Beastie Boys rapper Adam Yauch has died aged 47 after a long battle cancer.
Yauch, who performed with the Beastie Boys as MCA, was born in Brooklyn in 1964. He co-founded the band with Mike Diamond (Mike D) in 1979 as a hardcore punk band. After some local success, the band changed their music to hip hop and added Ad-Rock (Adam Horovitz) to the line up.
Fusing a rock sound with rap, The Beastie Boys incited outrage and excitement in equal amounts as they released multi-million selling debut album Licence to Ill in 1986.
Yauch was a practising Buddist and founded the Milarepa Fund, a non-profit organisation devoted to Tibetan independence and organised the series of Tibetan Freedom Concerts between 1996 and 2001.
The rapper also set up a recording studio called Oscilloscope Laboratories and Oscilloscope Pictures, an independent film distributing company.
Yauch was diagnosed with a cancer in a salivary gland in 2009. He died on 4 May 2012 and leaves a wife, daughter and his parents.
Yauch, who performed with the Beastie Boys as MCA, was born in Brooklyn in 1964. He co-founded the band with Mike Diamond (Mike D) in 1979 as a hardcore punk band. After some local success, the band changed their music to hip hop and added Ad-Rock (Adam Horovitz) to the line up.
Fusing a rock sound with rap, The Beastie Boys incited outrage and excitement in equal amounts as they released multi-million selling debut album Licence to Ill in 1986.
Yauch was a practising Buddist and founded the Milarepa Fund, a non-profit organisation devoted to Tibetan independence and organised the series of Tibetan Freedom Concerts between 1996 and 2001.
The rapper also set up a recording studio called Oscilloscope Laboratories and Oscilloscope Pictures, an independent film distributing company.
Yauch was diagnosed with a cancer in a salivary gland in 2009. He died on 4 May 2012 and leaves a wife, daughter and his parents.
