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Beastie Boys
"One memorable thing about recording this song was the drums. We had heard that [Led Zeppelin drummer] John Bonham had used a really long kick drum on something and thought it would be interesting to put his technique to the test. Taking full advantage of the size of the G-Son live room/basketball court, we wrapped a long piece of cardboard from a refrigerator box around the kick drum and then put a mic at the far end of it. Mike played the beat, and we looped it. The upright bass line was part of a Ron Carter improvisation that Mario had sampled. I played a little terminator fuzz bass line on the end of the song...but the thing I always liked best about this cut was the sample of the intro to the Bad Brains song 'I.' There's something cool about sampling a hardcore record to make a hip-hop record, especially when that record happens to be the Bad Brains." - Adam Yauch, 1999
Press
"...fuzzadelic bass and great pots-and-pans drum dynamics" - Boston Herald, 1992
"...a putdown of rival rappers" - Newsweek, 1992
"The old school flavored [Pass the Mic] shows and proves that [the Beastie Boys] still have what it takes to make heads nod on the MC'in tip" - The Source, 1992
"[An] old-school-flavored track [that] underscores the group's rhyming skills" - Rolling Stone, 1992
"[Pass the Mic] feature[s] bass from Modern Jazz Quartet and guitar from Bad Brains..." - Alternative Press, July1994
"[Adam] Yauch laments the current state of the art, decrying rappers whose subject matter seemed limited to material acquisitions, and explains something of the journey he and his band mates are undertaking" - excerpted from Rhyming & Stealing: A History of the Beastie Boys by Angus Batey, 1998
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