Licensed to Ill

Rubin was producing Slayer's Reign in Blood at the same time. Kerry King and Jeff Hanneman of that band supplied uncredited guitar, and King plays the lead parts on Fight for Your Right and No Sleep till Brooklyn. Columbia rejected Rubin's first title as homophobic, and Ad-Rock later apologised for it. A loose cover of the Beatles' I'm Down was pulled over publishing disputes involving Michael Jackson, and Scenario was cut late. The cover shows an American Airlines 727 crashed into a mountain with a tail shaped like a joint, an idea Rubin took from the book Hammer of the Gods.

Chart and reception

It reached number one on the Billboard 200, the first rap album to do so, and number two on the R&B/Hip-Hop chart. It was the third-biggest album of 1987 in the United States and reached number seven in Britain. The RIAA certified it Platinum on 2 February 1987 and Diamond on 4 March 2015. After Yauch's death in 2012 it re-entered the main chart at number 18 and went to number one on Catalog Albums. It stayed five weeks at number one and was the fastest-selling debut in Def Jam's history. AllMusic gave it five stars, Robert Christgau an A+, and Pitchfork's Dominique Leone 7.8 in 2004. Q called it the world's only punk rock rap album. Rolling Stone placed it at 217 in 2003, 219 in 2012 and 192 in 2020.