Mmmm duurrrropppp!

We all know I'm a bit of a media whore.

But sometimes, a celebrity death resonates deeper with me than others. That happened today.

Adam Yauch (MCA), founding member and raspy voice of the Beastie Boys, died at age 47 after a three-year battle with cancer.

I would never claim to be a huge fan of the Beastie Boys. Since their first album, Licensed to Ill, debuted in 1986, I was born a bit too late to have grown up listening to them. However, as is often true with pioneering, ground-breaking artists, their music stood the test of time. Like most people my age, I can rap along with classics like "Sabotage," "Brass Monkey," "Intergalactic," or "(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party)."

I won't detail the pioneering work the Beastie Boys did for white artists during the infancy of hip-hop. I won't describe how the Beastie Boys practically introduced white suburbia to a new genre of music. I won't delve into how they turned something that seemed dangerous, edgy, and foreign into something Middle America could swallow, something mainstream. I certainly won't explain how they revolutionized music for an entire generation.

I will, however, admit that the group's other Adam, Adam Horovitz (Ad-Rock), was one of my first celebrity crushes, following Yeah-Yeah from The Sandlot, Chris O'Donnell, and Brian Littrell. What can I say? I have a serious thing for Jewish guys with dark hair.

I will say that I wasn't exactly the girl that got asked to dance a lot in middle school (or high school, for that matter). So, when "Intergalactic" played at a sixth grade dance, I vividly remember dancing around with my friends and wishing the DJ would play it on repeat all night.

I will also share something that was pointed out by Sasha Frere-Jones of The New Yorker today. Although the early music of the Beastie Boys was similar in message to most of today's rap (disrespect to women, rebellious, over-sexualized, violent, etc.), their message began to change as they grew older. MCA, in particular, began to change. He became a Buddhist and the positive axioms of his belief quickly became the tenets he practiced.

In 1994's "Sure Shot," he rapped, "I want to say a little something that's long overdue/The disrespect to women has got to be through/To all the mothers and sisters and the wives and friends/I want to offer my love and respect to the end."

That's a message that bears repeating...and for that, MCA gets my love and respect to the end.