Growing up white (still am) in the suburbs in the 80′s, there was Madonna, Michael Jackson, Prince … and the Beastie Boys. Rap was new to white people and generally hated by white suburban parents. Credit the Beasties–not Eminem– with inaugurating an entire generation into the inner sanctum of hiphop.

What was different about the Beasties was the killer 1-2 of great music and authenticity: that led to wide acceptance by black artists. Google Adam Yauch and MCA and you’ll learn boatloads more than we know or could possibly convey here. Suffice it to say, the world lost a pioneer way before his time.

Here’s what’s on Beastieboys.com on May 5, 2012:

Adam Yauch • 1964-2012

It is with great sadness that we confirm that musician, rapper, activist and director Adam “MCA” Yauch, founding member of Beastie Boys and also of the Milarepa Foundation that produced the Tibetan Freedom Concert benefits, and film production and distribution company Oscilloscope Laboratories, passed away in his native New York City this morning after a near-three-year battle with cancer. He was 47 years old.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Yauch taught himself to play bass in high school, forming a band for his 17th birthday party that would later become known the world over as Beastie Boys.

With fellow members Michael “Mike D” Diamond and Adam “Adrock” Horovitz, Beastie Boys would go on to sell over 40 million records, release four #1 albums–including the first hip hop album ever to top the Billboard 200, the band’s 1986 debut full length, Licensed To Ill–win three Grammys, and the MTV Video Vanguard Lifetime Achievement award. Last month Beastie Boys were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, with Diamond and Horovitz reading an acceptance speech on behalf of Yauch, who was unable to attend.

In addition to his hand in creating such historic Beastie Boys albums as Paul’s Boutique, Check Your Head, Ill Communication, Hello Nasty and more, Yauch was a founder of the Milarepa Fund, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting awareness and activism regarding the injustices perpetrated on native Tibetans by Chinese occupational government and military forces. In 1996, Milarepa produced the first Tibetan Freedom Concert in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, which was attended by 100,000 people, making it the biggest benefit concert on U.S. soil since 1985′s Live Aid. The Tibetan Freedom Concert series would continue to stage some of the most significant benefit shows in the world for nearly a decade following in New York City, Washington DC, Tokyo, Sydney, Amsterdam, Taipei and other cities.

In the wake of September 11, 2001, Milarepa organized New Yorkers Against Violence, a benefit headlined by Beastie Boys at New York’s Hammerstein Ballroom, with net proceeds disbursed to the New York Women’s Foundation Disaster Relief Fund and the New York Association for New Americans (NYANA) September 11th Fund for New Americans–each chosen for their efforts on behalf of 9/11 victims least likely to receive help from other sources.

Under the alias of Nathanial Hörnblowér, Yauch directed iconic Beastie Boys videos including “So Whatcha Want,” “Intergalactic,” “Body Movin” and “Ch-Check It Out.” Under his own name, Yauch directed last year’s Fight For Your Right Revisited, an extended video for “Make Some Noise” from Beastie Boys’ Hot Sauce Committee Part Two, starring Elijah Wood, Danny McBride and Seth Rogen as the 1986 Beastie Boys, making their way through a half hour of cameo-studded misadventures before squaring off against Jack Black, Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly as Beastie Boys of the future.

Yauch’s passion and talent for filmmaking led to his founding of Oscilloscope Laboratories, which in 2008 released his directorial film debut, the basketball documentary Gunnin’ For That #1 Spot and has since become a major force in independent video distribution, amassing a catalogue of such acclaimed titles as Kelly Reichardt’s Wendy and Lucy, Oren Moverman’s The Messenger, Banksy’s Exit Through The Gift Shop, Lance Bangs and Spike Jonze’s Tell Them Anything You Want: A Portrait Of Maurice Sendak, and many more.

Yauch is survived by his wife Dechen and his daughter Tenzin Losel, as well as his parents Frances and Noel Yauch.

Skytturnar returns after a 7 year hiatus.Skytturnar widely regarded as the best rap group in Iceland are returning after a 7 year pause. The band is known for confronting fake rappers. This particular song is about whack and fake rappers.

We found Frontalot here on Kickstarter. Pretty obvious he’s really talented…and doing what hiphop used to do: tell stories about everyday life. There’s a lot of tired raps out there going over the same tired topics. Nice to see yard sales…er, stoop sales…getting their due.

Fremdschämen. Learn the word. Because it’s that feeling you have when you watch this video: specifically, utter embarrassment for someone else. It’s that same thing you feel 90% of the time watching Reality TV. But it begs the question: why do people think rap lends legimitacy to their diatribes?!

Obviously, this woman is not a rapper or trying to make a career of it (though she actually is a pretty good singer if you listen and here here scatting a line). But what is it about rap that people with harebrained ideas (they themselves don’t obviously think they’re harebrained) feel a need to write a “rap” and put it to music. In this vid, we have somebody who’s really bright–admittedly, it’s not easy turning bilingual rhymes–but completely deluded. What a joke. Well, maybe that’s why she recorded. And we’re glad she did!

What’s most surprising about Firas Louati–goes by the rap handle Hidden Blade–is that his English rapping is really good.  Like…really good. In this ESL rap world, it’s just a foregone conclusion these guys are going to suck in English. So when they smoke it, it’s just spinetingling. But then he also kills it in Arabic. Read more…

He is Tunisian, home most famously, now, of El General. But Hidden Blade has really solid skills himself, and did his own anthem to the revolution, Wa yahya alwatan “Tunisian Revolution”. He’s more talented than most of the rappers we listen to, and perhaps not taking off could be because it’s hard to pin him down: is he Hidden Blade or Firas Louati or Phiras Louati? He has a mashup of Facebook, mySpace, and Reverbnation pages, but t0ugh to figure out which is the most recent or official. it’s like an identity crisis, “Who am I this week?” Hopefully he catches on…

In his own words: “fromSsfax, Tunisia… Faithful to the tradition of pioneer [must be Tunisian] Rappers and lyricists like MF doom, Shurik’n and Madlib, comes this new Rap/Samurai/Martial arts/Oriental Fusion self-produced Album “Ronin” from Hidden Blade ~Katagiri~ … Dropping in 2010.”

It’s uncanny how Diggidy’s voice sounds just like Luda, or at others, like 50. Diggidy can rap, but the production needs to beef up.  Diggidy’s from Detroit, but he’s got a lot of competition now with the likes of Black Milk, Big Sean, and others…

Master and King opens with a riff that sounds like a way slowed down version of Heavy D’s “Now that We Found Love” (see below too). But the melody’s slightly different and very current. It’s an addictive song…the best off  ”The Extraordinaires from The Holstar (Zambia) and Teckzilla (Canada, bwo Nigeria).

Teckzilla’s style is reminiscent of the Dust Brothers–lots of splicing and dicing. And the album’s got a real 70′s feel with lots of 70′s soul and funk samples. Overall, in a bizarre way, feels a lot like Mountain’s Nantucket Sleighride. The production’s got an early 90′s hiphop feel overall. But this song’s worth the download.

Here’ the lyrics:

Verse 1
My Birth was an exam, math was the one final/
If life was the fatality, I am the one spinal/
Combonic move, I sonic boom but I ain’t shifting crowds/
Black rise from the white powder and scream it loud/
Cocaine rush, watch my propane bust/
Get dope brain, father kids homie – old man’s nut/
I’m a smooth, rude, crude, intelligent schmuck/
I spit bullets ill-logic watch irrelevants duck/
Like Pelicans cluck and Chickens fly, my Charles Dickens cry/
Men to cheat to open doors, that’s why women lie/
Test the Kid they can’t even try/
Took paint bristles with permanent ink and leave em dry/

Hook
I’m the Master and King – I put that on everything/
Raps my thing – I put that on everything/
The crowns my ring, married to the game, this is eternal bliss I will never be the same/
The Raps my paint, the beats my canvas, paint vivid pictures as big as Kansas/
Lsk thorough bred, Z.E.D’s the answer, industry’s my dance-floor, the constant dancer/
The Raps my paint, the beats my canvas, paint vivid pictures as big as Kansas/
Lsk thorough bred, Z.E.D’s the answer, industry’s my dance-floor, the constant dancer/

Verse 2
So since the industry’s my dance-floor, I’m doing the hammer dance/
And I’m too legit to quit even stick to an hour glass/
Days of our lives, the Bold beat the beautiful/
Society decayed but the saloon is still beauty-full/
The bars packed filled with crackerjacks, brothers with mean overbites/
Grim-Jaw Jacker-Jack, Holstar is gun-less so I’m supposed to clap it back/
That’s why I only murder tracks, here to extract the cataract/
The Kid’s precise that’s why I’m trying to be mad exact/
Roll in a Blue Phantom suicide doors advancing/
Who the guys who’s glancing, Cupid eyes are trancing/
Stupid thighs harassing, trapped in a Vise and glassed in/

*Hook*

Verse 3
In the beginning was the word, the word was the beginning/
And now it is heard through the world, it is deep in my soul; Translucent/
It’s tattered on my heart – you can’t move it/
Man was made and Woman from Man/
Flesh of my flesh, Bone of my bones, one forever/
Scribe on the stones by forefathers, drawn on the walls by ancestors/
This is an Art that you can’t measure, priceless this is us/
Us is we and we is you, you are me and I am you/
The grand plan, built in the tower of Babel/
Communicate to brethren through common apparel/
It ‘s all in my blood soaked shoulders and shawl x 3

And here’s Heavy D:

Sullee J was born on March 25th, 1985 in Baltimore, Maryland. He grew up in a Pakistani/American culture. He struggled with neglect, racism, multiplied mistakes, and heartaches. Sullee J moved to Chicago’s Stony Island area in 2004 where he was greatly influenced by the music scene. On December 28th, 2005 Sullee J was in a life changing car accident that landed him in the hospital for over a month, and bedridden for a year.He now reflects, before my accident I was always on the edge, didn’t care, would get into anything, and didnt care if I died right there. After it, I realized how much I had and how much of a change I needed to make. I realized that death wasn’t for me yet. I almost gave up before the accident and then something came into me. It felt like God put something in me, which now I know is my faith. Thats what keeps everything at a positive level for me.”

Faith is truly the backbone to Sullee J’s existence. Through his signature delivery and versatile flow, he methodically injects his reality with a positive outlook.

Sullee J began writing poetry to express himself when he was in the fifth grade, and started laying down his words to music in 2008 after self-realization of his gift. Sullee J’s fans echo that he is comparable to other hip-hop artists, like Eminem, Lupe Fiasco, and Nas. Sullee J is driven to reach a diverse audience with his music, and inspire, move, and entangle entire generations with his words.

Sullee J’s single, “Billy’s Conscience” has already led him to international acclaim as he and his song have been featured on Fox news affiliates nationwide. “Billy’s Conscience” shows how Sullee J captivates listeners as he tells the story of Billy Anderson, a young man whose struggle through a mysterious illness has received vast media attention

Sullee J flew to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma to meet Billy Anderson at the hospital. He did several news interviews with Billy’s family to help bring awareness to Billy’s mystery illness. Billy’s wife exclaimed, “The only thing that Sullee J has more of than talent, is heart. His heart is so big; you can’t help but listen and be taken in by his words. They are consuming.” Since that first news interview, Sullee J has done two more to help the Anderson family and be a voice for Billy. This is the epitome of who Sullee J is, and what he is about.

Opened for: DJ Whoo Kid, Jay Sean, Mos Def, DJ Drama, Waka Flocka, DMX, Travis Porter, Maino, DTP, and more!

From today’s NYTimes, Prof. Sujatha Fernandes writes about the ingredients that have made rap huge. Click the pic to read it there, or read it here:

The Mixtape of the Revolution

By SUJATHA FERNANDES