Dead, Adam Nathaniel Yauch on May 4, 2012, he was an American rapper, musician, film director, and human rights activist.
He was best known as a founding member of the hip hop group Beastie Boys.
Born in Brooklyn, New York City on August 5, 1964, Adam Yauch was the only child of a social worker and a painter and architect.
Yauch had a non-religious upbringing. His father had been raised a Catholic and his mother was Jewish.
In 2002, Yauch constructed a recording studio in New York City called Oscilloscope Laboratories.
He began an independent film distributing company called Oscilloscope Pictures.
He also directed the 2008 film Gunnin’ For That #1 Spot about eight high school basketball prospects at the Boost Mobile Elite 24 Hoops Classic at Rucker Park in Harlem, New York City.
Yauch produced Build a Nation, the comeback album from hardcore/punk band Bad Brains.
In addition, Oscilloscope Laboratories also distributed Kelly Reichardt’s Wendy and Lucy (2008) and Oren Moverman’s The Messenger (2009).
Yauch directed Beastie Boys videos under the pseudonym Nathaniel Hornblower, as well as the 2008 basketball documentary Gunnin’ for #1 Spot under his own name.
He also ran a film production and distribution company, Oscilloscope Pictures that shepherded many films, including Wendy and Lucy, We Need to Talk about Kevin, and the forthcoming LCD Sound system documentary Shut Up and Play the Hits.
In the mid-1990s, he co-founded the Milarepa Fund, which raised money for the Tibetan independence movement.
In 2009, Yauch was diagnosed and unsuccessfully treated for a cancerous parotid gland and a lymph node. He underwent surgery and radiation therapy, delaying the release of Hot Sauce Committee Part Two and the subsequent tour.
He was unable to appear in music videos for the album. Yauch became a vegan under the recommendation of his Tibetan doctors.
In addition to his career with the Beastie Boys, Yauch was heavily involved in the movement to free Tibet.
A founder of the Milarepa Fund, Yauch was instrumental in the first Tibetan Freedom Concert in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park 1996, which drew 100,000 people – the largest U.S. benefit concert since 1985’s Live Aid.
After 9/11, Yauch and the Beastie Boys organized New Yorkers Against Violence, a concert benefit for some of the victims least likely to receive help from elsewhere.
Yauch directed the 2006 Beastie Boys concert film, although in the DVD extras for the film, the title character in “A Day in the Life of Nathanial Hörnblowér” is played by David Cross.
He also directed the 2008 film Gunnin’ For That #1 Spot about eight high school basketball prospects at the Boost Mobile Elite 24 Hoops Classic at Rucker Park in Harlem, New York City.
Yauch produced Build a Nation, the comeback album from hardcore/punk band Bad Brains.
Oscilloscope Laboratories also distributed Adam Yauch’s directorial film debut, basketball documentary Gunnin’ For That #1 Spot (2008) as well as Kelly Reichardt’s Wendy and Lucy (2008) and Oren Moverman’s The Messenger (2009) The Beastie Boys had sold 40 million records worldwide by 2010.
In April 2012, the group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Yauch was inducted in absentia due to his illness.