Beastie Boys members Mike D (Mike Diamond) and Ad-Rock (Adam Horovitz) will be on hand on Saturday (Sept. 9) to celebrate the unveiling of Beastie Boys Square in New York’s Lower East Side. According to a press release announcing the event, the living members of the Rock and Roll hall of Fame rap trio — third member MCA (Adam Yauch) died of cancer in 2012 at age 47 — will join NY City Council member Chris Marte at the corner of Rivington St. between Ludlow and Essex streets for the celebration that will begin at noon and feature a guest DJ set by Jon Bless HiFi System.
The corner of Ludlow and Rivington will be renamed Beastie Boys Square in honor of the site of the cover photo for the band’s landmark 1989 sample-soaked second studio album, Paul’s Boutique. It’s a fitting tribute to the trio of teenage friends who formed in the city on Yauch’s 17th birthday and cycled through a hard-core punk phase before recording their breakthrough hip-hop debut, Licensed to Ill, what would become the first rap record to hit No. 1 on Billboard album chart.
The dense Dust Brothers-produced Boutique was a commercial dud at first, but still stands as a landmark in sampling thanks to its intense tangle of more than 100 samples, which range from obscure jazz to songs and pioneering early hip-hop to snippets of tracks by Rose Royce, Afrika Bambaataa, Paul McCartney, Pink Floyd, Curtis Mayfield, Kurtis Blow, Tower of Power, Public Enemy, the Eagles, Loggins and Messina, the Beatles, Cameo, Deep Purple, Johnny Cash, Jimi Hendrix and many more.
In addition, the album — which was recorded in Los Angeles — has dozens of references to classic New York personalities, places and traditions, including shout-outs to the Ramones, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, the Village, Chrystie Street, the D Train, Ed Koch, the Knicks, the Yankees, Shea Stadium, the Palladium, Phil Rizzuto, the Atlantic Antic, the New York Post, El Diario, Bernard Goetz, Broadway, Jazzy Jay, Bad Brains, and many others.
The unveiling is part of the year-long celebration of hip-hop’s 50th anniversary and it will be accompanied by the cinema debut of the Apple Original film, Beastie Boys Story at the IFC Center in Greenwich Village on Friday (Sept. 8) and Saturday at 9 and 11:30 p.m. SiriusXM will also relaunch the Beastie Boys Channel on Thursday (Sept. 7) on channel 105.
