Yesterday rapper KRS-One was forced to apologise after commemorating the wrong Beastie Boy in his tribute to hip-hop’s fallen, ‘Hip Hop Speaks from Heaven’.

In the song, which was released as part of his new album ‘The World is MIND,” he raps: “Like a late fog in the mist/ I see King Ad-Rock and rest in peace Nate Dogg/ Their names and their natures will last“.

By Ad-Rock (aka Adam Horowitz, who is alive) KRS-One meant another Beastie Boy, MCA (aka Adam Yauch), who died in 2012, aged 47, after a near-three-year battle with cancer.


The 51-year-old New Yorker has since removed it from his new album on Bandcamp and now plans to re-record it.

In his statement, in full below, KRS-One writes: “I mistakenly paid respect and condolences to the wrong Beastie Boy member King Ad-Rock when it should have been MCA.

“In light of this,” he goes on, “I am redoing the song ‘Hip Hop Speaks from Heaven’ and I am pulling the original version off of my digital release. Historical accuracy is extremely important to me.”

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A New York park named in honour of MCA was defaced with swastikas and pro-Trump graffiti last year. The Adam Yauch park is located in Brooklyn, New York.

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Following the vandalism of the park, Ad-Rock attended an anti-racism rally there, giving a speech through a megaphone and saying: “I’m assuming that we’re all here today because we’re thinking the same thing – spray painting swastikas at a children’s playground is a messed up thing to do.”

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After talking about Yauch’s belief in nonviolence, he detailed multiple examples of hate crimes and hate speech that have occurred in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s election win.