hold It Now Hit It

Classic. Grew up listening to these songs on the local alternative radio station and bought this on CD at a yard sale. Great album.

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!

Don’t really love this

Legendarny na wielu poziomach, od sampli Led Zeppelin, po Brass Monkey

Så sjukt corny men bra samtidigt. Inget jag kommer lyssna mkt mer på

Now I understand the inspiration for so many verses for queens in drag race. The New Style and Slow Ride are fun and captivating songs. I understand the appeal for this band and its inspiration but I’m just not the biggest fan of their style.

No esta malo pero not my vibe 😋

Rating: 7.2 Notes: Not completely my taste, but a fun album and I absolutely understand it's importance in the scope of music history. Standout tracks are She's Crafty, Girls, Fight for Your Right, No Sleep Till Brooklyn, Slow and Low.

Haven’t listened to this in ages. Still an awesome album.

REALLY COOL ALBUM acid rock mixed with hip hop really cool sound gotta love the beastie boys however they are kinda sus on some tracks so idk.

Mejor de lo que esperaba

4/5 if it wasn’t for the bangers prolly wldnt b a 4

stupid kind of fun album

Meh

Classic

I do not like rap, luckily these guys make that seem less like a racially motivated statement

I was always kind of mixed on this album. There's a few songs I absolutely rock with, but damn there's a bunch of stuff on here that I hate. I appreciate "Rhymin and Stealin" more these days, but "Brass Monkey" is still one of the fastest skips I've ever done on an album.

Doesn't feel good to rate this above 2Pac. Love all the classic rock samples - white guys aren't allowed to sample funk they have to work with different dad music. Also opening line referencing "Mutiny on the Bounty" - brave.

The production is infectious, but I quickly fatigued of the repetitive shouting and sexist, outdated lyrics

Bold move putting the worst songs on the album first

Fun album. Definitely the sound and lyrics get a bit repetitive but I like the energy

Well, I certainly liked this more than Paul’s Boutique. I know its genre is Hip Hop but I heard a lot of post punk and hair metal in it. Fight for your Right to Party is so energetic and Girls is so sad and fun at the same time. Why am I not rating it higher? I think it is the old saying “you had to be there”. While I was physically on this earth at that time I wasn’t around people who liked them, the culture or the hype so I cant emotionally connect with it. That’s my answer anyway.

Not for me

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.

This is #day704 of my #1001albumsyoumusthearbeforeyoudie challenge, and… here's to crossing another band off the list, as this is my third and final Beastie Boys record. Now, this is a game-changing record. What is there to add, really? As one of the songs says: "The New Style." That's all you need to know. Blast it out loud. This is a 5 out of 5. Looking forward to #day705.

It sounds like a group of yankees grabbed the microphone at a houseparty... and it's brilliant. Some people say it aged badly, I disagree. I think it's hiarious and it's meant to be. I would describe it as THE ultimate hip hop party album. The choice of samples is a lot more thoughtful than at first listen. In terms of highlights, there are many but Rhymin' & Stealin', Fight for your Right, No Sleep Till Brooklyn and Brass Monkey.

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

this isn’t outright bad but it is worse than the other two Beastie Boys albums on the music list and I am irritated that we got what is basically the same album three times instead of leaving those slots open for the album list’s many, many, many, many blind spots

hmmm

lots of these songs hold up on their own but listening to a whole album is just a lot of yelling

A classic sound, some classic songs, but the overwhelming takeaway is that these guys sound like colossal assholes. And that’s okay- artists are allowed to be young and dumb, finding their way. They would go on to make really incredible, mature and innovative music starting with their very next record. Rubin’s production has some high points (When the Levee Breaks + Sweet Leaf= yes please) but the Beastie’s inelegance often makes it sound flat.

You could say the Beastie Boys came out of the gate swinging. This fusion of Rap and Rock became the blueprint of pretty much every aspiring white rapper to come, and bear in mind, there were a lot (A LOT) of terrible ones. But, of course, the Beastie Boys would go on to do greater things with their innovations in sampling on their second album. Key tracks: Girls Fight for Your Right No Sleep Till Brooklyn

01) Rhymin & Stealin - 7,5 02) The New Style - 7,5 03) She's Crafty - 7,5 04) Posse in Effect - 7,0 05) Slow Ride - 7,5 06) Girls - 7,5 07) Fight for Your Right - 10,0 08) No Sleep till Brooklyn - 9,0 09) Paul Revere - 8,0 10) Hold It Now, Hit It - 7,0 11) Brass Monkey - 7,5 12) Slow and Low - 7,5 13) Time to Get Ill - 7,0 TOTAL: 7,73 (77/100) Current ranking: 334/970

Like. Classic

No es mi estilo, no lo he terminado de escuchar al completo:(

These are some of the only white guys besides Eminem who can do Hip-Hop justice. The ability to give reverence to a genre while not being of that culture is tough, while also making songs that can be very humorous. They strike the balance perfectly. They really fit into a style I call scumbag music. After 40 minutes, it has started to all sound somewhat similar though.

Highlights: Rhymin & Stealin, The New Style, She's Crafty, Slow Ride, Girls, Fight For Your Right, No Sleep Till Brooklyn, Hold It Now Hit It, Brass Monkey, Slow and Low White people classic. I love it for the same reasons I liked Run-DMC's Raising Hell. They are very similar, but the Beasties have this "jock" vibe to them. However somehow they don't come of as too cringe or too dumb. The record was a fun listen and I love it, but I don't value it as much as some of their later ones.

Amazing album! It's more of a Rap album, but it has some hard rock songs on it. It's their best album and I enjoyed it all the way through! Truly amazing!

77/100. Licensed to Ill is the debut album by the Beastie Boys, an iconic record that helped pioneer the fusion of rap and rock. It features some major classics and undeniably left a lasting impact on music. However, for me, this album was more enjoyable in my youth, and over time, it feels a bit less impactful. Still, it remains a fun and influential record that helped shape the genre.

It’s too immature and raucous for 9am so I wasn’t in the mood but the hits are undeniable

The first hip-hop album on this list that I didn't absolutely hate.

QUIT YELLING AT ME! Lots of noise on this one. Best thing here is 'Fight for your right' to paaaarrrrrrtty! Can do without the rest of it.

Not my favourite and not the worst. It’s not like other hip hop records, it’s punkier, it’s more chaotic. But it didn’t fully connect with me on this listen.

Ew I’m not finishing this bs

Lots of fun. Reminds me of Group Sex in a way that it’s short, dynamic, and juvenile enough in its humor that some of the lyrics that could be cringy come off as goofy.

I think Beastie Boys did a great job with this album, straight up. They definitely did well at catching all the provocativeness and rebelliousness and snotty attitudes. I think it's still really well done even though it was just a product of it's time. This is a good example of the mid-school hip-hop music, it has thumping beats that just completely you rock you. Also around this time sampling was getting quite popular in hip-hop. Like a quick usage of the Clash's "I Fought the Law" in "Rhymin & Stealin." That song's main sample is the drums from Led Zeppelin's "When The Levee Breaks" which is why itbeat sounded so familiar when I was listening to their fourth album. I also heard quite a few things in "Hold It Now, Hit It" that N.W.A. sampled on Straight Outta Compton, like M.C.A.'s line "Beer drinkin', breath stinkin', sniffin' glue" (okay actually Eazy-E's solo stuff, not N.W.A. - close enough.) Though I do understand why the Beastie Boys had a dislike for the album eventually and if they did play any songs off it live, they'd usually play with altered lyrics. It is fairly misogynistic, and the original album title was within character of the albums themes albeit very homophobic. This is my second listening to this. I think Beastie Boy's albums are very rewarding with re-listens they just have so many great lines littered throughout. Even though the lines they're cheesy as all hell, but that's part of the reason of why it's so good, because it's on the nose. I enjoyed this a lot more than my first listen, I definitely have to re-listen to Paul's Boutique (which is an album I got near the start of my listening journey.) I definitely recommend this. To like this album I think one has to embrace that It's cheesy, only then can a person be free to like the album and to not whatsoever take it seriously. p.s. "Paul Revere" is up there with being one of my favourite hip-hop songs. Highlight "Rhymin & Stealin", "No Sleep Till Brooklyn" and "Paul Revere"

Oh...so thats where N.W.A took from

Musical equivalent to that loud group of twats at school, with shit haircuts. I will admit "Fight for your Right" was pretty great, but the rest was just awful..

Good

This is music for retarded adolescent boys.

Every time I began to enjoy the music they commenced shouting over each other again. I get that it was bold and innovative but they made the same song 11 times with mixed production. Production excellent to be fair.

I love it, so much fun

One of the first great albums I owned as a kid. I know it is immature, but I still love it. 9/10 Top song Paul Revere

i love the beastie boys!!! don't uh. don't listen to the lyrics too closely.

Awesome

good stuff great!!

First real Introduction to the group, a good beat and background. It flowed well, I don’t really like the grunge of the music, a bit abrasive but overall, good album for those who like it.

Illað stöff. Eldist vel og húmor í þessu. Beatin feit og rokkið er gott. Rick Rubin er meistari.

Geggjuð plata. Eldist ótrúlega vel.

kinda crazy knowing this came out 40 years ago and its still so unique and hype. pretty revolutionary. so many led zeppelin homages in it too!

haven’t listened to this all the way through before. it’s just a solid album and incredible debut.

It's a really fun album, but I don't think it has held up quite as well as some of their later albums did. Of course, this is kind of them sorting out who they were going to be. It's juvenile, a lot of the songs do kind of sound the same, but they are having a blast. It's best when they break out the guitars (Fight for Your Right, No Sleep 'TIl Brooklyn).

Juu ei kiitos.

Kinda fun but a bit one note.

Rollicking, rapping romp! The juvenile bravado comes across a little cringey now, but the comic delivery and pinpoint interplay rivals Run-DMC, with three voices rather than two. The Led Zeppelin samples in Rhymin & Stealin (When the Levee Breaks) and She's Crafty (The Ocean) are nice.

Outstanding. I can't believe I've never listened to this album. Fight for Your Right and No Sleep Till Brooklyn back to back. I love their sound, its so punchy. The alternating vocalists (espcially in the same line) just works so damn well. Makes me feel awesome. Album name and cover are awesome too. 5 stars

I like the mix of rock and hip hop in theory, but in practice (especially because of the vocals) this album is sonically quite irritating to me. No Sleep Till Brooklyn and Fight for Your Right are the standout tracks for me. Rating: 1.5

It's definitely a new listening experience, the album seems like a punk hip hop fusion, funky (inna good way).

Some absolute bangers but also a few id be skipping pasty on the next listen

This might be the first time I listened to this one straight thru. Obvs heard some of these tunes many, many, countless many times. To their detriment! Good number of them others tho, never get old. Great album

The album opens with a horrible punk-ish rock-ish rap. Most definitely NOT my vibe - I'm all for PUNK, I'm all for Rock, I'm all for RAP. But I'm not in for whitewashed rap stitched with glue with (mostly bad) guitar riffs and very noisy drums. Yeah, the second song didn't get any better. Nor any other. The high pitched voices of these guys are not for me, they're just screaming. The messy instrumentals are at times very good (very 80s, some decent scratch, some good riffs) and at times very uninspired (a random electric guitar, a basic drum). I don't know if it's my ear that's just accustomed to the better productions of the west-coast rap of the roughly same era - DrDre and Ice T released some WAY BETTER rap in this same year, and thanks god they didn't have to SCREAM all the time - but I really can't stand these three white new yorkers yelling at me, at each other, at the music. Ooof. "She's crafty". Ooof I couldn't even listen to the whole song, it's honestly just bad musically, lirically, and content-wise. At least "Fight for your right" is musically a song, produced by an adult. They still sound like ass, the lyrics are bad, the flow is unbearable, in that song, but at least it's a song. Naah, this is the worst album I've listened to in a while, I'm glad I hadn't heard it in the past, I am glad I won't have to do it again.

Rock and hip hop funky rap battle type vibes

Favorite track(s): Rhymin & Stealin, Fight for Your Right, No Sleep Till Brooklyn, Brass Monkey Heard before Previous rating: 7/10

Made me want to go out and vandalise a VW for it's badge!! Feels like a parody album! The samples are great. Humerous, puerile lyrics, which by all accounts, are meant to lampoon frat boys. All in all, good fun!!

Fun listen, not my genre of music. Pleasantly surprised.

Хип-хап и рок, наверное для времени выхода было весьма свежо.

Iconic. So ahead of its time. Great Album!

No beating around the bush - every Beastie Boys albums is the same, so you only need to hear one auch is their repetitive nature. Indeed, you only need to hear 3-4 songs from this and you'll have consumed to entirety of what the band has to offer. Pick the best 3-4 songs and you'll have fun.

go white boys go

Overall, not a bad album, although it's not really my thing. It's fine having the songs in the background, but the only one that I kind of enjoyed, and that I also knew already, was Fight For Your Right, and that was pretty decent.

Fucking love this album, so much fun and fight for your right is the best karaoke song of all time. 5.0/5.0 Best song: No Sleep Till Brooklyn

Incredible, genuinely the most fun you can have listening to music. The beats are insane for 1986, it makes you laugh it makes you want to dance it is untouchable.

6/10

Terrible.

Mmmmmmm. Drop!

Could not listen to it.

Speaking of fellas who changed the game. Rules but I cannot listen to an entire Beasties album, the yelling (especially Mike D) gets very grating. Dated sure, but they grew with the times.

This is my second album by the Beastie Boys. I think I enjoyed this one more than "Paul's Boutique", which was already good. Very good album (though I'm definitely not a hip-hop expert). Songs I enjoyed: "Rhymin & Stealin", "The New Style", "She's Crafty", "Fight for your right" (together with "No Sleep Till Brooklyn" my favourites), or "Paul Revere". This is between 4 and 5 stars for me.

didn't like it very much, but there are some ok songs

My mileage varies on the Beastie Boys in general but an undeniably fun album that sort of drifts off toward the end.

Just not really my vibe but I get the hype if you love hip hop

Every beastie boys song is the same song

Who doesn’t like these goofy guys with their goofy rhymes. This early album is pretty unrefined even by their standards. But the hits make up for some of the filler here. Great for cruising down the road in the summer.

They packed the album full of hits; made me want to meet that funky monkey.

Eh, they get better.

This was really good

This was the music of my high school dances. Laughing at the send up of frat-boy culture and memorizing all the lyrics until we became part of the problem. I'm drinking not thinking. We got drunk on the potent mix of rock and rap with sensibilities spawned in the punk world and with tongues firmly planted in their cheeks. I know in my mind that Paul's Boutique was the peak, but my heart says it just doesn't get any better than this. RIP Adam\MCA, you left too soon.

Michael Scott qui rap avec Dwight, mais avec plus de flow, ça s’écoute très très bien cependant, ça met la pêche mais un peu trop situationel à mon goût

Yes it's dated, yes I never really liked them because my brother was obsessed and played them constantly in our room, but it ain't bad. I dig the beat flip on The New Style.

Even after 40 years this album still slaps. Rubins production across the whole album is phenomenal. I've always loved the guitar work on Fight For Your Right and No Sleep Til Brooklyn but I only learnt today that its Kerry King on the guitars. Crazy. Overall and absolute classic and one I'll keep coming back too. 4.25* rounded down to 4*

Every single one of the songs are at least solid and enough of them are amazing to make this a 5 star album

It’s a little silly a juvenile and they get so much better with every subsequent release, but I love this album. It’s a ton of fun.