Revisiting the Beastie Boys’ Hello Nasty

By Bridget Holt 

Music Journalist 

Beastie Boys, consisting of members Michael “Mike D” Diamond, Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovits, and the late Adam “MCA” Yauch, released Hello Nasty in 1998; 4 years after the release of their third studio album, Check Your Head, and right before the turn of the millennia into the 2000’s. Along with it winning 2 Grammy’s in 1999, with one being for best alternative music performance and the other for the best rap performance by a duo or group, the record would become a highlight in the Beastie Boys discography. Hello Nasty is often recognized as the trio’s magnum opus, as well as one of the most recognizable and iconic hip-hop albums of the late 90’s and 2000’s, and even today. 

My first listen to Hello Nasty was after coming across a CD copy of it at one of my local thrift stores. Being familiar with the Beastie Boys name I thought– why not? I’d honestly always thought they were kind of a joke, maybe because I wasn’t alive to witness them in their prime, but for a couple of cents you can’t lose. About a week prior I’d picked up an old Sony boombox, and – without realizing that that’s probably exactly the kind of sound system it was meant to be played on – when I popped in my copy of Hello Nasty, I lost myself sitting next to the player. I sat there listening to the album in its entirety like the radio was sending me secret messages. Like it was speaking directly to me. Mind blown. Mouth agape. 

After years of hearing about the Beastie Boys and always brushing them off, I finally understood them. 

I finally understood everything. 

 At an impressive almost 67-minute run time and 22-song track list, Hello Nasty is non-stop and completely unpredictable. In some ways it’s not much of a hip-hop record at all, the Beastie Boys taking their genre-bending and blending to a whole other, unprecedented level. Transitioning from hip-hop to jazz to funk to rock, to even exploring Latin and soul passages, the Beastie Boys manage to create a sound entirely new, yet still familiar to long-time fans; staying true to their signature vocal deliveries and hardcore roots. The record is diverse in many ways than its musical composition, with the lyrical content reflecting the Beastie Boys doing more soul-searching than they’ve ever done before; depicting a range of ideas that put subject matter both light and dark on an equal footing. 

The album starts with the playful tongue-in-cheek of “Super Disco Breakin’”: a stand-out track that’ll blast through your speakers with the force of some sort of alien spacecraft; the chorus – “Money Makin’ Money Money Makin” – setting the tone for some of the more lighthearted moments on the project. The next few songs are just as strong, just as high-energy, with the classic Beastie Boys track “Intergalactic” coming in at the seventh spot on the track list. The album after this point takes a turn into what makes Hello Nasty truly special, with some of the most experimental tracks spinning the record into what could only be compared to a stream of consciousness. “Song For Junior” is from start to finish a Bossa-Nova instrumental track, with the subsequent “I Don’t Know” being entirely acoustic, almost like something you’d play in front of a campfire. Lyrically, the Beastie Boys dive much deeper, touching on societal issues and even throwing some existentialist ideas into the mix. 

The record re-gains some level of familiarity with the appropriately electrifying track, “Electrify”, landing on the 17th spot on the track list, but swiftly returns to somewhere between space and time for the remainder of the record. The next track, “Picture This” is yet another Bossa-Nova moment, except with female vocals and accompanied by a whacked-out synthesizer. The record seems to transcend the grasp of the Beastie Boys themselves, closing off with the reggae-infused track, “Dr. Lee, PhD”, featuring the vocals of legendary Jamaican singer-songwriter-producer, Lee “Scratch” Perry. “Instant Death”, the 22nd and final track on the album, is soberingly stripped back, with listeners finally brought back to Earth for their final moments with Hello Nasty; leaving them to question what just happened . . . and how they’ll have to buy a copy for themselves. 

Hello Nasty is much more than just a hip-hop record. You might not believe me, or you might even find it ridiculous, but there is truly something otherworldly about it. Like the Beastie Boys harnessed an all-encompassing truth or have embedded in it some sort of ancient knowledge. Maybe that truth is – in true Beastie Boy fashion – to just not take yourself too seriously. But what do I know. If you are someone like me who thought that the Beastie Boys were nothing more than “Brass Monkey” or “Sabotage”, or if you’ve yet to plunge headfirst into the wonders of their catalogue, I encourage you to at the very least give Hello Nasty a listen. And let me assure you, it’ll take you to another dimension.