Jewish Rap 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.”