@Chris Molanphy: The caffeine wasn’t working yet.

Back then, it was seemingly way, way too complicated for the media to explain how indisputable hip-hop figure Ice-T was drawing controversy for a song from his non-hip-hop side project, and hence the whole thing became a “rap vs. the rest of culture” battle. With a nasty racist overtone — I guarantee you no one would have complained about “Cop Killer” if it had been a Dead Kennedys joint.

In the same way, I hate it when an act that flowed over a beat for two albums, then picked up instruments for two albums and tried to sound more like Bad Brains, are basically “rappers” for life.

How, exactly, is “Sabotage” a rap song?

Pause before you respond…

Yes, the Beasties came to prominence as a hip-hop act. (They started as a hardcore punk act, but never mind that…)

Yes, Ad-Rock is, at best, sing-talking in the song. Yes, it could be argued that he has some form of “flow.”

But there’s just no way the Beasties in their instrument-playing, heavy-thrashing, post-Check Your Head incarnation can be considered a traditional or even tangential hip-hop act. (If we were talking about something from the later Hello Nasty period I might buy it.)

Yes, I realize the song is used as a “control group” in this experiment, but any scientist will tell you: a worthy control is supposed to change one key element, in this case the elimination of misogynistic lyrics. To my mind, there are multiple key elements changed in the shift from “Kill You” to “Sabotage.” A successful control would be something like, I dunno, “Mama Said Knock You Out”; or, even better, another, ho-hating-free Eminem song like “Lose Yourself.”

I call bullshit on the execution, if not the premise, of this entire experiment.

Which is a bad thing.