Beastie Boys
American hip-hop group (1981–2012)
The Beastie Boys were an American hip-hop and rock group formed in New York City in 1981. Their main line-up consisted of Adam "Ad-Rock" Horovitz (vocals, guitar), Adam "MCA" Yauch (vocals, bass), and Michael "Mike D" Diamond (vocals, drums).
The Beastie Boys were previously members of the hardcore punk band the Young Aborigines, with Diamond on drums, Jeremy Shatan on bass guitar, and John Berry on guitar. Kate Schellenbach later joined on drums. When Shatan left in mid-1981, Yauch replaced him on bass and the band was renamed the Beastie Boys. Berry left shortly thereafter and was replaced by Horovitz, the guitarist of The Young and the Useless. After achieving local success with the 1983 comedy hip-hop single "Cooky Puss", the Beastie Boys made a full transition to hip-hop and Schellenbach subsequently left, with the group's final lineup consisting of Diamond, Horovitz and Yauch. Yauch, a filmmaker, directed many of the Beastie Boys' music videos under the alias Nathanial Hörnblowér.
The Beastie Boys toured with Madonna in 1985, after she discovered them while frequenting Danceteria. In 1986, they released their debut album, Licensed to Ill.
The public source identifies “Beastie Boys” as american hip-hop group (1981–2012). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Beastie, Boys and American.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q214039. VIAF identifies the subject as 136961742. The Library of Congress control number is n93075368. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1981, 1983, 1985 and 1986.
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This entry incorporates text from “Beastie Boys” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.