CULTURAS IN VITRO - A Musician Writes It, A Rapper Borrows It: A Swap or a Theft? The heart of the matter is the Beastie Boys' song "Pass the Mic," which has a willowy, elongated flute sound rising above its cluster of rock instruments, breakbeats and turntable scratches. The exotic sounding tidbit, looped more than 40 times during the Beastie's track, is a six-second, three-note performance that the Beastie Boys clipped out of a 1982 recording called "Choir," a song written and performed by Newton, a professor at Cal State L.A. and former Guggenheim fellow.