You rarely hear anyone cover the Beastie Boys. Is it because their songs rely so much on samples that they’re impossible to recreate legally without making a profit? How did they not get sued into oblivion with hundreds of samples used? Where do those royalties go today?
I don’t think hip hop songs in general tend to get covered, or at least not that I’m aware of (am absolutely open to being corrected on that).
I guess a lot of the rhymes are often very specifically about the person rapping, so someone else doing it might be a bit weird.
That said, I do know of one good example in eLZhi’s Elmatic a remake of Nas’ Illmatic. It has significantly rewritten lyrics though.
Yeah. There isn’t a tradition of covering someone else’s rap because the rapper was originally supposed to be both writer and performer. A lot of Beastie Boys songs are written in that perspective.
That being said, not all of their songs are like that and there is some cross genre mixing with rock. I can see Fight For Your Right or Sabotage getting easily covered.
This Sabotage cover was always great.
https://youtu.be/N95bs9kwXFU