There is little overstating the importance of the Beasties' debut, Licensed to Ill. It arrived out of nowhere, following some negligible hardcore punk singles, one hilarious prank phone call on wax ("Cookie Puss"), and two singles. 

 Licensed to Ill was the Beasties as the Three Stooges, full of comic aggression; Paul's Boutique was the Beasties as the Marx Brothers, full of comic surrealism. 

 Check Your Head arrived with the Beasties' own magazine and label, both named Grand Royal, and a Beastie-approved wardrobe. The album took its name from Flex Your Head, a 1982 Dischord compilation. 

 Ill Communication was more layered and tricked-out, not as spare and homemade as Check Your Head. Now the beats sounded like they had been cooked up in a laboratory, not knocked together in a garage. 

 The lame hardcore rips and pranks collected on Some Old Bullshit hardly prepare for Licensed to Ill. 

 Hello Nasty combined the anarchic wiseass humor of Licensed to Ill with the musical reach of Paul's Boutique, and yes, they played the instruments (or some of them).  

 Solid Gold Hits collects all of the group's singles and makes for a more streamlined compilation than Sounds of Science.  

 To the 5 Boroughs arrived after a six-year layoff, during which time MCA and Mike D had started families. And much more had changed: The Twin Towers, depicted on the album's cover, had been leveled. The country was at war. It was an election year 

 Solid Gold Hits collects all of the group's singles and makes for a more streamlined compilation than Sounds of Science.  

 The Mix-Up is an album of jazz-funk instrumentals that sounded like it was banged out over a weekend.