Following a long year of touring with the Beastie Boys on the Licensed to Ill tour, Tom and Adam Yauch decided that they would do something different. That something would later turn into what fans today call the Brooklyn "Demos" or the Brooklyn "Sessions."

Brooklyn was formed around late 1987 or early 1988. Its members included Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys, Tom Cushman, Daryl Jenifer of Bad Brains, and Doug E. Beans who was the drummer in Murphy's Law. Murphy's Law along with Fishbone had opened night after night for the Beastie Boys during the Licensed to Ill tour, so three out of four of them had gotten to know each other better while on the road.

Having only been paid a small percentage of what the Beastie Boys thought they were owed from Def Jam, Yauch took twenty thousand dollars and along with the other guys recorded several songs under the band name Brooklyn. The demo was shopped around to several recording labels, but was never put out commercially. In 1998, those recordings found their way into bootleg trading circles and now they are can be found in mp3 format many places on the web.

As history would have it, Yauch's memorable bass line from "Gratitude" was a product of the Brooklyn recordings. Page twenty-four in the Beastie Boys Anthology: Sounds of Science booklet tells the entire story.