Rolling Stone-The Immortals- 100 greatest artists of all time

[SovietUnionSq]

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/_/id/7235505?pageid=rs.News&pageregion=single2


77) Beastie Boys by Darryl "DMC" McDaniels

100) Lee "Scratch" Perry by Adam Horovitz

[SpuffyRJ]

(y) Very Cool. :D

[austinstories]

also public enemy, by yauch.

44) Public Enemy

By Adam Yauch


No one has been able to approach the political power that Public Enemy brought to hip-hop. I put them on a level with Bob Marley and a handful of other artists -- the rare artist who can make great music and also deliver a political and social message. But where Marley's music sweetly lures you in, then sneaks in the message, Chuck D grabs you by the collar and makes you listen.

I remember the first time I heard "Rebel Without a Pause": We were on tour with Run-DMC, and one day Chuck D put on a tape they had just finished. It was the first time they used those screeching horns along with this incredibly heavy beat -- it was just unlike anything I had ever heard before. It blew my wig back. Later I remember listening to "Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos" over and over again on headphones after It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back came out. The premise of it -- that the current U.S. prison system has many parallels to slavery -- blew my mind, and the music is incredible: that Isaac Hayes sample and Chuck D's rhymes about a jailbreak. Like a lot of their songs, it's like watching a movie.

PE completely changed the game musically. No one was just putting straight-out noise and atonal synthesizers into hip-hop, mixing elements of James Brown and Miles Davis; no one in hip-hop had ever been this hard, and perhaps no one has since. They made everything else sound clean and happy, and the power of the music perfectly matched the intention of the lyrics. They were also the first rap group to really focus on making albums -- you can listen to Nation of Millions or Fear of a Black Planet from beginning to end. They aren't just random songs tossed together.

To me, Chuck D is the most important MC in hip-hop. On a strictly MC'ing-skill basis, I rank him up there with the best: His power and cadences on lines like "Yes/The rhythm, the rebel/Without a pause/I'm lowering my level" is unmatched. Then if you take into account what he's actually saying, it puts him on a different plane from any other MC. The combination of him and Flavor Flav is incredibly effective: Chuck is so straight and direct, and Flav brings this wild randomness to it. They complement each other perfectly.

Public Enemy made hip-hop that was more than entertainment. They inspired a lot of people who believed that you can effect change through music, and they're still inspiring to me.

(From RS 946, April 15, 2004)

Next: The Byrds by Tom Petty

[yeahwho]

Hey I was just getting ready to post this in the "other music than" section when I thought I'd check here first. Thanks for putting this on the board, I found it to be a great read. Does anybody have the Darryl "DMC" McDaniels take on the Beastie Boys?

I found this to be a real good read. (y) Cool.

[rlwelch]

Wow. I wonder what DMC had to say about the Beasties.

[cubsfirstplace]

Can anyone scan and post this?

i can take a picture of it and post it, but i dont have a scanner

[Tzar]

nvm

[dave790]

Wow. I wonder what DMC had to say about the Beasties.

77) Beastie Boys
By Darryl "DMC" McDaniels

In the early days of rap, the conventional wisdom was that only black people were supposed to like hip-hop and only white people were supposed to like rock. But it wasn't like that. In Run-DMC, we were rapping over rock beats. The Beasties were a punk band listening to hip-hop.
I met the Beastie Boys in Rick Rubin's dorm room at NYU. What bugged me out about the Beasties was that they knew everything about hip-hop -- the Cold Crush Brothers, the Treacherous 3 and Afrika Bambaataa, all the old-school shit. In addition, they could rap, they could sing and they could play instruments.

Run-DMC wrote "Slow and Low" for the Beastie Boys. That was their first hit, and it was basically their blueprint. But then they started writing their own songs, and when Licensed to Ill came out, it went to Number One. They were writing songs we wished we had written, like "No Sleep Till Brooklyn." They put rock with rap like we did, but it made so much sense when they did it because they were already punk rockers.

The first time we toured with the Beastie Boys was the Raising Hell tour in 1986: Run-DMC, Whodini, LL Cool J and the Beastie Boys. We were playing the Deep South -- Crunkville, before there was crunk -- and it was just black people at those shows. The first night was somewhere in Georgia, and we were thinking, "I hope people don't leave when they see them." But the crowd loved them, because they weren't trying to be black rappers. They rapped about shit they knew about: skateboarding, going to White Castle, angel dust and mushrooms. Real recognizes real.

One of the most significant things about the Beasties is their longevity. They've been putting out genius records for twenty years, right through to To the 5 Boroughs. When Paul's Boutique came out, the critics said it wasn't up to par. But now people realize it's one of the best albums of the Eighties.

Each of the Beastie Boys has a different personality. Mike D is the examiner: He looks around, he takes in all the information, he's a little laid-back. MCA was always the mature one, but he could be a fool when it was time to be a fool. And Adrock is just full of life. He's approachable, affectionate and funny. But maybe my favorite thing about the Beastie Boys is that they're worldly. They taught me and many other people a lot about life, people and music.

(From RS 972, April 21, 2005)

well...just in case you hadn't seen it yet