The Toronto Star, April 8, 1986
By Greg Quill:
Heavy metal may have a future after all. And if that future isn't played out in the country's arenas, it'll be in dance clubs - if New York's wicked Beastie Boys have their way.

The Beastie Boys (Mike D, MCA and King Ad-Rock) perform at The Copa, 21 Scollard St., tonight. They are, as far as we know, the world's first heavy metal rap artists. The trio specializes in spoken, broken and often extremely irreverent rhymes intoned over pre-recorded tapes and "scratch" records. All rap acts do that. What's new about what The Beastie Boys do, given the evidence of their most recent hit, "She's On It", is that the music to which they intone is characterized not by synthesizer bleats and computerized drumbeats, but by wailing electric guitars and a solid 4/4 backbeat.

"We started out as your typical white punk/metal outfit in the late 1970s," Mike D told me the other day from New York. "And when rap and hip hop started hitting the streets, we included it in our show as a sort of joke.

"I always considered the two forms were very similar. They're both strongly teenage forms of music and they both appeal to hardcore fans and mostly male audiences. And both rap and metal are loud and extreme."

Their first recorded efforts, "Rock Hard" and "Cookie Puss", were equally reviled by rap purists and adored by rap radicals as decadent trash. But as Mike pointed out, the best pop is always decadent trash.

"Madonna is the person who gave us our first real break," he said. "She saw us pitching our rhymes on the street one day and scooped us up into the big time. We opened for her in her 14-city Virgin Tour last year. We got fat on her backstage goodies and polished up our Madonna impression."