The brass monkey is the kind of beer cocktail we can get behind, in that it combines two things we love (malt liquor and orange juice) together into one thing we love. We were under the impression that the Beastie Boys shared our love of the brass monkey as well, considering they wrote a whole song about it. Or so we thought. In a conversation with Studio 360’s Sean Rameswaram, Mike D claimed that the brass monkey the Beastie Boys were rapping about was actually a pre-mixed cocktails made of dark rum, vodka and orange juice. This is very upsetting news.
The relevant part of the interview starts at six minutes in, where a very confused Mike D insists Rameswaram do a Google search, reads the Wikipedia entry for brass monkey to him and even goes so far as to claim he’s never even heard of the malt liquor cocktail.
Discussing the groundbreaking news with Tim, he felt that Mike D was just trolling Rameswaram, based on the fact that there are lyrics referencing a 40 in the song, but a look at them shows only one mention of a 40 near the end. There are references to having the drink on ice, from a cup, from a can and owning a whole case of brass monkeys. As shown in the ad above, the pre-mixed cocktail version definitely used to exist, and anyway, that’s a very strange thing to troll someone about. So it looks like the next time you want to pay tribute to MCA with a drink, as your bartender to make you one with one part dark rum, one part vodka and one part orange juice.
In the meantime, you may as well just listen to the song while you acclimate yourself to this new world we’re suddenly living in.
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It most definitely existed. Between 1987 and 1991 it helped me to get in more than a little trouble.