MCA, aka Adam Yauch

According to news reports, MCA (also known as Adam Yauch) is being treated for a malignant tumor found in his salivary gland.

Apparently, his cancer is highly curable and isn’t likely to damage his voice. That means that after his bout with the beast, he’ll still be able to perform and continue making music.

As a big-time Beastie Boys fan, I figure what better way to celebrate the good news and send well wishes to our boy than by paying tribute to Licensed to Ill, a rap classic that is helping me get through my own battle with cancer.

Without a doubt, Licensed is among my top fav rap albums of all time. It’s the kind of joint I can play from beginning to end.  Twenty-plus years after its release, the singles “Paul Revere,” “The New Style,” and “Hold it Now, Hit it” bring out my inner B-gyrl with a vengeance. I’m talking break out the Adidas warm-up jacket and the shell toes with the fat laces.

The Beastie Boys’ second album, Paul’s Boutique, is widely considered the group’s best work, but Licensed brought a whole new flavor to the rap scene with its grimy lyrics and punk-inspired hip-hop beats.

Licensed to Ill, a hip-hop classic

I’ve listened to it repeatedly during my chemotherapy sessions, which are generally a few hours long and involve a lot of needles, plenty of sterilized tubing, and more chemo juice “than Picasso got paint.” So when I roll up to the cancer center, I have iPod in tow. And when it’s time for me to get hooked up to my meds, I throw on my earphones, sit back, and rock out for a while.

Needless to say, since I started treatment last year, there’s been a scruffy rap trio that has stayed in this slayer gyrl’s rotation.  Rhyming along with the Beastie Boys definitely makes the time at the chemo suite go by faster, but there’s something deeper to it, too. Music is a balm for the soul. It triggers good memories and helps you escape the not-so-pleasant ones, like what led you to chemo in the first place. For me, Licensed does both.

As one-third of the crew that got me to pledge my allegiance to early hip-hop — and decades later is supplying the score to my cancer recovery — MCA holds a special place in my heart and on my MP3 player. I thought I’d return the favor by writing him this get-well ode. Just trying to be crafty (in the truest sense of the word, not the Beastie definition), from one newbie to another.