With '5 Boroughs,' we were each working on beats, sitting in front of our laptops and samplers.
— Mike D
It's really hard to find a lot of things that rhyme with Michael Diamond.
What would've been the downside of holding bin Laden accountable by our own values of justice by which our country is based on?
New York isn't segregated the way many American cities are, where there are specific ethnic neighborhoods that don't necessarily co-exist, or they co-exist but in a much separate sense.
The amazing thing about music is that however many thousands of records I've got now, I know that there are still thousands more that I haven't even begun to discover.
Growing up in New York City and hip-hop are two inseparable things, two things that are totally intertwined in our lives.
I guess when time came to make 'To The 5 Boroughs,' we had something important to say.
We're doing what we want to do, and that's why the kids respect us.
We do not let our music get used in commercials for commercial products.
I was going to clubs in Manhattan when I was 14.
We're kind of doing what Bob McAllister did with 'Wonderama,' which is making people realize that kids are people, too.
I don't know if it's just me getting older or if it's a reflection of times changing, but it just seems to me like among most of my friends and peers, there's a lot more time being spent at home than out.
No Catholics in my family.
I feel no compunction to defend L.A. People criticize it, and for the most part, it's well-founded.
LL Cool J is very well known in Hollywood. He's an established commodity across several platforms, including motion pictures.
In the time we made 'To the 5 Boroughs,' there was a political seriousness because of what was happening in the world.
We're downtown New Yorkers and had very close proximity to the events of September 11th. Like everybody on the island of Manhattan, we were impacted by it in so many ways in terms of what we saw, what we felt, what our daily experience became in the wake of it.
Food was always a focus for us, lyrically.
All the music I listened to in high school that I loved and that moved me wasn't the same music other kids were listening to in school. I got into punk rock and new wave, then dub and hip-hop.
For me, growing up in New York, it started with Elvis Costello and the Clash and then got into louder things like Bad Brains and Stimulators, because those were, like, the local bands. Then I started getting into bands from England like the Slits. I remember seeing Gang of Four at Irving Plaza; that was a really big show for me.
When I first became aware of music, it was probably the same way a lot of people do - even more suburban or rural people - from my older brothers playing music.
To me, the whole thing with the roots of rap music was when the DJ had to supply all the music for the group with two turntables. And the whole criteria of what that DJ would use had nothing to do with what type of band made a record.
We never set out to be superstars.
Hopefully everybody in the audience thinks, 'That's cool. I could do that.' I don't like the thought that they say, 'I saw the Beastie Boys last night, and they're mega-stars.' I'm a lot happier when the kids who come backstage or to the hotel try to give us tapes of what they've done instead of just getting an autograph.
We are exercising our constitutional right to be fresh.
Every vote matters.
If people pay money to see you, they have to cheer. They can't boo, or else they're chumping themselves.
Having to wake up at seven and go take the subway every morning, having to get over there with all these commuters and see every possible face of humanity and realizing that you're just the same as these other people is actually an amazingly positive thing.
On 'Check Your Head' and 'Ill Communication,' most of the lyrics are much more, 'OK, you take that, and I'll say that' - they're split up.
I know for myself, and maybe I'm weird or whatever, but the whole thing is about constantly redefining identity.
Leaving Def Jam was kind of a blessing in disguise because we can make whatever record we want.
I'm always careful to even guess, at any juncture, about things before we do them.
Mr. Philippe Zdar is a little bit like the uncle of the whole Daft Punk-Phoenix-Air thing in Paris and known for being in the group Cassius. It was interesting working with Philippe.
There is an overall seriousness in tone that pervades 'To The 5 Boroughs.'
We're banned from a whole lot of hotels, and we're running out of hotels we can stay in.
We just have to be careful of our actions as world citizens.
I remember going to the East Village for the first time as a fifteen-year-old and going to Tompkins Square Park. That really seemed like a pretty edgy thing to do.
What a lot of the world missed was just how caring New York became post-9/11.
Denver and Boulder are good record-buying cities. I don't know why.
It's never been our intention to sell millions of albums, but if our message touches that many people, then so be it.
When you start rhyming, it's hard to find things that rhyme with Yauch, Horovitz and Diamond.
We make all the decisions on our records... We have complete veto power.
I kind of idolized older punk-rock and hip-hop bands, and I was, like, 15 when I started the Beastie Boys. And what business did we having doing that at that age?
Most interviewers basically just want us to rephrase the bio. You already know us - why do you need to interview us?
My parents were very, very good about not separating us as kids from their adult friends. So on any given night, we'd have, like, this kind of freak show - artists and art dealers coming over. And these are the people I feel like I learned from.
L.A. is a town built upon segregated, individual fantasies.
I'm the first to admit that we were totally dependent on a particular place and time... for us, seeing Minor Threat at the CBGB hardcore matinee was just as necessary a force in our lives as the Treacherous Three at Club Negril or the Funky Four + One More at the Rock Lounge.
The bottom line with a lot of bands that funk is being applied to is that they don't really listen to funk and aren't versed in funk. Like, you know, Gordon Lightfoot.
When you get to a point where you're not beholden to a record company, then it's up to you to say, 'OK, enough knob-turning. We're done.'
At the time, I was living pretty close to Ground Zero. I had to grab some necessary equipment, put it in my backpack, and flee the immediate proximity on my bike.
