The Beastie Boys' album Hello Nasty at 25

14:19The Beastie Boys' Hello Nasty turns 25

If you came of age in the 1990s, you were living in a Beastie Boys world. They were the one group that everyone could agree on: the rappers, the rockers, the stoners, the jocks, the punks, the skaters, the ravers, the nerds. By the time the New York trio released their fifth album, Hello Nasty, in 1998, the Beasties were as much a brand as a band — the unimpeachable curators of cool who had shaped the sound and style of the decade through their Grand Royal record-label/magazine mini-empire. They had also become unlikely ambassadors for humanitarian causes through their Tibetan Freedom Concerts. Certainly, they were the first and only group who could call up Lee "Scratch" Perry and the Dalai Lama on speed dial.

Arriving four years after their 1994 smash Ill Communication, Hello Nasty saw the Beastie Boys both returning to their old-school '80s electro-rap roots while continuing to branch out musically into Tropicalia, dub reggae, '60s cocktail music, and other crate-digger concerns. But in hindsight, it also marked the moment when the Beasties' stranglehold on the zeitgeist began to loosen, ushering in a less active phase of their career just as the internet was on the verge of transforming the pop-cultural landscape as we knew it.

To mark the album's 25th anniversary, Commotion's Elamin Abdelmahmoud spoke with two card-carrying members of Generation Beastie — writers Niko Stratis and Stuart Berman — to talk about the impact Hello Nasty had at the time, and its importance to the overall Beastie Boys saga.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow the Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud podcast, on your favourite podcast player.

Elamin: The Beastie Boys' fifth album, Hello Nasty, comes out in 1998. Let's talk about where the Beasties were at that point of their career.

Niko: It had been four years since their previous real record. They had their own magazine, they had their own record label; they had this amalgamation of punk-rock culture and hip-hop culture, because those were the two worlds that informed them. So when Hello Nasty dropped, I was working in a grocery store and this person that I worked with called me on my line — I worked in the bakery, she was in the meat department — and she was like, "We have to go to the record store at lunch because Hello Nasty drops today!" It was an event.

Elamin: We asked both of you to give us your favorite cut from Hello Nasty. Stuart, you picked Flowin' Prose. Why this one?

LISTEN | Flowin' Prose by The Beastie Boys:

Stuart: This track opened up an interesting new avenue for the group. They were coming off the double shot of Check Your Head and Ill Communication, which were two similarly styled records. Some would say Ill Communication was the first record where they didn't reinvent themselves again; they went back to a proven template. By this point, Beastie Boys records were pretty segregated between their tentpole rap tracks and the instrumental funky interludes that were the intermission music between [the rap] tracks, and I feel like this song kind of folds those two identities into one another.

And it's sort of a different way of rapping from [Adam "MCA" Yauch]. Lots of Beastie Boys tracks kind of have the same style of rapping, like, "Now we're going to talk/ just like THIS/ and punctuate our points just like THIS." But this was a totally different kind of flow coming from MCA. So it felt like an interesting way for them to retain their identity as a rap group, while still experimenting sonically.

WATCH | Official music video for Body Movin' by The Beastie Boys:

Elamin: Niko's pick is Body Movin'. Why this one?

Niko: The first time I ever listened to this record, I'm hearing all these songs in the beginning of the album, like Remote Control, and I'm like, "Okay, I'm into this. This feels really sharp." Every song sort of felt in conversation with each other. Then you hit this one and it's like they're going for it in this really big and bold and interesting way that I really liked.

MCA is leaning into his Nathaniel Hornblower persona, where he's pretending to be a Swedish guy. This song has so much of the big bombast of the Beasties, but there's also steel drum and all these other elements at play there. I think it's a really good amalgamation of what makes them so good: they're big, they're fun and they're loud. But they're also interested in a lot of stuff, and they want to layer that in there. They want to hide stuff that you might not find on your first listen. You might not find it for 20 years, but eventually you will notice it.

Elamin: Stuart, you've talked about Hello Nasty being a sign of the Beasties' decline, or at least the beginning of that decline. What makes you feel that way?

Stuart: I mean, this is a band that had such an incredible run over their first 10 to 12 years. Inevitably you hit a peak, and then things started going down. I think they were pivoting away [from their signature rap-rock sound]. They were like, "Alright, we did this thing in the past. Everyone else is running with it now. We're going in this direction." They were going back to the early '80s, which wasn't a big thing in the late '90s. They were kind of ahead of the curve on '80s nostalgia.

But they also had their ear to the ground of what was happening underground at that time. A lot of indie rock bands were starting to pull from Brazilian tropicalia music and dub, and easy-listening records from the '50s and '60s. The Beasties were definitely trying to ride that wave as well at the same time.

Elamin: Niko, what do you make of this moment? It's 1998 and the Beasties are kind of competing in a sonic environment that they helped shape to begin with…

Niko: I never really fully thought that the Beasties were ever really competing with anybody but themselves, you know? They're always very much doing the thing that they want to do. Their entire career from [1989's] Paul's Boutique on is very much a story of three people specifically who only will work with each other, exploring the roads that they want to explore. They're digging into the crates they want to dig through, they're playing the sounds they want to play. And I feel like on Hello Nasty, they're really bringing that together where they're making these big singles, but they're not making singles the way that other people are in the late '90s.

These last couple of years as we move from the '90s into the 2000s is a really interesting era of pop music. Rap is rising in a huge way. Punk rock is rising in a huge way. We're changing the way we talk about pop. The internet is coming online. We're moving into a digital culture. And they're doing this thing where they're pulling from tropicalia and all these things that nobody else is pulling from.

Elamin: Where do you rank Hello Nasty in the Beasties discography?

Stuart: I do think it's a second-tier record, in my opinion, just because the run from Paul's Boutique to Ill Communication is among the greatest three-album runs in modern music history. So I'd put Hello Nasty a notch below that, but it's still a very interesting record, and there's still a lot I love about this record. There's a certain White Album-type sprawl to it that I find interesting.

It's funny: for a group that is so associated with retro '70s, '80s culture, they've got those scratchy vinyl effects all over their records,  They were really a true CD-era band in that they really maximized that 60-to-70-minute runtime and made these big sprawling patchwork records. So you're always going to find some cool stuff in there, even when they do maybe go off the deep end at times.

Niko: I have gone on record multiple times saying that this is my favourite Beastie Boys record. I will be out there on the corner where the evangelists always are and I will have my sign that says "Hello Nasty is the best Beastie Boys record," and I will probably get beat up more than the evangelists do. This is the one I listen to straight-through the most, because it's a conversation that goes places and takes me places. Yes, it reminds me of being 16 and there's that idea of, "Do you like this thing? Or did you just like it when you're 16?" And I'm like, "Ah, but what about both?" I do really love this record; I love the flow and the feeling of it. This is my favourite Beastie Boys record and I will never apologize for that.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Panel produced by Ty Callender.