Blog: THEME FOR GREAT CITIES

Beastie Boys was always a tricky act for me to follow. On one hand, Licensed to Ill (1986) defined my later high-school experience. It was a massive, band-breaking album, but for Beastie Boys, not quite definitive. Musically, it's primitive, a time-capsule effort that's representative of its era but hardly representative of Beastie Boys. It barely hinted at the sophisticated direction the trio would take with its follow-up, Paul's Boutique (1989), which, more than anything, set the dominant tone of the Brooklynites' discography. Beastie Boys was the first white rap act to go platinum, [...]