“You Gotta Fight For Your Right To Party!” – Beastie Boys, 1986

The nominees for the 2011 induction class of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame were announced earlier this week.  To be eligible for nomination an act must have released its first single or album at least 25 years prior to the year of nomination.  This year’s list features twelve artists, five of which will be inducted.  It includes Alice Cooper, the Beastie Boys, Bon Jovi, Chic, Neil Diamond, Donovan, Dr. John, the J. Geils Band, LL Cool J, Darlene Love, Laura Nyro, Donna Summer, Joe Tex, Tom Waits, and Chuck Willis.

Determining the worthiness of inclusion in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is even more subjective than for sports halls of fame, where statistics–a much more objective criteria of greatness–can be applied.  With that concession noted, I would have the Beastie Boys as the first in, not only because of their great and diverse body of work, but also because they are true groundbreakers.  They helped pave the way for Eminem and many other experimental offshoots of hip hop owe much to what they did.

The Beastie Boys 1986 album License to Ill is a chain of genre-bending music without a weak link and one the best albums of the last 25 years.  Their biggest hit from License to Ill, and one of music’s most iconic lines that captures the youthful and rebellious exuberance of rock and roll itself, is “You Gotta Fight For Your Right To Party.” I suspect that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame voters will agree with me and we’ll be hearing quite a bit of that still-catchy hip-hop/rock anthem at the time of the induction in March 2011.