CANON
AlbumBeastie Boys, 1998
Hello Nasty
ABOUT THE WORK
There’s a special kind of confidence required to become less coherent as you become more accomplished.
Hello Nasty has that confidence.
By 1998, the Beastie Boys had already passed through enough identities for several careers. Instead of resolving those identities into a mature final form, they created a colosseum for them.
The result is closer to an anonymous radio transmission than a conventional album. Rap records interrupt miniature funk experiments. Dub wanders through electro. Cheap science-fiction noises sit next to beautiful melodies. Mix Master Mike arrives to cut faster and the weird builds.
“Intergalactic” may be the record’s most obvious monument, but the pleasure of Hello Nasty is how little the rest of it attempts to resemble “Intergalactic.”
The record makes curiosity sound like discipline.
The Beastie Boys spent their career refusing to remain the people who had made the previous Beastie Boys record.
Hello Nasty might be the purest expression of that freedom.
Hello Nasty has that confidence.
By 1998, the Beastie Boys had already passed through enough identities for several careers. Instead of resolving those identities into a mature final form, they created a colosseum for them.
The result is closer to an anonymous radio transmission than a conventional album. Rap records interrupt miniature funk experiments. Dub wanders through electro. Cheap science-fiction noises sit next to beautiful melodies. Mix Master Mike arrives to cut faster and the weird builds.
“Intergalactic” may be the record’s most obvious monument, but the pleasure of Hello Nasty is how little the rest of it attempts to resemble “Intergalactic.”
The record makes curiosity sound like discipline.
The Beastie Boys spent their career refusing to remain the people who had made the previous Beastie Boys record.
Hello Nasty might be the purest expression of that freedom.