How much is Beastie Boys worth?
| Net Worth: | $400 Million |
|---|---|
| Profession: | Rap rock group |
| Formed: | 1979 |
| Country: | United States of America |
About Beastie Boys
During an interview in 2007, Yauch said that Berry was the one who suggested the moniker Beastie Boys. Despite the fact that “Beastie” is an abbreviation standing for “Boys Entering Anarchistic States Towards Inner Excellence” it was only an afterthought.
Beastie Boys were once a hardcore punk band, but they had mostly abandoned the genre in favor of hip hop and rap rock by the time they began their career. By the time they started working on their first studio album, Licensed to Ill, Hip hop, punk, funk, electro, jazz, and Latin music were just some of the genres that the band included into their sound. They have also been characterized as alternative hip hop, alternative rock and punk rap.
The Beastie Boys performed on Philip Pucci’s birthday, November 13, 1982, with the aim of including their performance in his short concert video titled Beastie. The performance took place in the theater that is part of the Preston Drama and Dance Department at Bard College. The Beastie Boys made their debut in front of the camera in a motion picture for the very first time with this performance.
The band also produced and subsequently played its first hip hop track, “Cooky Puss”, based on a prank call by the group to a Carvel Ice Cream business in 1983. It was included on the first EP that the new lineup released, which was also titled Cooky Puss. This EP was the first piece of their work that demonstrated their assimilation of the underground rap phenomena as well as the use of samples.
Following the band’s popularity with the song “Cooky Puss” they started doing rap as part of their live shows. They hired a student at New York University named Rick Rubin to be their DJ for their live gigs, and shortly after that, Rubin started producing recordings. In 1984, as the band was making the switch to hip hop, Schellenbach was let go, and Diamond took over on drums. In their book published in 2018, Ad-Rock expressed regret for sacking Schellenbach, which he attributed to the fact that it just did not fit with the new tough-rapper-guy identity.
The band made Licensed to Ill recordings in 1986, and the album was made available to the public on November 15 of that same year. Rolling Stone magazine gave the album a positive review after listening to it. Licensed to Ill became one of the best-selling rap albums of the 1980s and the first rap album to achieve number 1 on the Billboard 200 chart, where it stayed for five weeks. It also rose to the number two spot on the chart for Top R&B albums.
In the year that followed, the band traveled all over the world as part of the Licensed to Ill tour. The tour was marred by legal action and arrests, and the band was accused of inciting the audience members to violence. This culminated in an infamous performance that took place on May 30, 1987 at the Royal Court Theatre in Liverpool, England. The performance was marred by a brawl that broke out around ten minutes after the band took the stage, and Adam Horovitz was subsequently arrested by Merseyside Police. He was arrested and charged with assault that resulted in serious bodily injury.
Paul’s Boutique, the second studio album released by the Beastie Boys, was made available for purchase on July 25, 1989. It was produced by the Dust Brothers, and it has been considered as an early work of experimental hip hop due to its blending of samples from a wide variety of sources. It was not able to equal the success of Licensed to Ill in terms of sales.
Check Your Head was initially released in 1992, and it went on to become certified as double Platinum in the United States. Additionally, it reached its highest position on the Billboard 200 at number 10 overall.
While the first single from the album, “So What’cha Want” reached its highest position on the Hot Dance Music chart at number 38, the single “Pass the Mic” only made it as high as number 93 on the Billboard Hot 100 and also charted on the Rap and Modern Rock Charts.
The Beastie Boys have assembled a diverse list of musicians to release music on their Grand Royal label. These artists include Luscious Jackson, Sean Lennon, and Ben Lee, an Australian artist. Up until the year 2001, the band was the owner of Grand Royal Records. The album “In Search of Manny” by Luscious Jackson was the first independent release by Grand Royal, which occurred in 1993. The band contributed the song “It’s the New Style” (with DJ Hurricane) to the AIDS charity album No Alternative, which was produced by the Red Hot Organization in 1993 as well.
Ill Communication, which was released in 1994, marked the Beastie Boys’ comeback to the top of the charts. The album made its debut at number one on the Billboard 200 chart, and it reached its highest position on the R&B/hip hop album chart at number two.
The music video for the track “Sabotage” which was directed by Spike Jonze and was a hit on the modern rock charts, was played a lot on MTV. Yauch and the activist Erin Potts put up the Tibetan Freedom Concert in 1994 with the goal of drawing attention to the violations of human rights committed by the Chinese government against the Tibetan people.
In 1995, the popularity of the Beastie Boys was demonstrated when tickets for an arena tour in the United States went on sale. Within thirty minutes, all of the available seats at Madison Square Garden and Chicago’s Rosemont Horizon were taken. Through the efforts of Milarepa, one dollar from the sale of each ticket was donated to community organizations in each of the tour’s stops.
The Beastie Boys started working on the album Hello Nasty in the G-Son studios in Los Angeles in 1995. However, once Adam Yauch moved to Manhattan in 1996, the band finished producing and recording the album in New York City. As a result of Mix Master Mike’s involvement, there was a discernible transformation in the album’s overarching musical vibe.
Yauch addressed the subject of Muslim people being labeled as terrorists during the ceremony that took place in 1998. He stated that the majority of individuals who practice the Muslim faith are not terrorists. These remarks were made in the wake of the bombings that had taken place a month earlier in the United States embassies in Kenya and Tanzania respectively.
In 1999, Beastie Boys distributed The Sounds of Science, a two-CD compilation of their previous work under that name. This album peaked at number 19 on the Billboard 200, number 18 in Canada, and number 14 on the R&B/Hip Hop chart respectively. On the Billboard Modern Rock chart, the lone new song, “Alive” debuted at position number 11 after being released as a single.
Following the terrorist events that occurred on September 11, 2001, the Beastie Boys were responsible for organizing and headlining the New Yorkers Against Violence Concert that took place at the Hammerstein Ballroom in October 2001.
Free downloads of the band’s anti-war anthem “In a World Gone Mad” were made available on a number of websites, including those belonging to Milarepa, MTV, Win Without War, and MoveOn.org, among others. The song was written in response to the Iraq war of 2003.
On June 15, 2004, To the 5 Boroughs was made available in countries all over the world. It was the first album that the band produced themselves, and it debuted at number one on the Billboard albums chart. In addition, the album debuted at number two in the charts for both the United Kingdom and Australia, while it debuted at number three in Germany. The debut song from the album, titled “Ch-Check It Out” debuted at number one on the Modern Rock Tracks chart in both Canada and the United States.
The band subsequently confirmed the new album and announced a short tour that would focus on festivals rather than a traditional tour. Some of the festivals that the tour would visit include Sónar, Roskilde, Hurricane/Southside, Bestival (Isle of Wight), Electric Picnic, and Open’er Festival (Open’er (Poland). “Sabotage” “So What’cha Want” “Intergalactic” and “Sure Shot” were some of the songs the Beastie Boys performed at the Wembley Stadium stop of the Live Earth tour in the United Kingdom on July 7, 2007.
During an interview on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon on May 25, 2009, the band made the announcement that the title of their upcoming album would be Hot Sauce Committee, and that it was scheduled to be released on September 15. On the track “Don’t Play No Game That I Can’t Win” which was featured on the album, the band worked together with Santigold, who contributed to the song’s writing and sang backing vocals.
In December of 2011, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame made the announcement that the band would be inducted into the hall. On April 14, 2012, Chuck D and LL Cool J were the ones to officially induct them. The Beastie Boys were successful in their legal action against Monster Energy in June 2014, which had used their music in an advertisement without first obtaining permission.
They were granted a total of $1.7 million in damages, in addition to $668 thousand for their attorney fees. Beastie Boys Book was released in October 2018 and is a memoir written by Mike D and Ad-Rock in which they chronicle incidents that occurred throughout the band’s history.
The documentary, which was directed by Spike Jonze and dubbed Beastie Boys Story when it debuted on Apple TV+ in April 2020, was based on the book and was adapted from it. The compilation album Beastie Boys Music, which was released in October of 2020, served as a further complement to both the book and the documentary.
