Alison: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart live from the WNYC studios in SoHo. Thank you for spending part of your day with us. Whether you're listening on the radio, live streaming, or on demand, I'm grateful you are here. On today's show, we'll speak with musician Emile Mosseri, who after years of the composing film scores has released his first solo album. Nasim Alikhani is here. She's a chef behind the beloved Brooklyn Restaurant, Sofreh, and her debut cookbook was just published. We'll talk about that.

Because summer is a great time for a podcast binge, especially if you have a long trip planned, critic and friend of the show, Nick Quah, joins us with some recommendations and to talk about the turbulent state of the podcast industry right now. That's the plan, so let's get this started with Hello Nasty by the Beastie Boys.

[MUSIC - Beastie Boys: Body Movin']

Body movin', body movin'

A1 sound and the sound's so soothin'

Body movin', body movin'

We be gettin' down and you know we're Krush Groovin'

Now, let me get some action from the back section

We need body rockin', not perfection

Let your backbone flip but don't slip a disc

And let your spine unwind, just take a risk

Alison: For this edition of our Silver Liner Notes series, we're looking at a superstar group whose music went in a new direction in 1998 while retaining their identity, the Beastie Boys. In the summer of '98, the Beastie Boys released Hello Nasty, their fifth studio album. At 67 minutes long, it was a love letter to hip hop with layer upon layer of samples and music genres that probably shouldn't work together like Rachmaninoff in the Jazz of the Crusaders, Intergalactic put it.

It garnered a five-star review in Rolling Stone and the album quickly went to number one. It would go on to win two Grammys and the VMA for best hip hop video for Intergalactic, the first single from the album. Let's listen to a clip of that now.

[MUSIC - Beastie Boys: Intergalactic]

Jazz and AWOL, that's our team

Step inside the party, disrupt the whole scene

When it comes to beats, well, I'm a fiend

I like my sugar with coffee and cream

Well, I gotta keep it going keep it going full steam

Too sweet to be sour too nice to be mean

Well, on the tough-guy style I'm not too keen

Trying to change the world, I'm going to plot and scheme

Mario C likes to keep it clean

going to shine like a sunbeam

Keep on rappin', 'cause that's my dream

Thank Moe Dee for Sticking to Themes

Now when it comes to envy y'all is green

Jealous of the rhyme and the rhyme routine

Alison: Here to guide us through where Hello Nasty lands in the Beastie Boys pantheon is Alan Light. He wrote the 2006 book, The Skills to Pay the Bills: The Beastie Boys Story, he's also a former editor-in-chief of Vibe and Spin Magazines and has written book books on Leonard Cohen and Prince. Alan, so nice to see you.

Alan: It is lovely to see you, Alison. It's been a long, long time.

Alison: I'm so glad you're on the show. Thank you for making time. Hey, listeners, are you a Beastie Boys fan? What did you think of Hello Nasty when it came out? How do you feel about it now, what was your favorite song or memory about the record? Maybe you saw the Beasties in concert in the 1990s. Tell us about your experience for this Silver Liner Notes, the 25th anniversary of Hello Nasty. Our phone number is 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. You can text to us on that number as well or you can hit us up on social media.

Same handle all the way around, @AllOfItWNYC. We're talking about Hello Nasty from the Beastie Boys. Let's set the stage a little bit, Alan, where were the Beasties career-wise when Hello Nasty was about to come out?

Alan: One thing that is so interesting to think about the Beastie Boys is each album really is part of this ongoing narrative and developing story. You can't talk about Hello Nasty without backing it up at least a little bit, which is it had been four years since the Ill Communication album had come out, which was their previous album. That four years really saw them regain this position of prominence and dominance in the culture. They had had this incredible rise and fall, and rise already.

Licensed to Ill, their debut album, was a phenomenon, was the biggest-selling debut record in the history of Columbia Records. That was the one with Fight for Your Right to Party on it, so it established them as these total knucklehead idiots-

Alison: What a great anthem. It became a huge anthem.

Alan: -and we're headlining arenas, and we're beloved. The success of that album almost blew the band apart. They had to really scatter and regroup for a while, and came back with the Paul's Boutique album, which was one of the greatest hip hop albums of all time without question and also a complete flop when it was released. They were coming off of this album that had been a number one album for months, Paul's Boutique came out, it didn't make the top 10, they didn't tour behind it, and they just were in quiet mode.

The next album, Check Your Head, got them back in play a little bit, brought them back to some prominence, and then Ill Communication was the album with sabotage on it, which was a huge record for them. That was really the album that got them back to headlining arenas. It was after Ill Communication that they headlined the Lollapalooza, whichever year it was, the third or fourth Lollapalooza tour. The Beastie Boys Empire was really in the process of expanding. They had launched a record label, they had launched a magazine, a clothing line.

Adam Yauch had spearheaded the Tibetan Freedom Concerts. He'd gotten very involved as an activist with the Free Tibet cause. This was finally an album where there was all this anticipation because these guys were really back on top and had opened up in all of these different sonic directions, and different places in the world and the culture, where we were all waiting to see where they were going to go.

Alison: Let's talk to Bobby who is calling in from Manhattan, who is going to tell us-- I think you know the story of the title of the album. I know the story of the title of the album. I think Bobby is going to fill everybody in. Hi, Bobby.

Bobby: Hey, how's it going?

Alison: Going forward. How about you?

Bobby: Going great. I just wanted to say thanks for taking my call. Love your show. Also that Hello Nasty is got to be one of the best records ever made. I was in the music business in the '90s, and their manager and PR company was a company called Nasty Little Man, it still exists, and whenever I would call my friend who worked for them, they'd answer the phone, "Hello, nasty." I was quite certain that that's where the name of the title of the album comes from, but please correct me if I'm mistaken.

Alison: Alan, I think he's right.

Alan: That's absolutely correct. Nasty Little Man was their publicist, remains the publicist for the Beastie Boys projects as they go on, and yes, there was a woman there who would answer the phone when you called into the office, "Hello, nasty." It's one thing that was really, I think, compelling and fascinating, again at the time, was that Beastie Boys had become this big cultural phenomenon again, but there was also this sense that there were all these in-jokes and there was this little community of their friends and collaborators that they had built around them and they were working that.

It always felt like even as big as they were getting, that there was still this sense of, if you were on the inside, and you got the jokes, or you got why this person was guessing, or they were shouting out this person in this line, that there was still an idea that you were in the club. They maintained that coolness even as they were back to playing arenas and eventually playing stadiums that they still had that relationship with their listeners.

Alison: Also, our theme music is Luscious Jackson. They were part of the Beastie family.

Alan: They were part of the Beastie Family. Jill from Luscious Jackson sings on Hello Nasty on one of the songs in fact.

Alison: My guest is Alan Light. We are celebrating Hello Nasty's 25th anniversary. It's part of our Silver Liner Notes series. If you are a fan of the album, Hello Nasty, or the Beastie Boys, give us a call. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. What did you think about the album when it came out, what do you think about it now 25 years later? Maybe you've seen the Beasties in concert and want to shout it out, 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. How was this work sonically different, sonically adventurous, or even mature?

Alan: Well, mature is a relative term.

[laughter]

It was great that as much as they had this incredible resurgence and were dealing with weighty topics, again, getting much more involved in activism, getting much more involved within the music business and these other things. This is still an album where they had lines like, "I'll stir fry you in my wok," or, "Dogs love me 'cause I'm crazy sniffable." These were still lines on a number one album that was coming out at the time, so maturity was in there in places. I think what's most striking about this album, it is far in a way the most musically diverse. The last few records, Check Your Head and Ill Communication album had gotten them back in touch with playing instruments. The Beastie Boys had started as a punk band. Those albums had this mix of hip-hop. Them picking up instruments and playing punk or hardcore again, dabbling in playing funk and trying to sound like the records that they were sampling on the other records. Then with Hello Nasty, there are different kinds of guests. The famous reggae producer Lee Scratch Perry comes on for a dub track. There's sort of a bossa nova feel and a more melodic feel, and actual singing on some of these songs.

The hip-hop songs leaned very old school. This is the album where they brought Mix Master Mike in as their DJ and really made the MCM DJ interplay that kind of old-school feel of focus to the hip-hop songs. It's really broadening and opening up to all of these things that they had been listening to, things that they had been thinking about and talking about and dealing with and covering in their magazine or whatever it was. Trying to fit all of that within the scope of this album.

Ad-Rock always says that Hello Nasty is his favorite Beastie Boys' album because it's the longest one. He's like, "It's got the most stuff on it, so that's got to be the best one."

Alison: Since you brought up Mix Master Mike, he has remained with them until, sadly, Adam Yauch's death, was inducted into the Hall of Fame with them. Let's play Three MC's and One DJ and then we can talk about Mix Master Mike's contribution to the Beastie Boys into this album. This is Three MC's and One DJ.

[MUSIC - Beastie Boys: Three MC's and One DJ]

'Cause nobody can do it like Mix Master can

Come on now

I've got the D double O, D double O style

Here we go again because it's been a while

Do me a favor don't touch that dial

I rock from Manhattan to the Miracle Mile

My name's Mike D and I'm the ladies choice

I want to get next to you like Rolls Royce

Y'all gather round to hear my golden voice

'Cause when its time to rhyme you know I get noice

Cruising like a fan boat on the glade

He'll tweak ass your ass across the cross fade

So watch your back when he takes the stage

Or he'll send you off on a naked rampage

3 MC's and one DJ

We be getting down with no delay

Alison: What did Mix Master Mike bring to the group?

Alan: Mix Master Mike, I may get the detail right or wrong on this, but at the time that he did join up with the Beastie Boys, I think, for three years running, he'd won the International DJ Competition. This was an absolute virtuoso on the turntables, who was inventing new technologies. He had hooked up a wah-wah pedal to his turntables, so you get a whole wobbly sound going on because he's working, not just the turntables, but also the feeds in and out. The Beastie Boys had initially Rick Rubin back in the very early days as their DJ, and then Dr. Dré. Not NWA Dr. Dre, but Yo! MTV Raps Dr. Dré.

Then for a number of years, DJ Hurricane as their DJ. That was always an element of what they were doing, but now they were working with somebody who was really bringing these crazy ideas to the table. On Paul's Boutique, they had worked with all of these crazy samples that the Dust Brothers had put together, these crazy tracks that they had put together.

This was somebody who could almost do that in real-time, who could bring in really different kinds of sounds and then manipulate them in really different ways, where there was much more improvisational interplay, much more complicated interplay, where you had somebody who had complete mastery of the turntables as an instrument, working together with them as they were putting those rhymes together. It just added these layers of complexity. Even as much as it had that sort of old-school, pass-the-mic feel to it, it also had all these layers sonically and structurally to what was going on.

Alison: Let's take a few calls. Jim is calling in from Brooklyn. Hi, Jim, thanks for calling All Of It.

Jim: Hi, Alison. Thanks for taking my call. I met Adam Yauch at Bard College in 1982 and was friends with him from then up until his death. I had the good fortune to see the hardcore Beastie Boys play at Bard with Kate Schellenbach and the late John Berry on a couple of occasions. While Adam was still at Bard, I had a job driving the van, pick up students at the train. He convinced Bard to send some events to Studio 54 when the Beastie Boys first did Cookie Puss. Weeks before that, they were a hardcore band, and the next thing, they were wrapping at Studio 54, a van full of drunk Bard students.

Then over the years, I would see him all the time. I bartended at a place called the Great Jones Cafe. He and Money Mark, I think, would come in and hang out while they were making Ill Communication. He would bring in cassette tape of just some of the instrumentals and play it in the room to see how people were digging it in the restaurant. Just saw them many times, of course, including Hello Nasty, but to me, Ill Communication was the time that I got to see and spend time around him and see a bunch of those shows the most. Just still one of the great bands and was just so privileged to be in his orbit over the years.

Alison: Jim, thank you so much for calling in. Appreciate you sharing all that.

Alan: He's the guy who should be telling the story.

Alison: It's like the Jonathan from Manhattan who has a question bringing up an interesting point. Hey, Jonathan. Go for it. Jonathan, are you there? Oh, maybe Jonathan put us on hold. He was going to get some lunch. You know what? Oh, Jonathan, are you there? Oh, Jonathan, we'll catch you later. My guest is Alan Light. We are talking about Hello Nasty from the Beastie Boys. It turns 25 this year. After the break, we'll talk a little bit about more about the album. We'll play a couple of remixes and take more of your calls, 212-433-9692. This is All Of It.

You're listening to All Of It on WNYC for this edition of Silver Liner Notes, where we're celebrating the Silver anniversary, 25 years of albums that were released in 1998. We've arrived at the Beastie Boys' Hello Nasty. Our ride-along for this segment is Alan Light, who has of course, written about the Beasties, was editor-in-chief of Vibe and Spin. I love this text we got.

"Hi, from the West Village. I remember when this album came out so well. I was on a post-college graduation trip around Europe and ads for the album were everywhere, yet it was only available in the States. It was one reason why I wanted to get home ASAP. I'll never forget the music videos too, so futuristic," that's from Cindy. Cindy brings up a great point. The Beastie Boys were always really masters of the music video. They were masters of-- They got irony involved in their videos, humor, sarcasm. How would you describe this video era around Hello Nasty?

Alan: I think it's around this time that they won the Video Vanguard award, the MTV Awards. I can't remember one year to the next, but it was in this phase for sure. Futuristic but humorous really, and if you think about that Intergalactic video, which really was the big hit from this album, you think of them in the boiler suits and the helmets and the hyper-modern them in the train station, but also the ridiculous fight between the Godzilla and the Beat Monster, or whatever it was. This preposterous-looking. It was both hyper-contemporary and also this silly throwback, monster movie thing.

They were always able to ride that, that they could be silly, but also be super cool that it could be ironic, but also be really, really good to do that. To do that over and over again was so amazing about the dynamic that these guys had.

Alison: In the '90s, I can remember, they're in their early 30s at this point. Once upon a time, Beastie Boys, you would do an interview and you'd be like, "Will they show up? Will they not? Will they be who they say they are? Will they pretend to be somebody else?"

Alan: Are they just going to pour beer over each other?

Alison: They're going to goof on you. By this time, I can remember, I use the word maturity, but maybe, I'm not sure that's the right word, but you're like, "Oh, yes they'll show up and we'll have a conversation."

Alan: Again, the sense that by this time, they really were spanning different worlds and different cultures. At this point, they were really settled into-- Yauch was the activist conscience, vegetarian, or focused on these issues around Tibet. Mike was the business guy, who was out launching, running the label, running the fashion company. Ad-Rock was still the guy plugged into the music side, and the guy who would always show up with more beats and always be messing around on turntables and coming up with new ideas and new directions for them. I think that's one thing that I've really learned watching bands over the years, is to survive. For bands to be able to hang in year after year, each of the members really do need to feel some independence and investment in what the project is. You got to have your lane and feel like you've got some accountability and some responsibility. They really laid that out so well during this period. It took them into all-- You said at the top, this album won two Grammys. It won an alternative Grammy and a hip-hop Grammy, which had never been done before.

I don't know if it's ever been done since. I don't think that it has, but the fact that they were that respected in both of those worlds, that was the space they were occupying at that time.

Alison: Let's talk to VL from Brooklyn. Hi, VL. Thanks for calling in.

VL: Hello. [chuckles]

Alison: Hello.

VL: Can you hear me?

Alison: Yes, you're on the air.

VL: Oh. Great. Well, so it just so happens that while they were working on Hello Nasty, I was Mike D's personal trainer and I had no idea what was going to be in this album. I wouldn't really ever talk to him about it, but needless to say, I was a huge fan of Beastie Boys, but I made sure not to intrude on his personal face, but I loved it. Of course, I loved all their other albums, especially Paul's Boutique, which doesn't get a lot of love, but I think it's also a great album, and Check Your Head.

Alan: Paul's Boutique should get all the love, but VL, I got to ask you, is this when Mike was really going deep into yoga?

VL: Absolutely. We would go to some of the same yoga classes as well so we had that in common. Then I went off and really delved into the yoga world. I loved them even more because I had seen their evolution and I was simultaneously going through my own evolution. He was very, very not solemn but serious so I wasn't getting any of that craziness when we were together, but it was great. I'm here. Can you hear me?

Alison: Thank you. Yes. I'm going to dive in because I want to make sure we get to a little bit more music. One thing you wanted us to play, Alan, was the Fatboy Slim Remix of Body Movin'. Why did you want us to take a listen to this?

Alan: First of all, this was the version that became a hit or at least a club hit at the time for them, but I think also is indicative again of all of the different directions that they were going and they were being embraced during this period. This is late '90s. This is when everybody is still waiting for EDM, for electronica to take over the world. Fatboy Slim had had some of those huge hits by then.

He was a super hot property, but everybody wanted to work with Beastie Boys at this time and so the fact that this was really this almost meeting of Titans in the moment in 1998, that you would have Fatboy Slim doing a Beastie Boy Boys remix, just felt like another milestone, another hurdle that they had crossed that you would get a big dance hit like this.

Alison: Let's take a listen.

[MUSIC - Beastie Boys: Body Movin']

Body movin', body movin'

A1 sound and the sound's so soothin'

Body movin', body movin'

We be gettin' down and you know we're Krush Groovin'

Body movin', body movin'

A1 sound and the sound's so soothin'

Body movin', body movin'

We be gettin' down and you know we're Krush Groovin'

Now, let me get some action from the back section

We need body rockin', not perfection

Let your backbone flip but don't slip a disc

And let your spine unwind, just take a risk

I wanna do the freak until the break of dawn

Tell me party people, is that so wrong?

The ship is dockin', interlockin'

And up-rockin', electro-shockin'

We're gettin' down, computer action

Do the robotic satisfaction

Alison: We're talking about Hello Nasty at 25. Let's talk to James calling in from Manhattan. Hi, James. You're on the air.

James: Hi. How are you?

Alison: Doing--

James: I was just calling to say I always found a great similarity between De La Soul and Beastie Boys like 3 Feet High and Rising and Paul's Boutique. Did they know each other? Were they friends?

Alison: Let's say, Alan, do you know if there was any connection between the Beasties and De La?

Alan: I'm sure that they were bouncing off each other at the time because in 1988, '89, you're still talking about a very small hip-hop community. Beastie Boys were so affiliated associated with the Def Jam world at that time and with LL and with Public Enemy. Those were the really close affiliations that I think of. You make a really, not to get too sidetracked, but an interesting point. There's a moment there in 1987, '88 or so where sampling technology gets out ahead of sampling law, where you can start to really put together these really elaborate complicated pieces out of existing recordings, and it's the Wild West.

Nobody is yet determined how you pay for that or clear it. In that moment, you get some of the most amazing records in the history of not just hip-hop but anything. 3 Feet High and Rising and Paul's Boutique, Public Enemy takes a nation of millions to hold us back and then the laws start getting established. A year later, you could never have made those records. You could never have afforded to put those records together. It's such a fascinating little to 8-month, 10-month period there where you see this incredible breakthrough, and that's where you're hearing that the caller is hearing the De La and Beastie connection.

Alison: Someone texted, "I spent over $100 on my son, who was two, could see the Beastie Boys when they played SummerStage. He's 18 now. Just wanted his first concert to be a cool one." Another text, "The Criterion Collection, Beastie Boys music video set has extra and source footage in the alternate angles and remixes on the alternate audio tracks." That's pretty cool.

Alan: That is a fantastic package that Beastie Boys video anthology for people who are into that stuff, all kinds of other camera angles and collections and lives, other stuff that isn't released. It's a really amazing document.

Alison: Tray did the Rolling Stone review at the time. This was 25 years ago. He gave the album five stars, but he also said in the review, "See all those stars up there? That means I can't walk down my block for a whole month. For a Black man championing the Beasties is like being down with Madonna or rooting for the Utah Jazz." This is 1998. What was happening culturally that those two sentences would be in a Beastie Boys review?

Alan: Look, I think that there was always a complicated relationship between the Beastie Boys and the core hip-hop community. The fact is most of the artists around Chuck D was a friend and an advocate. Run DMC were. Q-Tip was. There was the sense that Beastie Boys respected hip-hop culture. They didn't pretend to be anybody other than who they were. Their references, their lyrics were very much from their own experience. The cultural appropriation was limited by where they took it. The reality was Licensed to Ill was the biggest-selling hip-hop record of all time at the time.

It was the first hip-hop record to go number one. That was these three white kids who were clearly given access to MTV in a different way, to radio in a different way, to a suburban audience in a different way than their peers were. No matter how much they understood that and tried to respect that and tried to address that, there's no way around what the history was. Now, by the time you get to Hello Nasty, the music has expanded in so many directions. Again, hip-hop is one piece.

It's the foundation of what they were doing as much as their punk roots were, but there's all these other things that are going on in the album. I don't think that people thought of them in competition with the MCs that you were hearing on Hot 97 in 1998. The BBC were in a different place by that.

Alison: Andrew from Kew Gardens texted in, "Love the Beastie since License to Ill. Love the Beastie Boys Book. Love the way Hello Nasty opens up with super disco breaking. Was lucky enough to see them play at the Nassau Coliseum where Patty Smith opened up for them." I can't remember the year. Believe I saw that show, too. "I wish there was more hip-hop like them today." Could there be someone like the Beasties today?

Alan: They were so much a product of a certain time and place and culture. Certainly, I think there could be a version of that today that draws on, now more than ever, that you're receiving so much more different kinds of music and more kinds of culture and all the things that you can access from around the world immediately. The things that I see, like my kid listening to that-- we would never have been able to chase down in our youth.

But I think that they came really out so much and they were always very upfront about saying, "We came from New York City at a certain moment where punk and hip-hop and disco and club stuff was all happening and bouncing off each other." That was what was at the heart of their relationship and that was at the heart of their music and their project. I think that thinking about what Beastie Boys would be like now is what would be the result of that kind of B‐Boy Bouillabaisse. What would that sound like today? I don't think it would sound like what they were doing then.

Alison: We have been talking about Hello Nasty at 25. It's part of our Silver Liner Notes series. Thanks to everybody who called in with their Beastie Boys memories and thanks to Alan Light for being our ride-along. Alan, nice to see you.

Alan: Thank you, Alison. Great to see you.

Alison: Let's go out with Putting Shame in Your Game from Hello Nasty.

[MUSIC - Beastie Boys: Putting Shame in Your Game]

Beatsie, Beatsie, Beatsie, Beatsie Boys gettin' live on the spot

Puttin' all kinds of shame in the game you got

We keep the party movin' to the broad daylight

G-E-T-L-I-V-E, all right

Transhypnotic, robotic, can't stop it

No limits to this style and you know you can't lock it

First you mock it, rock it and then you stock it

I've got the styles that are always in the pocket

Well, like a bird floatin' down

 

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