Are the Beastie Boys a 'boy band'?

So I've been slightly obsessed with Vice Magazine's VBS series Soft Focus. The series shows these laid back in-depth interviews with punk luminaries like Mike Watt, Ted Leo, Steve Malkmus -- all the dudes you wanna have a beer with. The interviewer is Ian Svenonius, a former DC punker who plays a sort of faux-Charlie Rose-meets-Lester Bangs character. The interviews can shift from fascinating to slightly awkward, but it seems this is the kind of thing Svenonius is going for.

Anyways, Adam Horovitz was a recent guest and the two discussed topics such as Beastie Boys/Beatles correlation (awkward) and Horovitz discovering LL Cool J (wtf?). But the most penetrating topic for me was the discussion of Bubblegum pop and the supergroup phenomenon. Now I know most hip-hops artists, and musicians in general, tread the line between their on-stage persona and their real life in ways that are most advantageous to them. (Johnny Cash never shot a man in Reno, but the more people bought into it the more popular he became).

The Beastie Boys were different however. As with most hip-hop artists it has been difficult to determine where say, AdRock ends and Adam Horovitz begins. Ok, License to Ill was a definite party album, tongue-in-cheek portrayal of bratty Manhattan teens, but Paul's Boutique was a complete departure, and then there's Check Your Head, with even more profound songs like "Something's Got to Give" showing a more earnest side of the group.

So what are The Beastie Boys, a fictitious group invented by its three members who also portray the three main characters of said group? Or are they some sort of hybrid, a performance art troupe that switches gears whenever it suits them? The latter seems to be the case with most hip-hop acts, although I am sure they wouldn't admit it.