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Adam Yauch aka MCA, one of the members and founder of the pioneering and multimillion-selling hip-hop / rap group the Beastie Boys, died last week in Manhattan. He lost his 3-year battle to cancer of the salivary gland. He was 47. I was just a kid, but I still remember when their #1 hit “Brass Monkey” hit the streets, the Hip Hop world lost its mind. The Beastie Boys completely blew us away with the funk and the comedy, a combination that kept them on the scene for the past 20 years. The Beastie Boys became an institution in the history of Hip Hop. “The Beasties opened hip-hop music up to the suburbs,” said Rick Rubin, who produced the group’s 1986 debut album, in a recent interview with The Plain Dealer of Cleveland. “As crazy as they were, they seemed safe to Middle America, in a way black artists hadn’t been up to that time.”