...

I gotta say this one's hitting me hard. No other words.

-CR

i loved PAUL'S BOUTIQUE so much that nothing else after it measured up, to me.

i like it much better now, though.

"Check your head" is one of my fav. albums of all time. To this day still getting played on a regular basis. RIP

OH SHIT i had not gotten the news yet.

fuck.

I know a lot of musicians cite "Paul's Boutique" as a pivotal album, and I agree that it is the event horizon of the sampling era of hip-hop, but for me "Check Yo Head" is the album. Period. That album has so heavily informed the music I make, throughout my entire career, that I can't honestly say I would have had a career without hearing it.

I also think it's the first album they found their sound on. "Paul's Boutique" is amazing and all, but it stands apart from their ouvre, for the most part. "Check Yo Head" is where they found the groove that they stayed with to this day.

I'm really quite amazed at how crushed I am by this. I feel like I lost a band member. There are very few shows that Sister Machine Gun performed where we didn't cover a Beastie Boys song (usually "Gratitude" or "Paul Revere," but there were a few others...) and each time we did it it only showed to highlight how much better they are at capturing what it's like to live in the 90s than I was.

-CR

This is why I don't like to wake up some days. This just bums me out. He was way too young. Those guys still had a ton of music in them. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: FUCK CANCER.

As far as musical inspiration, I have to go with Chris on this one. "Check Your Head" was a phenomenal moment for me. And really, "Paul's Boutique" is mostly a Dust Brothers record with the Beasties rhyming over it. Check was the moment that they really became craftsmen. To me that was the album where they grew up and became something truly unique and great. Everything on that album was like a crystallization of everything that came before (the punk rock intensity, the creative wordplay and puns, the densely layered samples, etc) into a machine that to an extent seemed to sum up the zeitgeist of the time. A lot of the musical hybridization of the 90s comes from right there.

-William

RIP

I don't know what else to say right now.

47. Not so much older than me.

Thank you for the music, Mr. Yauch.

I was thinking about it, and he was a Buddhist. Assuming (and it's a big assumption, I'll grant) that he's right, he'll be coming back again. One could make the argument that he has earned the right to come back as a supremely talented black dude, but I'd be okay with a do-over.

But it's nice to think that somewhere right now a child is being conceived that has Adam Yauch's soul. That's a fine picture to finish this day out with.

-CR

He's got 49 days in the Bardo before he comes back around. Let's check back in a month and a half to see if any superbad babies were born. Start the search with the ones who came out bobbing their heads.

-William