Today in Hip-Hop — August 5: Adam “MCA” Yauch Would’ve Been 62 Today

Adam Nathaniel Yauch — MCA — was born in Brooklyn on August 5, 1964. He’d have hit 62 today. Here’s the jewel most heads don’t clock: MCA didn’t start out as an MC. In 1981 he co-founded the Beastie Boys as a hardcore punk four-piece with John Berry, Mike Diamond (Mike D), and Kate Schellenbach on drums. Their first release was the Polly Wog Stew EP on Rat Cage Records in 1982 — pure downtown NYC hardcore, four years before they touched a drum machine on a Def Jam record.

The transition from hardcore to hip-hop happened between 1983 and 1986. Rick Rubin signed the crew to a nascent Def Jam, John Berry stepped away, Kate Schellenbach was pushed out (she’d resurface a decade later fronting Luscious Jackson on the Beasties’ own Grand Royal label), and Ad-Rock (Adam Horovitz) came in. Licensed to Ill dropped November 15, 1986. By March 1987 it was the first hip-hop album ever to hit #1 on the Billboard 200 — a benchmark that still matters when you’re arguing about the genre’s mainstream arrival.

MCA was the bass player, the lowest voice in the trio, and the group’s moral compass. When Check Your Head (1992) pivoted the Beasties back to live instruments in their own G-Son Studios in Atwater Village, that was largely MCA’s push — bass up front, samples in the back. Ill Communication (1994) gave us “Sabotage,” and MCA in the fake mustache and mirrored aviators became hip-hop’s most-quoted visual gag. Spike Jonze directed. Three decades later that video is still Halloween costume gold.

The same year Ill Communication dropped, MCA co-founded the Milarepa Fund for Tibetan independence and organized the first Tibetan Freedom Concert in Golden Gate Park in June 1996 — tens of thousands of people, Rage Against the Machine, Smashing Pumpkins, Björk, Foo Fighters, and A Tribe Called Quest sharing a stage in the name of Tibetan self-determination. Nobody was doing arena-scale hip-hop activism at that register in 1996. He also founded Oscilloscope Laboratories in 2002 — the film distribution house that put out Kelly Reichardt’s Wendy and Lucy and Banksy’s Exit Through the Gift Shop. He directed the Beasties’ 2006 Madison Square Garden concert film Awesome; I F**king Shot That! under his pseudonym Nathanial Hörnblowér, then followed it up with the 2008 basketball doc Gunnin’ for That #1 Spot.

MCA was diagnosed with parotid salivary gland cancer in 2009. The Beastie Boys were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on April 14, 2012 — he was too sick to attend, and Ad-Rock and Mike D read his written acceptance speech from the stage. He passed three weeks later, on May 4, 2012, at 47. A year after that, NYC Parks renamed the Palmetto Playground in his old Brooklyn Heights neighborhood Adam Yauch Park. Fitting. He never really left the borough.

We made a Beastie Boys Licensed to Ill Hoodie and a Paul’s Boutique tee for the heads who came up on Beasties records and never let go. Two eras, one crew, MCA’s bass at the bottom of both. If you missed our Hello Nasty 28-year retrospective a few weeks back, that’s the next stop after Ill Communication in the MCA discography.

Also on the calendar: MCA moments worth spinning today

• 1987 — Licensed to Ill hits #1 on the Billboard 200, the first hip-hop album to do so. Rick Rubin production, Kerry King (Slayer) guitar solo on “No Sleep Till Brooklyn.”
• 1994 — “Sabotage” video drops on MTV, directed by Spike Jonze. Cost roughly $50,000 to make and became one of the most-watched music videos of the decade.
• 1996 — First Tibetan Freedom Concert in Golden Gate Park, MCA’s Milarepa Fund pulling one of the biggest activist-rap lineups ever assembled.
• 2006 — Awesome; I F**king Shot That! premieres at Sundance — MCA edited a full Madison Square Garden Beasties show from 50 audience-shot camcorder tapes.
• 2013 — Palmetto Playground in Brooklyn Heights renamed Adam Yauch Park by NYC Parks. Skate ledge and swings, right where MCA grew up.

Yesterday we sat with the Mac Miller / Kris Kross / Key Glock stretch of August 3. Tomorrow, August 6, marks 38 years since Yo! MTV Raps launched its weekly slot in 1988 — the show that pushed hip-hop into every living room in America. We’ll ride again then.

Stay creative — The Custom Creative Team