Jason’s Jukebox: Beastie Boys

There was a time when rap was for black people only. Rappers like Vanilla Ice and Marky Mark were the jokes they deserved to be. But there was one group of white rappers NO ONE laughed at–the Beastie Boys. I thought for my first rap-based discography ranking, I’d look at the first rap group whose album I ever bought. (Note: I’m not counting The Mix-Up because it’s an instrumental album.

1) Licensed to Ill ***** (1986) This is so different from the rest of the Beastie Boys’s catalog, it’s crazy. It’s still excellent, but don’t expect a repeat on any other album. The album has a very punk rock feel to it, with samples of Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, and Creedence Clearwater Revival. The final song, “Time to Get Ill”, gives a sample of what will close the next album, but on a much grander scale. It’s a classic of the 80’s.

Best Tracks: “Rhyming and Stealing”, “Posse In Effect”, “Fight For Your Right To Party”, “No Sleep Till Brooklyn” “Slow and Low”, “Time to Get Ill”

2) Paul’s Boutique *****(1989) A Facebook friend of mine said this album is what would happen if the Beatles’s second album was Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, not Please Please Me.  It’s a 180 that no one expected from the boys. Everyone thought they’d do another Licensed, but they came up with a masterpiece of experimentation that they would never be able to duplicate again.

Best tracks: “Shake Your Rump”, “High Plains Drifter”, “Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun”, “Shadarack”, “B-Boy Bouillabaisse”

3) Check Your Head ***1/2(1992) The Beasties returned to playing instruments for this one, and it had very few samples. But even with that approach, which emulated the debut, it was still pretty innovative at the time.

Best Tracks: “Jimmy James”, “Pass the Mic”, “So Whatcha Want”, “Namaste”

4) Ill Communication *****(1994) Another album that’s light on the samples but heavy on the instrumentation. This is the second album that hit #1. The album has a much funkier, jazzier feel than the previous ones, and features much more experimentation than Check Your Head. 

Best tracks: “Sure Shot”, “B-Boys Making with the Freak-Freak”, ‘Sabotage”, “Sabrosa”, “Do It”, “Bodhisattva Vow”

Debunking Lies: The “Trolley Scenario”

(Image: A representation of the “train” or “trolley” scenario. A trolley is shown on a track, and there are two sets of victims. If you don’t pull the lever, 4 people die. If you do pull the lever, the trolley switches to the other tracks, and kills the other person who is tied to the tracks instead.)

In the first Toby Maguire Spider-man movie, there is a scene in which the Green Goblin has train cars suspended from a cable, and sadistically asks Spider-man to make a choice. Will he save his girlfriend, or “suffer the children”. The train scenario is based on the same idea. You are standing next to a lever. One track has four people tied down to it. The other has only one person tied to the tracks. If you don’t pull the lever, 4 people die. But if you do pull the lever, only one person dies. The scenario asks this question: would you pull the lever?

I’ve seen atheists use this scenario as a way of saying “gotcha!” to Christians, to show that they can’t always do the right thing. Using the scenario in this way fails to acknowledge a Christian principle known as the “double-effect” principle. I once heard it said that every good is someone else’s evil. We are only guilty of intended sin. If I don’t pull the lever and save those four people, I am not responsible for killing that one person. That’s because I didn’t intend his or her death.

I understand the purpose of these scenarios. They’re a good way to test one’s sense of ethics. But please, don’t use them as a means to mock Christians. From what I read on Wikipedia’s article, that was not the intended purpose.