The Louis Theroux Podcast - S8 EP6: Mike D discusses breaking rap into the mainstream, the infamous hydraulic penis, and disbanding the Beastie Boys

Episode Date: July 13, 2026

Louis sits down with Grammy award-winning rapper, producer and former Beastie Boy Mike D. Speaking ahead of the release of his first solo album, Thank You, Mike tells Louis about breaking rap into the mainstream, the mechanics behind the Beastie Boys’ 20 foot hydraulic penis, and breaking up the band after Adam Yauch’s death.  Warnings: Strong language and adult themes.     Links/Attachments:    Song: Rapture, Blondie (1980)  https://open.spotify.com/track/1hQr0D1ZXbGHFcWLhusijv     Book: Everybody’s Fly, Fat Five Freddy with Mark Rozzo (2026)  https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/775871/everybodys-fly-by-fab-5-freddy-with-mark-rozzo/     Song: Cooky Puss, Beastie Boys (1983)  https://open.spotify.com/track/7DZSImZVNfImxqehwNtPuB     Song: Rapper’s Delight, Sugarhill Gang (1979)  https://open.spotify.com/track/7sZDbHZiuHEzS00vzCuhqS     Song: Good Times, Chic (1979)  https://open.spotify.com/track/0PQFPcSK1gnBGlbV4CZCG0     Song: The Message, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five (1982)  https://open.spotify.com/album/4dEczweFPXeLMMVD1zIdi7     Song: Sucker M.C.’s, Run-D.M.C. (1983)  https://open.spotify.com/track/3hx5R8nOKu5zvhlfDNSIQC     Album: Licensed to Ill, Beastie Boys (1986)  https://open.spotify.com/album/11oR0ZuqB3ucZwb5TGbZxb     Radio Show: The Goon Show (1951-1960) - BBC   https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0072vdz     Film: National Lampoon’s Animal House (1978)  https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077975/     Film: Caddyshack (1980)  https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080487/     Album: Paul’s Boutique, Beastie Boys (1989)  https://open.spotify.com/album/1kmyirVya5fRxdjsPFDM05     Song: Shadrach, Beastie Boys (1989)  https://open.spotify.com/track/1vIJBVsuMouxSuDxRtTaYI     Album: Hello Nasty, Beastie Boys (1998)  https://open.spotify.com/album/1HhBu55aklCwIus7KffIji     Song: Intergalactic, Beastie Boys (1998)  https://open.spotify.com/track/5fpizYGbi5IQoEraj6FP0R     Song: What We Got, Mike D (2026)  https://open.spotify.com/track/3UeGo2iTVN98fWW96iRL5p     Song: Switch Up, Mike D (2026)  https://open.spotify.com/track/1FHSvpvNWmJcpDcmsxrtbH       Credits:  Producer: Millie Chu   Assistant Producer: Beth Johnstone  Audio Mixer: Tom Guest  Video Mixer: Scott Edwards  Production Manager: Francesca Bassett   Music: Miguel D’Oliveira   Executive Producer: Arron Fellows       A Mindhouse Studios Production for Spotify   www.mindhouse.co.uk   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome back to the Louis Theroux podcast. Today I'm joined in the studio by rapper, musician and founding member of Beastie Boys, Mike D. In the early 80s, Mike co-founded the seminal hip-hop group with his bandmates, Adam Yowch, MCA, and Adam Horowitz, Ad Rock. They signed with Def Jam Records and collaborated with infamous producer Rick Rubin on their first album, Licensed to Ill in 19. The album included instant classics like Fight for Your Right to Party and No Sleep Till Brooklyn and became the first rap album to top the Billboard 200. In those days, they embraced a kind of obnoxious frat boy persona which led to lots of headlines and along with the success and understandable amount of stress. Feeling a bit overwhelmed and wanting to move on from that iteration. They made a follow-up album.

Actually, it's a brilliant album. We talk about it, Paul's Boutique, and several others that sold less well, but set them up for longevity in the industry and a lot of musical success. After Adam Yao's death from cancer in 2012, Mike and Adrock confirmed they would never perform or record as Beastie Boys again, which they've stuck to to this day. I was a fan of Beastie Boys growing up. they sort of they represented a kind of i don't know swaggering unapologetic party boy attitude that was

infectious but musically i was more a fan of the latest stuff so it was a pleasure to be able to dive into into the recordings i do a couple of impressions don't i merely i think we kept those in so you'll definitely want to hear those me doing the me doing the vocoder or an intergalactic we recorded this conversation in june this year mike was in london to promote his new album a solo offering called Thank You, which will be released on the 28th of August this year. It's the first solo album from A Beastie Boy. A quick warning, this conversation contains strong language and adult themes, all that and much, much more coming up. Welcome. Thank you for hosting. Thank you for guest. Is that fair to say? I think so. I'll do my best. Guesting. I'll be my best to be a professional

guest, you know, I won't stay longer than two days. They say guests are like... I'll clean up after myself. Gets are like fish. Yeah, I know. After two days they go off. My girlfriend and partner, because she... Is that an angle of phrase?

Because she says that. She loves saying that. Really? Gets are like fish. They go off, yeah, after two days. We won't take that long. Yeah. This is a thrill for me.

I'm a fan. I'm a little younger. I grew up listening to hip-hop, though, and remember very very... very clearly when Beastie Boys happened. That first wave, it was a kind of cultural convulsion, wasn't it? So I'd like to talk to you about that. You've got new music coming out.

I'm going to talk about that. I'm going to start in a weird place, though, if that's all right. I'm weird. The weirder, the better. All right. To what extent can you take credit for the term, it's a hair term. I know where you're going with this. The mullet.

Am I not supposed to say some kind of derogatory term? I'm going to cancel for saying mullet now. It's a fish. Everyone knows what the mullet. He was rocking a mullet. He had a mullet. Everyone knows that it's a very widely used term.

It's almost like a comedy word, but it's a fish originally. But what people don't know is that Beastie Boys are credited with coming up with the term. And my first exposure to the term was in Grand Royal, your magazine, where you did this, this was in 19. maybe? We did an in-depth

historical exploration of the mullet hairstyle, yeah. Business at the front party at the back. Yeah. Ice hockey hair is another... That's another term. Another term. Which had been popular in the... At least in North America, that was a term

because you've got, like, it was, you know, it was a thing for a while. Like, you'd have these, like, ice hockey players in the hair would kind of be, like, hanging down below their helmet, down their neck. You're saying it was a great look. To my mind, it was horrific.

And because I associated it with Michael Bolton. I would say he's a mullet proponent. At the time, he would have been. It seemed to me like everything that was wrong with a certain aspect of the culture. It seemed to embody kind of yuppie, like, oh, I'm about my business, but I know how to have fun. Well, actually, the mullet was much more blue-collar than yuck. Well, it's true. In the states, actually.

I think that's probably true as well. I mean, I don't want to get all classist on it. but what it was. Like, because it was, it was this thing of like, you could kind of keep a decent job, right? Like you could be working in like the,

the high-fi shop or something. And like, you know, wear a colored shirt. But then the second you got off, you could just wear a T-shirt and you're kind of like rocking out a little bit. Yeah. So conceptually,

it's sound. Yeah, you're right. No one feels like a snob. Thank you for that. But then I was, I think, were miscredited.

Like, we didn't invent the term. The hairstyle predated us, and I think the term existed. We just loved using it and had a good laugh. You know, just a cultural observation there. Yeah, well, I mean, I'm going to take this awkward moment and use it to pivot onto an observation about, I think it always felt as though you were tapped into something culturally.

and that growing up in New York, New York is obviously one of the greatest cities in the world. And one of the special things about it, like LA's great too, but you've got that concentration. Everyone is forced together for good or ill in Manhattan and the five boroughs, but you are exposed to stuff. So you, as Jewish kids growing up, relatively well off, but you were mixing in circles where you might hear some hip-hop and rap. And here's me telling you your fucking story, which is the wrong way around. I agree with it.

I think, and I think, look, that's what my colleague, Adam Horvitz, Ad Rock, and I really tried to do in the Beastie Boys book, was kind of communicate this thing of like we only, as a band, and the work we made only would have been possible with us being born and bred and living in New York City at the time that we lived there. Because you really did. It's like what you just said, we had this, there was this incredible concentration

that was totally unique to New York, that different than to anywhere. You know, you have all of this music at different kinds of music that you could walk just like a few, you know, as kids we would literally walk, you'd walk down one block and you'd hear salsa blaring out of like the salsa club. Then you'd like, we'd be like, oh, we got to get to the mud club.

That's where, you know, all this like new music is happening that we want to hear the DJs might play. And then all of a sudden you start hearing hip hop and you're like, wait, what is that? You know, and that was like the most exciting revolutionary music by far that we had ever heard. So the second we heard that, it was like, oh, we have to do that. But my point is that all of that coexisted in one night

you could really partake, you know, your starter could be from here, your main could be from there, your desert from there. You know, you had this total satisfying, all-encompassing, multifaceted musical meal night after night in the meal. That's a Vegas buffet of cultural offerings and musical selections. I was struck reading up when you, you came up listening to The Clash, though they were, I think, somewhat formative for you.

Yeah, definitely. Misfits, bad brains. What was your first exposure to hip-hop and how deep were you into hip-hop? I grew up like It was like sort of there were the punk and new wave and post punk groups That was like my first love like whether it was the clash Or

Like talking heads Elvis Costello The Slits Anyway we grew up on that and loving All that Then it was sort of like the next thing was then I went to go see the bad brains And that was like somehow

At least with my Young teenage Point of sort of testosterone own levels or whatever. That just seemed like, all right, that's, that's my music. You know, where... The bad brains were a, would you call them punk? It was hardcore. I would say hardcore. But they were black. But they were black. But not kind of in a black tradition, if you

like. Well, yeah, that I guess that's what I, I guess maybe that's also one of the things that made it even more interesting. It's like the, okay, here's every rule. Now take them, like, you know, wrap them up in this piece of paper and then throw it in the bin. And that's like what the bad brains were. You know, they, they come from this like studied, you don't free jazz playing background they were really good on their instruments and they played really reductive hardcore punk music at lightning speed yeah so it was like that was it was just literally thrilling but I was as thrilling as that was when we all for all of us when we heard rap music it was like that was the music that where everything stopped like literally the

world stopped and the world finally made sense at the same time for me because there's like that here is this is this music that trumps everything else this is more revolutionary this is more yeah i guess like i would use the term modern it was completely set itself apart from anything that had come prior to it right it didn't it's like it's funny because hip-hop has a history but then it exists sort of devoid of history felt like a ground zero moment musically. Like this has changed everything.

Yeah. I mean, I still really remember hearing like Grandmaster Flash and the wheels of steel, which is like kind of the first acts of turntableism on a record where he's scratching

and he's sampling other records to make his record. So it just seems so exciting. And at the age I was, I was just trying to figure out what is he doing? You know, and then we started to go to like the hip-hop

clubs like hip hop started to come downtown like i was too scared to go i guess i could have gone as like a 15 year old up to harlem world but that would have been a very terrifying you know it's like just being like a white kid going up to like a completely black club filled with like grown-ups to like four in the morning was like a scary idea but then once hip-hop started to come to like the new york downtown clubs, that was like this just incredibly exciting moment. And I don't think just for us, you know, I mean, like that, I think like even Blondie Rapture came out of that, you know. I was listening to Fab Five Freddy's audiobook.

He'd gone up to these uptown hip-hop shows, and he's from Brooklyn. He'd gone up to these shows, and then comes back downtown and tells Debbie Harry and Chris Stein from Blondie all about it. And they, you know, they immediately had this sort of openness that they just immediately were like, yeah, we should be, we should be doing this. And they made rapture, you know. This is like mid-80s, is it? 83, 84? Yeah, I guess, yeah. Yeah. So you're sort of 15, 16 years old? I'm trying to think is we put out a record called Cookie Puss.

That was your first record. It was the second record, actually. We had a hardcore punk record that came out before I graduated. high school. So that would have been like 82, 83 or something. The 83 I guess was like our but that was just, that was, and then we made cookie pus after that. So that would have been like around 84 I guess.

79, they used to say that the first rap record with 79 Sugar Hill gang. They used to say that. Yeah, yeah. Well, the thing is with the Sugar Hill gang is very, it's that rapper's delight is controversial because it was in, especially in Heinz's The chic sample, has it?

Yeah, yeah. Good times, yeah, good times baseline. I was not to say it's replayed, but it's... I'm still going. Okay, sorry. This is something you do a lot in the spare of time. Human baselines. I'm available for parties, bummits, for weddings.

Okay. Or albums. Okay, fair. So... Some listeners aren't as across the musical history. So they know that track. No, I think it's known the world over, but it's... very strange rap where he talks about going to a house and the food just ain't no good.

Chicken tastes like wood. Chicken tastes like wood. I mean, people don't, I don't want my, I don't want wood. No one wants that. I don't want wooden chicken. No. Back in those days, you could rap about, you didn't have to be like talking about what's happening, you know, social injustice or, you know, slinging drugs or whatever.

Like living in the outlaw life, you could just talk about the quality of the chicken you when you visited someone. Which is fair. I think there's, I think, well, I do think that's one of the beautiful things of rap music. It can be sort of, in hip-hop culture, you can, like, swallow up and be inclusive of anything and everything. It's about invention and reinvention. So, in other words, if you don't sort of have a singular voice within rap music, this might be a controversial take, but I'd say if you don't have a singular voice within rap or hip-hop, you really don't have a voice in a rapper.

or you're not contributing to the sort of the history or the evolution of rap or hip hop. You know, it thrives, whereas I think a lot of other music are more tradition-based. Well, it said to me once that rap is unique in music in that it's highly unusual for someone to cover someone else's rap, because the rap is taken to be an expression of something deep and true about you. Like the idea of you covering an NWA lyric,

do you know what I mean? It would be weird. But I don't think it's just content. I think it's also that like rap it's about being stylistically singular like if your voice sounds like somebody else is whereas in singing

there's sort of more of a standard set like oh you sing well I mean there's a thing of being a good rapper but there's a gazillion different colors and flavors of what that good rapping is but anyway where are we so I strayed from Sugar Hill gang rappers

like because I think it's an interesting thing is looking back at it it was taking rap music at the time time and it literally took lyrics from a group called Colcrush brothers. It used to perform at Harlem World, Grandmaster Kaz and Cold Crush, and took some of their lyrics, and it literally was like a different group performing those lyrics, but over what at the time was like a radio-friendly track. So in a sense, it's commercially brilliant, right?

Because it took something that's like existing, was really exciting in Harlem and the Bronx and putting it under a record in a way that could actually play on the radio, which at the time, it was like too rough and too scary to play on like daytime radio. But on the other hand, it's sort of like it is what it is, right? It's this like kind of like toned down rap music. And then I think you had this quick evolution from that of like there's a record I talked about Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steelware. Then that was a first like sampling record. And then Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five made the song of the message. And I think you were just talking about like sort of social messages versus the chicken taste like wood narrative.

It's like a jungle sometimes. I won't do it. I won't do too much of it. You're your baseline? What is the baseline? Well, that's more the synth line. That's the synth line. That is the synth line. It's the synth line. Well, I'll do this. You can sign up for your human base plane and I'll do the synth packaged deal. Yeah. If you're really interested, you can talk to my age.

I see, I think we got something here. You were, is it fair to say Beastie Boys were the first white rappers to blow up? I get, there definitely were other white rappers. We were probably the first, yeah, commercially. God, it's like I'm uncomfortable even saying it, but yeah, somehow it worked. Why is that? I'm a commercial. I guess I think we didn't aspire to that, right? We came from like this like punk rock place. And then to us, rap music was like punk rock plus because it was like way more radical, way more inventive, way more completely new and original than say punk or hardcore punk

or New Wave was even. So yeah, I guess I'm not comfortable saying commercial because that wasn't our aspirate. That wasn't what we aspired to then. What we were inspired to is we were literally in love with rap music and the fact that we actually got to make it. And then not only got to make it, we got to make it around, like, in the company of, like, Run DMC, who sort of acted like our mentor or older brother figures, who were like, so Run DMC changed, for me, changed a history of hip hop again because you had the records that we've just been talking about. And then Run DMC came out with, like, Sucker

MCs. It was just a drum machine and a little bit of scratching, and the exchange of run and DMC's and that was just absolutely radical. And that played, there was a moment in time in New York City where there was, you could, you could not escape that song. Like walking down the block, it was like, I remember really specifically, it was like summer, it was hot, you'd be walking down the block and you would, even in the daytime, you would hear that song blasting out of like five to ten different cars within an hour, you know?

And so it was just like, it was culture that took, over and changed how everybody thought rap music could sound. You were bulking slightly or jibbing at the notion that you became super commercial, nevertheless you really did, didn't you? You became huge, almost to the extent where you got imprisoned by a certain version of yourself, a media depiction, which to begin with, it sounds like you lent into a bit. And the signature anthem, which is still huge, I don't know if you, If you feel like you're proud of it, if it dogs you,

if you ambivalent or what your feelings are, but fight for your right to party, which was probably my first exposure to your music. I watched this Spike Jones documentary slash live show, filmed live show, where you talk about that. And one of the through lines for the film is this idea of you maturing and attempting to escape from what became an oppressive label of being this sort of party frat boy band.

And what I hadn't appreciated was, actually partly that original iteration was tongue in cheek like that you were sort of playing up obviously I knew it was playing up but I didn't realize it was almost intended as a satirical take on fratboy culture originally and then it got blurry I think you even give a quote where you go we didn't know what was a joke and what wasn't a joke

the lines became real blurry do you want to say anything about how that all justated yeah I mean it's funny it's an interesting for us it's interesting because it's I think we embraced comedy as much as we embraced rap music and as much as we embraced music. Like I kind of actually, I always felt inspired by it. Then later in life, like I would watch things about the Beatles,

and they would talk about their relationship with Peter Sellers, and that was it the Goon Squad. The Goon Show. The Goon Show, right? And that that was very formative for them. And for us, we grew up on these, like, kind of, They were like these very fratty comedies, like these, these comedies that were being made in Hollywood sort of post-Saturday night live, like with like Chevy Chase and Bill Murray. Animal House.

And Animal House is definitely, I mean, literally Frat House, right? That was Belushi and Dan Aykroyd. And then you had Chevy Chase with, what was it, the Fletch? The Fletch movies. The very esteemed Fletch franchise. What were the other? Kedyshack? Wow, that's the real classic, actually.

The enduring classic of the batch is. Caddyshack. I mean, that's like literally scripture at this point. But anyway, all those comedies were really important to us. And so that was just kind of part of our stew. But it's a funny thing with being, I guess, youthful naivete. We thought it was hilarious to us. And like you said, but then it starts to feel different once you put that out in the world and people think, oh, you actually are this. And then it's that funny thing of then you're sort of playing at being this, thing enough that you actually to some degree become that a little bit. And then you realize like, wait, hold on, this was not the intention. It does not feel good in your own skin at a certain.

You know, I mean, I guess thankfully we had each other. We could sort of all realize that together. I don't know. It's funny because I think it's we very easily could have just disbanded completely at that point. Right. What point are we talking about? After sort of what I would call the commercial success of license to ill and coming to the UK and being on the front of tabloids and, you know, and Adam getting arrested in Liverpool after this show that we played there, which was not, that was just where the culture was at. That was not, you know, our doing, which. Let's drill into that for a second, do justice to that. Because in a way, the UK is a great crucible for America. to discover how small the world can be, like in terms of the media culture and the tabloids turning

on something and deciding, well, we can sharpen our claws against this and sell some papers. And meanwhile, you know, not to let you completely off the hook, like the stage show was outrageous. Yeah. Part of it, it ended with an enormous hydraulic penis going up. Well, I mean, it's, it's, yeah, it was hydraulic. And it's, you know, it's anatomical of, what, 50% of, what, 50% of, the world. I don't know what the male-to-female ratio is. You say that like that explains more than, I think people already had that information. Yeah. I'm not sure how much that added to the picture.

How did it work? That might be more helpful. With a hydrant. There was a pump or? No, no, no, pumps involved. Whose idea was that? Oh, God. I literally don't remember individually any one of us being able to take singular credit over it, but I remember the three of us thinking that it was an absolute stroke of genius that we'd just come up with the most idiotic idea ever and that we were sitting in a room with somebody who was actually going to build it and it was actually achievable. You know, it was very absurd.

It's one of the things where, like, something is so absurd, it just feels great. Then there's the moment then when that sort of becomes, part of your reality. And that still would have been fine, except then it kind of like, in its way, it kind of like became this moment of like idol worship as like part of the encore. And then it's like, oh my God, what do we create? I mean, not that. I don't think we knew that we even could process that intellectually as that was all happening. And then I think when we got the thing of coming to the UK at that time is coming from New York, we had no, we really, we didn't know what a tabloid

was, you know, of course we had like the Daily News and he had New York Post, but I don't know, I think it's, yeah, it is different. I mean, I don't think it's slightly, it's different, you know, I mean, those newspapers might not be of the highest caliber and they're certainly like

sensationalist to a certain degree. Get Lost Beasties was one headline. The other one, are you ready for this one? Pop idols sneer at dying kids. Was it dying kids? Am I right? Yes.

dying kids. I mean, you can't get more fucked up than that. That can't feel good when you see that in the pain. No, and it was really alienated. I mean, it's interesting because they're coming here

and literally having that in our faces and that's the reality. And then that becomes, at that time, all those tabloids were a huge part of, that's what the media was here. So the fact that these things that felt really hurtful

are on the cover of a newspaper and then you have this whole sort of energy of reaction to that. It literally felt like it was like spiraling completely out of our control, right? So I think there's part of us as a group where we felt like, oh God, we don't want to do this anymore at all. We're over, you know, we're over this and thank, I mean, thank goodness so somehow then we realized that, no, actually we did have a lot of fun

making this and that's what we made is separate from how people take it, but then at the same time, I think that was the beginning of us realizing, like, wait, what we do say actually can be impactful. And we have to actually, it was very constructive and instructive for us. Because then we realized, like, okay, what we say can really make an impact, can make a difference. And then I think we started to sort of experience the flip side of how that felt after sort of Paul's Boutique and check your head the ensuing two albums that we put out after that

after those came out and then we got to see how those were received even though they were not received on this massive commercial scale like what licensed to ill was or for that matter in the case of Paul's Boutique, tragic commercial failure. Right, well we should talk about that because when you were making Paul's Boutique, I was amazed to read like that. Didn't flop, but it didn't significantly underperformed.

It's such a great album. And I think it's now recognized as not just a hip-hop classic, maybe just a classic of music. You'd moved to L.A. There were, you'd broken from Russell Simmons and Rick Rubin. You were working with the Dust Brothers. You were having fun, discovering the West Coast lifestyle a little bit, using sample, many layered samples.

It said that album couldn't be made now. The samples would be too expensive to come. clear. Well, also technologically, it was a unique moment in time. We were all a sudden able to take, basically imagine, we were able to take Jimmy Hendricks and put him in a room with an old jazz player and a string section from a symphonic record and, you know, something from somebody's comedy record. And that was our orchestra. Yeah. But that's quite normal now, right? But that back then it was new. Right, but that's my point is that at the time, that was so exciting to us. And then,

I think it's an interesting, even though the record I just made it is this process of like every time you have to kind of, at least for me, I have to like fall in love with what I'm making. I think that's part of like the creative process. Thank God. And there's also all this insecurity and all these other things that come with that. But you fall in love with what you're making. And we were so in love with making Paul's Routique is so excited about. If anything, we felt like, oh, wow, like these ideas, everything is more exciting than what we made on license to ill. But we didn't, I guess, you know, if you were a record company president, you'd be like, there's not a single song on here that sounds like what made license to ill popular. So why is this going to be popular?

And it wasn't. Was that the thing? And it was absolutely crushing. But hang on, it's near a slight case of the management had changed at Capitol Records and suddenly the people who had brought you on had gone. And I was told that the marketing budget for Paul's boutique was. taken away and reassigned to a Donny Osmond record. Well, there was a moment, yeah. Is that true? Can you confirm that?

Yeah, no, we literally had a meeting with a guy who at the time had become the president of Capitol Records. I think because the guy who was the president when we got signed and it was such a flop, he got sacked. So we had to literally go in. We were making a plea like we wanted to make another video for what song was it on Paul's boutique. Shadrack. No, Shadrack, we actually managed to make the video, which is because of where technology was at, it was like ludicrously expensive,

and now I think anybody could make that video on their iPhone. What was the key line for Shadrach? Ironically. For Shadrach Mishakabendigo. What was the... I've got more stories than J.D.'s got Salinger. I hold the title, you are the challenger. J.D. Salinger only wrote 10 stories.

stories. But we all know his name, don't we? Did that not cross your mind? Wait, I heard something. I think the mic just dropped.

I think I heard that. That was the mic drop. Yeah, 10 stories. We made 10 records. You know, there's a lot of parallels. He's actually known for having a very small output.

But it rhymes with challenger. There we go. I think now you just owned the problem. You, a producer was Rick Rubin. it was said that he was a big fan of wrestling and that he encouraged you to take on you know wrestling classically there's the good guys and the bad guys the bad guys whip up

the crowd by doing horrible things everyone goes nuts and he encouraged you to play up to kind of bad boy personas is there anything in there? Yeah it was we had a successful collaboration with Rick because we actually came from quite different worlds we grew up in New York City

in Manhattan and Brooklyn Rick came from suburban Long Island. And so he loved wrestling, he loved heavy metal. We loved punk rock. And then it's not to say that there wasn't a lot that we totally agreed on and met on. We loved the bad brains. We loved the Ramones. And we loved Run DMC.

You know, like that we had a lot in common. But that's what made, I think, you know, Rick was a very good producer for license to ill because he loved ACDC and Led Zeppelin and then that's not where we came from. But then that collided with our worlds. And then he would push this idea of like the bad boy wrestler. And it's kind of like that thing of like just getting the reaction is everything. You know, just thinking about hip hop and

it's striking how you've been very much embraced I think you've like not that I get to decide this but you know I think the way you've managed your place as white performers in a culturally, you know, largely black space has been admirable.

Like to what extent are you aware of I don't know like needing not to decide to own it too much not apologising but nevertheless paying respect to the people who created the music originally? I mean, are you conscious of all of that? Yeah, I think actually it's interesting with rap.

We were so fortunate to be surrounded by these groups that really were our peers, but they're also the people we looked up to, you know, when I'm speaking to, like, run DMC, public enemy. And then even later on, like into De LaSoul and other people where it's like Tribe Called Quest, where we got to actually have, like, creative relationships with all of these people. and either perform with them or make records with all of them and feel like, yeah, there was a lot of power in that because we, I think we respected their music so much.

When NWA blew up, did you get on board with that straight away? And there was a pivot towards actually almost histrionic level of violence, you know, shooting and killing and disrespecting women. I don't want to sound disapproving like I'm a fan of the music, but how did you react to that? It's funny. I remember hearing the cassette of the first EZE single. It was familiar to me because I definitely think there was something like that I think Dr. Dre had definitely listened to License to Ill. I think he would say the same thing. So I'm not saying that as a negative at all because I think Dre is an incredible producer. And I think Dre actually does cite License to Ill as being like formative in terms of part of what informed to his palette on the purpose. first on the early EZE and NWA records. But I think when as soon as I heard EZE, I was like, this is going to be huge.

Like this there's something like I, there's this, this is it. Like there's that, that punk excitement and originality. But then at the same time, then when it's sort of like, when NWA blew up, on the one hand, it just became another iteration of like the same way like when we came to Britain licensed to ill era. and then there was this huge reaction to it, then all of a sudden, NWA is getting banned by the FBI or whatever the thing.

Yeah, it's just the thing about the reaction, it's, you know, there always has to, it's kind of, again, like a little bit like the pro wrestling thing, right? There's, I guess, yeah, there has to be the bad guy. There has to be the villain. And so we were at NWA was at Eminem was it, Marilyn Manson was it, who else? I mean, you know, way before us was probably like Ozzy Osbourne.

Yeah. We seemed to have this. whatever, like, there is that cultural moment. Although now, I would like to point out that I think now we're in a place where politicians behave so badly.

Right. That there's no place. Us pop stars have no, we don't stand a chance. Russell Simmons, Mike Dionne Russell Simmons, this is you. You said about.

That is me. He just needed three white rappers to get on MTV. It could have been anybody. that's true and it isn't true well you said it I know I said it but I think I hear it I'm like oh that's an oversimbing

I guess well I would say this it's a sound bite right so it's in a sense it is true but it's an oversimplification because that's only giving one part of the story so yes that is true but it worked

I think in hindsight because we are already a group that came from this downtown New York culture and we knew out of He couldn't have just grabbed three guys off the street. We had our personality and we, you know, to Russell's savvy credit, although he did ultimately, you know, rob a lot of money from us. Do we, are we legally, that could cause us legal issues.

Why? Has he acknowledged that? He would probably dispute it and say, well, the Beastie Boys, they weren't going to make another record for me, so I didn't pay them. But, you know, that doesn't, just because you have creative differences. I just got to say something like... Russell Simmons denies that he robbed money from the Beastie Ponce. Oh, he probably does, but he's also exiled in Bali, isn't he?

I think there have been multiple allegations of sexual misconduct. You know, to us he was the biggest manager in the world, which obviously was part of his power, right? Because he was the biggest manager in rap music. So that was like a positive thing when we felt like he was on our side. But then when he used that power to say, no, you've got to do this or else I'm not going to pay you, that didn't feel very good.

And then I think he really didn't understand. He was used to dealing with people that would buy into this idea of money being the main thing that they wanted as the outcome of their creative work. And because we came from like this kind of, you know, we were more entitled in terms of coming from solid middle class, you know, like homes where we weren't, we didn't have a desperate need for the finances. And more importantly, we all grew up in these households where, like what we thought and what we felt and mattered. Right. So when Russell confronted us with do what I think you should do or else, there's no way we're going to do what you say. It's like this, we are the, this is our band and we're going to do what we want to do. What did he want you to do?

Well, he wanted us to immediately make another record and you would have, you know, for him, he would have wanted us to make license to L Part 2, right? Because he didn't, he didn't see any sort of like long-term future, either in us as a group. You know, for him, it was like about immediate return on investment. And he was very honest about it. He didn't think rap music was ever going to turn into catalog music, which it has. But at that time, when it was being made, for him, that wasn't a possibility at all. There was a whole different paradigm for rap.

It was mainly singles music. And then if you did an album, okay, three albums max. If you're lucky, you'll get three albums. Not even three. Right, exactly. So he bought into that. He bought into that belief and just thought, these audiences aren't going to stay with you for that long.

They move on quickly. Yeah, and that was literally what Russell would say to us. And then back in those days, it would have seemed ridiculous. Like, what, LL Cool Jays going to be 60 years old, going around like Mick Jagger doing an old, it would have seemed ridiculous, the idea of longevity. I can see why he might have thought that. It's part of music for kids.

And now you have LL Cool J doing huge tours every year with Nas and whoever else, you know and it's just important catalog music anyway very sorry I'm with you I'm with you a whole tangent that was a good tangent Russell Simmons

if you know where Russell Simmons whereabouts are in Bali a phone number will be coming up on the screen and we'll be accepting tip off investigations will be forthcoming okay

and that's legally fine yeah because I'm going to say allegedly you just say allegedly and it's all good Yeah, I guess You killed someone.

You killed someone. Allegedly. Allegedly. Was there a division of labor between the three of you? How did you split duties? Was there a lead singer? There's no lead singer.

I think, I wouldn't say as much division as labor is sort of like this collaboration where we were each other's best editors and we would kind of like push each other

because it's worse actually I've been I've enjoyed working on like I'm making my my record that's coming out this year as much as I miss you know yowk and and it's scary not working you know as as a group I enjoy doing it because I'm there were so many years where I think about every rhyme I was going to say or perform or write because it was always a little bit of like, what's you get to think of this? And what's the other thing?

And then I think there's a lot of positive that came. You were all thinking that. I think we were all thinking. It was like the friendly competition thing. You know, we wanted to impress each other first. But yeah, I think that's, you know, I swear it's interesting with being in a band, right? Because there can be different moments

where different people can sort of assume, even within an album on a song, one person can assume leadership and not. Like, I think we had that as a band, especially, and there's times that are worked really well. And Hello Nasty, we were able to each kind of like execute on like these ideas that we had individually, but bring those into a group.

Is that the one, is that the one, does that have sabotage on it? I know, it's after sabotage. It has intergalactic. Oh, intergalactic. Interlactic. The baseline, baseline thing, good. this, this, that was all right. No, don't, don't try to monetize.

How do you, don't try to monetize that. How do you do? I don't have to be making money on it. I built a huge human baseline platform for you earlier in the show. And now you're going to trash it all. It's like, like my financial advisor. How did you, how do you do that? How, what is that?

What technologically, yeah, it actually was. We actually bought at the time, was this single rack space module vocoder, and it was just like, it was extremely satisfying. Once we plugged that in in the studio, and Adam Horowitz, AdRoc had the beat, like the kick and snare beat that we were like, we were desperate to do something with

because we were just like, all right, this beat, that's it. And then we just kind of had this idea of like, hmm, what have we all, instead of like each of us rapping as individuals, what have we all, like, we kind of make it, that it's one cadence and one tone that we all kind of like hit, one rhythm, one cadence, so we all hit. I might be, it sounds like it kind of Wu-Tang.

I get a slight Wu-Tang flavor on that. It's something about almost Method Man. Anyway, maybe that's all in my head, but there's something about the delivery. It's very punchy short. Tell me, I'd have to look at the timeline, because when did enter the 36 chambers, Wutang Clan come out? 93, I want to say.

Really, that early? Oh, wow. Wasn't it? Are you Googling it? 93. 90. I'm so thrilled. I don't know what to say now. This episode is brought to you by Claude. I have Claude on my phone.

It's an AI that helps out with projects. It gives me advice. I asked it for the best episodes of the Louis Theroux podcast. It came back very quickly, mentioning Adam Buxton, John Wilson, Marco Pierre White, all solid episodes. Nice to have Claude. is a listener. Claude is the AI for minds that don't stop at good enough. It's the collaborator

that actually understands your entire workflow and thinks with you, whether you're debugging code at midnight. Not something I do very often. But you might, or strategizing your next business move, I definitely do that. Claude extends your thinking to tackle the problems that matter. Claude's been helpful for me. You know, sometimes you just need like a screen grab, like a metaphorical one, a sense of what the landscape looks like. What's the key part of the narrative? You know, Steve Coogan, what are the key episodes, what are the parts of his story that I need to dig into, the landmarks on the journey, and it'll give you citations. You can click through to the relevant websites, magazine articles, stories, podcasts, and like that, in the blink of an eye, you have

all the information at your fingertips. For problems worth solving, get started with Claude at clod.a.ai slash Theru. That's clod.a.ai slash t-h-e-r-o-u-u-x. And check out Claude Pro, which includes all of the features mentioned in today's episode. How's your energy? You're all right? My energy? Is it okay? Is that an ageist remark? No, you look great. You've said that... Well, you know, Adam Horvitz, I have this joke for a long time that people are like, it's more of a New York thing. People are like, are you okay, man? You look, you look tired. There's like there's no quicker way to get somebody feeling totally unseeded.

Yeah. Or other ones is just look at the, just look slightly above their eyes. Just look at their hair lines. Just don't meet their eyes. And then they're like, what is going on? Someone once said, being a weird kid from a sorry mom, weird family, is just kind of weird, but it's also pretty lonely. That sounds like something I said. You said that.

in your documentary. Yeah, on the one hand, it was great. I thank God I was born into the family of origin that I was born into, right? Because my dad was in the business of art. He was an art dealer. And so there were all these artists and strong opinion people around our house in 70s and 80s, New York. And so I thought it was totally normal to voice your opinion. and be loud and feel self-affirmed in it.

And I also thought it was the most normal thing to me in the world was to be completely wrapped up in your own creative pursuits. So that was all incredibly inspiring. But then my dad died when I was 15. And both my brothers were quite a bit older than me. So I was the only one left at home. And so it became, it was just like my mom and I, and I didn't really, I didn't have the tools to understanding

the word grieving or grief or any of the process or any of it, you know. And I remember like I got my mom sort of just, she just wanted to do the right thing, but she didn't really, because she kind of comes from, you know, Jewish background growing up in the South Bronx with no money, you know, really basically poverty and, you know, growing up to immigrant parents and great depression, you know, extermination of Jews in Europe. So she, like very, she was an incredibly brilliant person, but she was also emotionally very stoic, right? I think just out of total necessity.

You know, we talk a lot now to 20, 26 on esteemed shows such as yours about allegedly being emotionally open and vulnerable. You know, we throw the word vulnerable out there. You know, in her generation, that was not possible to be a part of that discussion. And, you know, like, when you're growing up in the Great Depression and everybody's losing their jobs and nobody has a job and no one understands what's happening and they're in a downward spiral. And anyway, she was doing, I think in hindsight, the best she could. And she, like I said, she was a brilliant woman, but she didn't have a great emotional openness because that's something she'd ever been taught or been brought up with. And so I just remember, you know, for me, it just became sad.

I'm left at home. She's sad. I'm sad. And it's just the two of us in this house. You know, so that's where like it was weird. And then it was lonely at the same time. But I think that was also kind of the root when I look back at it. Like that's that's where like punk rock was my therapy.

You know, then like making, like being in a punk rock band, I was literally just yelling it out. that was my, my, like, emotional release. So, you know, thank God I had that. Wow. Interesting. But no, but I do think it is something that is, it's all in there in terms of what I ultimately would do and would make, right? I had this, like, artistic empowerment and feeling like, of course it's normal, that I'm white and I'm in a rap group because, like, this idea of, like, just people

doing impossible creative things was a totally normal. normal thing in my household. And I had to also kind of like invent stuff for myself too, right? Because my brothers were out of the home. That's where I think also then that I was so happy to find the band ultimately because that became my found family of choice. Chosen family, they call it. Family of Troy.

Chosen family is the term, I believe. Is your mom with us? She is not. She died. That's a stupid expression. She died at the age of 93 just, just before COVID. And yeah, and thankfully actually we got to go, I got, I got to be with her long enough that then we actually had like a, it was interesting because she really, she, she, at an older age,

she got to really change and we had a much more emotionally connected, uh, relationship. And that, that I really give her so much credit because that can't be easy. It's all easy at any age, right? But to be older and do that. Were you, was she on the ride with you? when you were getting criticized for alleged misogyny and was that, was she able to support you through any of that or not really? I do vividly remember calling her from the United Kingdom in the midst of like, you know,

1987 craziness and tabloid headlines and being like, you know, this just feels so completely strange and surreal. I don't even know what the words I used to describe it at that time. It felt so alienating because you almost feel like here's this huge storm that's going on that you're not even part of yet you're the epicenter of it. So I do really remember calling her and thank God I had a mom that I could call and just have her listen to me. But yeah, she wasn't patchy. And actually it was the opposite because I remember there were many times in life where I would call her

and kind of want her to tell me what to do. and she was actually very smart that way she'd be like her big line was you'll figure it out so I would say you know as parents like we kind of like try to I think we I have this thing where I think we

we try to take or replicate the things that we liked that our parents did and then we try to not do or do differently the things that we didn't like that they did right and then we still screw it up anyway do you think you'll figure it out is appropriate as a parenting style i was i liked that when you said it like i do think you because you can't chew your kids food for them right yeah you want to give them a bit of advice but they they need to make

their own mistakes yeah well i think it's too my mom's having two things it's like listening is totally undervalued but is sorry what did you say what she told me that listening is totally undervalued what is undervalued stop Was that funny? No. You'd be funny if you'd got the joke straight away. I'm going to give you credit because this is the thing. You did the joke the first time and it didn't really land.

So I did it again. And you did it again. Maybe slightly better but not really. And then so you're like, I'm, I double down. Now I'm going to triple down. Yeah. And then it didn't really work. Your new album, because we're in the sort of sad portion of the podcast now.

Have you noticed the mood changed in the room, didn't it? So it feels appropriate to say, You know, you lost the third leg of your stool. Oh, look at you with your metaphors. Is that the right metaphor? Stools by definition three-legged? I mean, they often often are, or most commonly are, but sometimes they have four legs.

Exactly, but this one has three legs. Unless you count Money Mark, or maybe are that Kate Schellenbach? Yeah, I mean, really, I mean, these toys could be, are a multi-multe-legged stool. Stool and someone's. How many legs are on the Wutang outfit? Infinite. Like 50 or 60.

But this is an awkward pivot because we're being silly and this is serious. You lost the third leg of your stool when Adam Yauk passed away, died from cancer. The new album is called Thank You. The track Thank You is about him? It's not about him as much as he's certainly part of it.

It's about, I had been away, I was with my partner, my girlfriend, Nadia, and we are on this meditation retreat in Northern California. And I just kind of came back from that. And we've been recording the record already for a good amount of time. And I came back with this, I don't know, just, it's an interesting thing being in nature and being silent

and having the gift of a sitting Buddhist practice for a bit. I just came back with this total like kind of overwhelming feeling of gratitude for so many things of my family as it exists now. My family of origin. My, my band, which was my, I think we came up with chosen family. It was all in there. And then I was just happened to be, then I was working in the studio with the guitar player Will who's on tour with me now. And he just, we just started doing that song.

And so this thing, thank you is what came to me. And then it was actually my kids that pushed me. Like then later on I kind of had to come up with, all right, what's going to be the verse? Like what are the sort of the particulars that I'm talking about? And that's where my kids were so helpful in the making of this record. Because they would just ask me kind of like these obvious questions that like other musicians or producers, you know, they think of me as like, oh, that's my. Mark D, he knows what he's doing.

But my kids actually don't think, they think I'm thoroughly inept at most steps of the way as most kids think of their parents. They're like, all right, dad, what is this about? Like, what do you know, almost like, you know, a little, with that little tinge of being annoyed that, like, kids can have with their parents.

Like, what are you talking about here, dad? And then I just had to flesh that out a little bit. So it's not, yeah, Adam Yaga is definitely part of it, but it's that feeling, like I said, of what I came from from this band, but also all of us being kids in these clubs in New York City, having to navigate all of that together, right? Which is, it's simultaneously exciting and looking back at it, like sort of insanely scary.

It had its consequences, too. You know, we thrived in it and we survived, and we could only have become the band that we did coming from that. but we had, you know, at the same time in those clubs that we came from, like the people who were like at the door and all these people, we knew from the clubs working there that was all of a sudden AIDS hit, and I was like all these people started literally dying. And we were like, you know, I still, we had no idea how to,

what was going on, how to process that or anything as, you know, we're like 16, 17 years old. So with that, and then also just other friends who died way too young from just, you know, all the crazy stuff that people do unsupervised at a young age. I mean, I want to do tribute to Adam Yark. It's really striking in the documentary that a lot of so much of it is kind of dealing with the absence. And I think you've said that you wouldn't perform as Beastie Boys since he died. And you were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and declined the invitation to perform.

because as I understood it, you and Adam Horowitz felt that it wouldn't be Beastie Boys without Yao. It requires inclusion of the three of us. It's funny because I don't think Adam or I, we never decided like, oh, right, putting you an end to the band. It just felt like, I vividly remember, like, rock and roll Hall of Fame, we desperately wanted Yauk to be there, and at that point he was just too ill to be able to go.

he really wanted to be there. And I think what was almost most, like, resonant and sad for Adam and I was that we knew how much he wanted to be there. And that all the way up to that point, in his mind, he was going to be well enough to be there. And that ended up not being the case. And so, yeah, it's just, yeah, kind of tragic and frustrating. He died age 47. Yeah, really young. Yeah. I mean, God. Yeah. It's not that long ago. I know that is, what is that, 15? A bit more.

He was a year and a half or so, older than me, and I just turned 60 this year. Was it tough to process all on that? Yeah, I think I still, I mean, of course, it's, it's, because I think there was a lot, there's a, I can look at it now and see that there's so much wrapped up in that for me, because he was, he was part of my chosen family, He was also sort of my older brother in this very much, in that chosen family, he had that

role of like kind of older brother that I could sort of count on in that way. And just also having this really joyful creative collaboration. You know, this collaborator of yours die is tragic. And then it was also the death of sort of my identity at that time. Because from 16, up until that age of, he was 47. I would have been 46. So that's 30 years that my identity was completely wrapped up or hugely informed

by being a member of Beastie Boys. Right. So there's a lot. There's a whole lot in there, for sure. How does it feel now returning to music? Is this the first project you've done

post Beastie Boys? I mean, I've done, I've produced. and I've written on other people's records and I've done like little things but as in terms of like I'm going to release a whole project under my name. Yes, my first foray.

Does it feel good? Yeah, I mean, I mean, well, listen, it's a lot of things. It's not all good as you know making anything creative. It's like I love the process of making it. I was actually completely fell in love all over again and with making music and getting completely lost in that creative process and working with others towards that and that felt absolutely great but then there's all the other stuff that comes with it of like oh god now i've got to release into the world oh god

now i've got to sit and talk in this serious podcast where i say alleged 16 million times And even just even in my brief time that I've been here in London recently playing these shows And like I had a really You know don't cry for me Argentina on this one But I had a really nice quiet life With my kids with my girlfriend With you know my dogs

Like everything was like great So there is part of me where I'm like Oh you know now now like my time is Really spoken for And then even the other night I was coming out of dinner in Soho and then these guys like were kind of drunk came up to me and they're like hey you're that guy from yeah you know and I'm like oh man I liked my quiet life better but you know I think that's

but that's it that's not me that's every anybody that does anything that puts them in public at all we want to have our cake and eat it too we want to we want to make what we make and we want people to interact with that but we want to be left alone and it's not even my I think for me it's not even left to look. I want to really have like that, the space to kind of just like watch everything and feel everything so I can make stuff. And so I just realized I just have to,

that's my job. I have to kind of budget what I'm doing to make sure I still get that. I've taken a lot of your time. I feel like we should land the plane. I'm not good, by the way, my girlfriend says I'm terrible landing the plane. She gives me a signal.

Really? Yeah. She gives me the landing the plane. There's a plane on the cover of license to ill, Right? Yeah. There is. Eminem then copied for one of his albums, right? Oh, he did do an homage. He did an homage. Yeah. Have you chilled with Marshall Mathers?

I've met him. I've never chilled. I would chilling like requires time and like... You've met him. Was he friendly and... Oh, he was very friendly. He's paid tribute. He said, I think it's obvious to anyone how big of an influence the Beastie Boys were on me and so many others. Well, there you go. Vanilla ice? Isn't a vanilla ice playing at Trump's, like, wrestling anniversary gala? You mean the Freedom 250?

Yeah, yeah. Is that what it is? Freedom 250 is a bit like truth social. Yeah. Freedom 250 is basically just a wrestling match, right? Though he changed the defense ministry to the Ministry of War. Because he should, by his logic, everything's kind of, anyway, I'm going on. Yeah, yeah, let's leave it.

The Freedom 250, in the last day, On my notes, it says this Trump has canceled Freedom 250, notwithstanding being lobbied by Mike D to see if he could join the roster late in the process. Alleged. That was a joke. I don't think you were asked to perform. I was not asked.

No alleged necessary. I was not asked to perform. It's lucky you weren't asked. It would have been presented with a difficult quandary and whether to accept. No, why is it difficult to say no? Okay, I was being ironic. Yeah.

I'm going to dial my irony levels down a bit. You've got a dumb American here. You know, you've got to be careful with us. You can say that. I can't. I'm half American. Did you ever meet Trump? I've been, this is going to be a weird statistic,

and maybe self-incriminating one. Your fellow New Yorker. As his fellow New Yorker, I've been in an elevator with him twice, a good amount pre-presidency at a New York Knicks game, both times at New York Knicksames So you saw the hair up close I saw the hair within the confines

Of an elevator And what was your takeaway? I mean this is obviously It was in a different place in its arc Did you get a vibe from him? No But you are aware I'm in an elevator with Donald Trump

You know Because already at this point He's got like Trump airways He's got you know He's put a lot of effort into The Trump brand Just that's like more say Trump as a New York celebrity right but it didn't seem

it didn't seem as evil then I guess I was once again very naive you're gonna go with evil yeah I think self-important would be non-controversial narcissistic

you're right I guess evil I'm putting some kind of moralistic judgment take on it but I just I do feel it just this is thing it just feels immoral to me I like the idea of government trying to govern for the people and actually provide services for the people

and actually address the needs of everybody. So is that, I don't know, so is that evil if you're actually only trying to cater to the biggest corporations in the world and the richest, the absolute wealthiest people in the world and their ideas? Your partner in crime. I'm going to leave that on the table. Ad Rock, also known as Adam Horowitz, said at an event,

I can't wrap my head around it of Trump. He is the New York City rich elite. Who got duped by that motherfucker? I don't get it at all. People look at him and us New Yorkers as awful people, so I don't get it. He's a fucking scumbag. That doesn't seem like that controversial a take, right?

He's talking about somebody who's espousing greed and not only greed, but dishonesty is the only way to get ahead. He also drew on the wells of wrestling, friendly with Vince McMan. And in a sense, everything you said about Rick Rubin and your personas and playing up to the bad boy image, Trump did his rallies and created a persona observing the code of K-fabe, you know that term? KFAP is the term they use in wrestling which is that when you're performing you're never off stage so you never admit that wrestling might not be real

you always exaggerate and you have your storylines and you never never show your hand so it's just a kind of permanent state of performance art where the spell is never broken I think actually that's really really accurate right because each day there's

some statement some it's kind of like perfect I feel like we've got the perfect full circle moment because in a weird way, you know, they're having the 250th anniversary event, right? He seems to be reminding the world of that a lot. Can you imagine anything that would be more fitting at the end, like on one, say, you know, say outside the Washington Monument, that at the end of the concert and the festivities like an enormous hydraulic penis would go up? So you're suggesting

that we rent, you get it out of storage, the hydraulic penis. I mean, obviously that's not going to happen, It doesn't feel like, because he talks so much about the size of his penis. Wait, what? Trump. Does he? Yes. He was during a debate. He was, I got no problems in that area.

Believe me. Oh, yeah, yeah, you're right. That was like an a Biden debate. People said something like that. Yeah, yeah. When I say so much, you could be like, he only said it once, but once for a president is a lot. Yeah. Well, I mean, I'd like to think, right, usually, and there was an older, there was a model in years gone by,

where if you'd said that one time, it would be considered a huge gaff, and that would be the end of it. Right, but I think you're actually, you're right, this was actually helpful for me, Jay, thank you. This was a brilliant analysis, because it is like this swirl,

this pro wrestler thing, where you just like, you, you, you, he has to stay in that role and there has to be something performative every single day. In, with that, that is that role. Yes.

So that was just, yeah, so that was just one, iteration. Thank you so much for coming by, Mike. Are you out for a bit more? You doing more dates? We will be back in the United Kingdom at a date soon to be determined in the fall. Nice. How's that for an honest but unclear answer? When does the album actually officially drop? August 28th. Thank you. August 28th. You're going to print some vinyl? Yeah, we are. We actually, I'm pretty, I'm pretty, I'm pretty, I'm. I'm proud of the vinyl packaging and the cassette package, particularly good.

I bet. I miss vinyl. I don't feel like I've listened to an album since I stopped buying vinyl, you know, in the sense of like, oh, there's the album, and I'm listening to it, and I have a set of... Yeah, the ritual. Associations with the physical object. Well, I know a few people.

I can get them to send you a vinyl album. That's finally, you've got the penny dropped. I can pull. I can pull some strings. Yeah. That took longer than I expected. I really love vinyl And welcome back

Thanks Mike for coming on the podcast Listeners and viewers Check out his album when it comes out in August There are three singles at the time of recording What We Got and Switch Up The Two I can name Switch Up is like a drum and bass It's in the drum and bass genre

What we got he feels like I was thinking about this He's up there, his rap is so loose It feels like the father of the bride at a wedding where everyone's left and his MDMA is just coming up and he's just going off the top of the dome. Like his rap is just whatever. And there's a bit where he's like, what we're going to say now, what we're going to say now. I think he gives hope to middle-aged white guys everywhere that you can just do you. Whatever you are, be that.

and if you do it in a way that feels true to who you are, then maybe it's not cringe, maybe it's kind of brilliant. And yes, I am open to revisiting the rap space with my own kind of, I don't know, rambling old guy on a vibe. After nearly all previously announced performers at the Freedom 250 concert backed out, Vanilla Ice remained on the bill. However, the free concert was called up I know that was like a cliffhanger

However, the free concert was called off hours before it was set to happen due to, quote, inclement weather Do we believe that? That feels like maybe it's an excuse for the fact that it was going to be lame. Russell Simmons The music impresario mentioned during the chat

He was brother of one of the guys in Run DMC You probably knew that. However, he was caught up in allegations of sexual misconduct. I think there was a documentary made. He denies the allegations of sexual abuse made against him. In total, more than 20 women have accused Simmons of sexual assault. The mullet was mentioned due to the fact that Beastie Boys had recorded mullethead in 1994 or 5 on the album Mill communication. But why is it called a mullet?

Is it because the hairstyle resembles a fish? Or is it because there was an old insult, apparently dating back to the 19th century, maybe, mullet head? Or is it because there was a French fashion guru called Henri Mollet, M-O-L-E-T, who championed the short at the front, long at the back look? All of those answers are available. I can't really stand by one. I'm just happy that the mullet's back.

And what's weird is I really like the mullet. Now, like it looks quite cool when I see people on Instagram, younger people. I saw last night on my Instagram feed a skateboarder with a mullet. He looked amazing. The mullet and the moustache and I can't grow a mullet because of alopecia. No, it's not funny. It's a disease that I have. Willie was smiling.

See, that's what I have to put up with. That's it for this week, apart from the credits. The producer was Millie Chu. The assistant producer was Beth Johnston. The production manager was Francesca Bassett. The music in this series was by Miguel Di Olivera. The executive producer was Aaron Fellows. This is a Mindhouse Studios production for Spotify.