This wasn't a Cobain shot to the face. Not a Tupac drive-by. Not an Elvis overdose. Not even a Bon Scott misadventure. No car wrecks, no plane crashes. Nothing sudden or instantaneous. And yet we were all caught off guard.
We knew his health had waned over the years, and we knew the cancer never completely left his body. Maybe this is something we should expect when we see somebody slowly physically deteriorating. But it is -- still -- unfeasible to imagine a world without any of the Beastie Boys frolicking around.
For those of my generation they have always been there. The three of them jumping around, dropping sick beats, dropping sicker rhymes, constantly amused by the attention given to them. As we grew up we watched them grow up. We watched them evolve from bratty Brooklyn punkers to bratty hip-hop gurus to bratty music godfathers. Our lives had a varied soundtrack, and the Beastie Boys were a significant part of it.
We still have the songs and the videos and the wacky interviews, but as MCA departed so too did the Beastie Boys. The Beastie Boys without Adam is like The Beatles without... well, take your pick. When one is removed what remains is noticeably incomplete.
There will be a slew of unreleased material on the way as well as re-mixes and re-imaginings of existing BB material, but we won't have any more all-new studio albums. No more new addicting hooks that bounce around in our heads for days. No more big chunky beats that make us feel like pimps as we thump that stuff from our Honda Civics. And nothing more from MCA and the mesmerizing unique way he slings out his rhymes.
But, like I said, we still have a large library of Beastie Boys music, and when we start missing the guy we can always bust it out. And we will. We'll bust it out LOUDLY.
No comments:
Post a Comment