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Beastie Boys' Adam Yauch Has Died

Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys during a 2001 performance in New York City.
Scott Gries
/
Getty Images
Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys during a 2001 performance in New York City.

Update at 2:30 p.m. ET: The news that Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys has died has now been confirmed by the group's public relations firm.

Our original post:

Adam "MCA" Yauch of the Beastie Boys, who announced in 2009 that he had a cancerous tumor in a salivary gland, has died, according to reports from Global Grind.com, Rolling Stone and TMZ.com. He was 47.

It was just last month when the Beastie Boys were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Yauch didn't attend the ceremony. According to the hall, the band:

"...combined hardcore and hip-hop in a fresh-sounding musical mashup that was danceable, infectious and wickedly funny. ... Due to their brash humor and punkish sensibility, the Beastie Boys have been called 'the bastard brat offspring of Sesame Street and the Sex Pistols,' 'AC/DC meets Run-D.M.C. with a teenage wit' and 'the Marx Brothers of rap.' "

Our friends at The Record will have much more. (Update at 2:42 p.m. ET: Their post is now here.)

"Beastie Boys" is already trending high on Twitter. And the hashtags #RIPMCA and #AdamYauch are going strong.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Mark Memmott
Mark Memmott is NPR's supervising senior editor for Standards & Practices. In that role, he's a resource for NPR's journalists – helping them raise the right questions as they do their work and uphold the organization's standards.