It's the rallying cry of bands on their way home after a long tour. The drunken chorus of newly minted New Yorkers as they roll over the Brooklyn Bridge at 3 a.m. And now, nearly 30 years after the Beastie Boys dropped the seminal album Licensed To Ill, "No Sleep Till Brooklyn" is the official anthem of the 2013 Video Music Awards.

The Beastie Boys' debut studio album, Licensed to Ill, dropped in 1986, fresh from the new Def Jam Recordings, which was headed up at the time by Rick Rubin and the Boys' then-manager Russell Simmons. The record contains some of the band's biggest hits, including "Fight for Your Right" and the tribute to the borough that many of the guys called home: "No Sleep Till Brooklyn."

A battle cry, a debaucherous ode to BK embraced New Yorkers and non-natives alike, the song also represented a shift in music — a merging of hip-hop and rock that the guys pulled off with their trademark tongue-in-cheek swagger. The accompanying video, featuring the Beasties' friends and co-directed by Def Jam pal Ric Menello — who passed away in March — captured that same spirit.

In celebration of the jam's history — and to get pumped for the Video Music Awards' first time in Brooklyn — MTV News spoke with the people behind the song and video. They gave us a heartfelt and hilarious new-before-seen peek at Brooklyn's own unofficial anthem.

A 'Very New York Song'
Russell Simmons, Def Jam Recordings founder:
"It was perfect, you know, 'No Sleep Till Brooklyn.' It was ...

Up until now, Zayn Malik has remained relatively tight-lipped about his engagement to Little Mix's Perrie Edwards. But on Friday (August 23), the One Direction heartthrob took to Twitter to open up to his Directioners about his "happy" news.

"Never been more happy in my life! Thank you to everyone that has been so lovely about my engagement to my beautiful fiancé!" Zayn wrote two days after his rep confirmed the engagement to MTV News. "Big love."

Just two days before the guys are slated to appear at the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards, 1D visited the "Today" show Friday morning, where Niall Horan tried to deflect talk about Zayn's engagement, joking, "I'm pregnant. It's exclusive to the 'Today' show."

Malik and Edwards first sparked engagement rumors Wednesday after the Little Mix singer was spotted wearing some bling at the U.K. premiere of One Direction's new 3-D flick, The following day, he sat down with U.K. radio station Capital FM and called the engagement "cool."

Malik has been busy making the rounds promoting "This Is Us," which hits theaters August 30. Additionally, 1D is up for Best Song of the Summer for their single "Best Song Ever" at the VMAs. They are currently ahead in the competition, with Miley Cyrus' "We Can't Stop" trailing behind.

Directioners can vote for the boy band with the hashtag #voteonedirection. The VMAs will go live from Brooklyn's Barclays Center on Sunday. The pre-show kicks off 8 p.m. ET/PT followed by the main show at 9 p.m. ET/PT.

When Mos Def (now Yasiin Bey) and Talib Kweli dropped their Mos Def & Talib Kweli Are Black Star album in 1998, the plan was never to form something permanent — but try to tell that to the legion of fans that have championed the duo since they formed 15 years ago.

"It was definitely a one-time thing; it was definitely a project," Talib told MTV News as we rode down Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn in a dollar van, a nod to the group's first music video, "Definition." In that clip, he and Mos rapped from a similar van, a popular mode of public transportation in New York City outer boroughs.

"Even though we didn't envision Black Star as a group per se, it became a group," he admitted. "Once the music was created and it came out, once people responded and it resonated with people the way that it did, you can't tell nobody Black Star wasn't a group."

The LP will turn 15 years old on September 29, and hip-hop heads have been singing its praises ever since. It was a thoughtful and independent juxtaposition to big-budget, major-label albums like Diddy's No Way Out and Ma$e's Harlem World, with love songs like "Brown Skin Lady" and the hip-hop ode "Definition."

With the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards taking place at the Barclays Center on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn, the cultural hub that both Talib and Yasiin hold so dear, we take a trip down memory lane with Kweli to talk about some of the album's stand-out tracks.

"The day it came ...

Classic cinematographer Gilbert Taylor passed away Friday, August 23, at the age of 99, as reported by BBC News, leaving behind an impressive filmography of incomparable importance. Taylor died at his home on the Isle of Wight in England, with his wife, Dee Taylor, and family by his side.

With a career spanning over 40 years and including films such as "A Hard Day's Night," "The Omen" and "Star Wars," Taylor's contributions to the world of film are immeasurable.

Taylor was born in 1914 in Bushey Heath, Hertfordshire, and found work as a camera assistant at London's Gainsborough Studios at the young age of 15. He then served as an officer in the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve during World War II, filming the aftermath of overnight raids on Germany for Winston Churchill. Taylor's cinematography career began with 1948's "The Outsider" starring Richard Attenborough.

After working on the Beatles' "A Hard Day's Night" and Alfred Hitchcock's "Frenzy," Taylor — by then almost a 30-year film industry vet — began work on George Lucas' latest film, "Star Wars," in the 1970s. His contributions to the film, as he revealed in an interview with American Cinematographer magazine, were substantial.

"George avoided all meetings and contact with me from day one," said Taylor. "So I read the extra-long script many times and made my own decisions as to how I would shoot the picture. I took it upon myself to experiment with photographing the lightsabers and other things onstage before we moved on to our two weeks of location work in ...

It's not a dream! It's not a hoax! Ben Affleck will play Batman in 2015's "Man of Steel" sequel, meaning that the Academy Award winner will come face-to-cowl with Henry Cavill's Superman in what's sure to be the team-up — or throwdown — of the decade. But not all is right in Gotham. Comic book fans are a notoriously fickle bunch, and Ben Affleck's brief tenure as Batman-to-be has been divisive at best.

Thanks to nearly 75 years of constant appearances in comics, films and television shows, Batman has become a character that fans feel incredibly passionate about. This constant exposure has also given fans a checklist of essential ingredients every actor must possess before getting the keys to the Batmobile. Here are five Bat-traits that the "Argo" director will have to nail in order to bring this new Batman to life.

Bat Body
Affleck isn't known for taking on particularly physically demanding roles, with his characters in recent films like "Argo" and "The Town" not nearing the level of superhuman physique that previous Batman Christian Bale sported in his three outings as Bruce Wayne. Affleck will need to tone up his everyman bod past even the heroic proportions he sported when he played a superhero in 2003's "Daredevil." But audience members need not worry, because Affleck will get in fighting shape for the role — that's what personal trainers are for.

Affleck doesn't even have that far to go, especially when compared to Marvel Studios leading man Chris Pratt, who went from an extreme schlub on "Parks and ...

Aside from being outrageously funny, the films in Edgar Wright's Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy — "Shaun of the Dead," "Hot Fuzz" and "The World's End" — stand out for being uniquely and unabashedly British. Even the name of the trilogy comes from a dessert that isn't available in the United States.

"The World's End," out this weekend, follows five childhood friends that reunite to finish the pub crawl that they couldn't finish as young lads. As Wright and Simon Pegg explained to MTV News' Josh Horowitz at Comic-Con, the Britishness of their first movie, "Shaun of the Dead," is what made them keep things classy.

"I think what inspired us to make the other two movies was actually coming to the States and showing 'Shaun of the Dead' and seeing that people laughed at it just as much as they did in the U.K.," Wright said. "That was very pleasing because there had been this idea before with some British films that you had to make them transatlantic to sell everything. You see a lot of British movies with American actors or actresses inserted in to make it more international. It was very pleasing to us that we made 'Shaun of the Dead' and people liked it for its Britishness, so we continued in that vein for the new one."

Some considerations have been made for overseas audiences. In "Shaun," the team adjusted two words to make it less confusing to Americans.

"There were two [changes]. There's a make of pen called Biro. There's a bit when Shaun says that the ...

Wale knows a thing or two about comebacks. In fact, the MMG rapper's propensity for successful musical resurrection made him the perfect artist to create "No Pain No Gain," the title track to the documentary about Robert Griffin III's football comeback, "RGIII: The Will to Win."

RGIII: No Pain No Game from Gatorade Productions on Vimeo.

"If anybody knows about comebacks, it's Wale," the Washington, D.C., native told MTV News about the NFL Films and Gatorade Productions film. "Being dropped from Interscope, then going through that whole ordeal, to now being one of the top rappers in the country, I know what that's about. I know what it's like to deal with that uncertainty. I use it all as motivation, and hopefully Rob uses it as motivation as well."

On the inspirational track the MC spits intricate metaphors with impassioned fortitude and dexterity. He channels the 2012 NFL Rookie of the Year's mental and physical journey back to the gridiron after a season-ending knee injury in last year's playoffs with lines like "This is hard work/ This is our turf/ I'ma carry the city till my arms hurt/ I'm a move maker/ Never lose faith/ I know the easy plays are through the hard work."

"Gatorade and Rob reached out and it didn't take me longer than a second to want to be a part of this," the rabid Washington Redskins fan said. Before rapping, Wale was a football player himself at Robert Morris and Virginia State University.

"I'm a passionate person, to a fault at times. I'm ...

No sleep 'til Brooklyn for One Direction. The boys are making a few pit stops before making themselves comfortable in Brooklyn's Barclays Center for Sunday's MTV Video Music Awards, airing at 9 p.m. ET/PT.

First up, the "Today" show, where 1D grew an estimated crowd of 18,000 for their performances of "What Makes You Beautiful," "Kiss You" and their VMA-nominated "Best Song Ever," in Rockefeller Center.

In between numbers, they spoke with "Today" hosts Matt Lauer and Savannah Guthrie — the latter of whom mistakenly called nearly every member of the band Liam — about their upcoming documentary and Zayn Malik's engagement.

"We always say this: There's only so much you can get across in a 140-character tweet," Niall Horan explained of why they let cameras follow them around for the 3D biopic, "One Direction: This Is Us." "We wanted to really give behind-the-scenes access ... to what it's like for us. What it's like for our families, and really what these guys [the fans] have done, really, in three years."

"You're going to see a lot more of what we're like when we interact with each other behind the scenes," Harry Styles chimed in. "A nice insight. It's a great film."

Not to mention where the guys come from.

"A nice look at our families, as well," Liam Payne said. "How they deal with us being away from home. It's nice."

Of course, the big question of the hour was Malik's recently confirmed engagement to Little Mix singer Perrie Edwards. But the 20-year-old kept details close to the vest.

"There's not much to ...