Jewish Rap Kingpins and the Politics of Musical Identity

Any Jewish rapper working today owes an enormous debt to Def Jam Records founder Rick Rubin and the troublemakers he released upon the world—Michael “Mike D” Diamond, Adam “Ad Rock” Horovitz, and Adam “MCA” Yauch. From the day Licensed to Ill (1986) dropped, the Beastie Boys—that rollicking, nasally, raunchy trio of New York Jews—has been unapologetically themselves, in all their irreverent glory.

Rubin and the Beastie Boys created a space for themselves in popular music that hadn’t existed in a meaningful way since before World War II: a space for Jews to coexist with black music, while also distinguishing themselves from “whites.” The Beasties meant to offend, meant to subvert assumptions—and their way of achieving that (besides giant inflatable penises on stage) was to not only behave in a manner oh-so-unbecoming of well-to-do New York Jews, but to create some of the most enduring rap albums of the era while paying proper homage to the African-American artists who created the genre in which they worked. Their 1988 album Paul’s Boutique remains one of the greatest rap albums ever made, and essentially set the stage for the sample-heavy magpie sensibility that has ruled the genre off and on ever since.

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