New article - mentions Mike D's new son

[michellenj02]

http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/life/story/0,4386,264047,00.html

in case anyone was interested.

-Michelle

[Mary-Kate]

Cool, I'm interested, thanks (y)

[Mary-Kate]

Skylar! that is SUCH a cute name!!

[liberty_a320]

Good article, thanks. I didn't realize Mike D's son was already born.

[alexandra]

wow, great news! congrats to mike & tamra! (y)

[Bourgie]

It seems the article has been archived. Can someone give me a quick review of what it said?

[chechina]

Wow, the man's a baby-making machine.

Well, now that there's three Beastie children, maybe they'll all form a group when they're older.

[zoejones]

It seems the article has been archived. Can someone give me a quick review of what it said?

Yeah, if anyone could do that, it'd be nice. Or if anyone is subscribed (per chance?) to that service if they could post it...

[michellenj02]

Getting the beast out of the boys
The Beastie Boys don't see themselves as trailblazers of white hip-hop. They're too busy having fun

By Jill Alphonso

TRY telling American hip-hop band the Beastie Boys that they might just be the grand arbiters of cool, or that they are one of the most influential bands in the history of hip-hop, and you will be greeted with an awkward silence.


Who's the beast?: (From left) Yauch, Diamond and Horovitz in a scene from their upcoming video Triple Trouble.
'I would not feel comfortable with all that,' says Adam 'MCA' Yauch, 39, in a recent phone interview. 'It's inaccurate.'

This is surprising, coming from a founding member of a group which brought white hip-hop to the mainstream.

For over 20 years, they have been known for off-the-wall party songs like Brass Monkey and Fight For Your Right (To Party) taken off their 1986 album Licensed To Ill, and Intergalactic off Hello Nasty (1998).

The Beastie Boys also comprise 'Mike D' Diamond, 38, and Adam 'King Ad-Rock' Horovitz, 37.

Yauch, whose voice carries inflections of a soft New York accent, seems more at ease joking than talking about the Beastie Boys - pop culture phenomenon and multi-platinum producing hip-hop group.

'We spend a lot of time with each other in the studio, kidding around,' he says.

'And when we make a record, we're trying to crack each other up half the time.'

Asked why the band took six years to put out its sixth album, To The 5 Boroughs, he launches into an elaborate story about how the group was kidnapped and held prisoner by Bigfoot.

But when he runs out of steam and is pressed a little further, he reveals that the story was concocted because they had no idea of what to tell people.

'The truth is that we really don't know what we've been doing,' he confesses with a laugh. 'Living life, I guess.'

Not that life for the boys has been all that bad, though they were forced to close their record label and magazine, Grand Royal, in 2001, declaring bankruptcy because of the project a year later.

'Mike D was probably the most affected by that,' says Yauch, adding that they have since recovered from their losses.

'It was a fun thing for a while, but the rest of us weren't really that involved in the project.'

Yauch says he has been spending most of his time playing basketball with the other Beastie Boys and hanging out with his family.

He got married in 1998, and lives with his Tibetan-American wife, Dechen Wangdu, and their five-year-old daughter, Tenzin. Yauch says his daughter sings along to Beastie Boys songs, and often travels with him when they tour.

Horovitz has been dealing with his epilepsy, which was discovered last November. Though the illness has been controlled, he still cannot handle flash photography.

He is still seeing his girlfriend of eight years, Kathleen Hanna, frontwoman of New York band Le Tigre.

Diamond is married to film director Tamra Davis. They have two sons, Davis, two, and Skylar, who was born earlier this month.

DESPITE having gone missing in action for the past six years, the Beastie Boys have obviously not been forgotten.

Their albums have collectively sold over 20 million copies worldwide. To The 5 Boroughs debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard albums charts, and has sold two million copies since its release in mid-June.

The album has sold around 3,000 copies here.

Some call To The 5 Boroughs the most political of the Beastie Boys' albums, given that it talks about the current state of affairs in the United States today.

In An Open Letter To NYC, they rap about post-911 New York, saying: 'Dear New York, I hope you're doing well/I know a lot's happened and you've been through hell.'

But more blatantly, on the track It Takes Time To Build, Yauch's vocals come through clearly on the lines: 'Maybe it's time that we impeach Tex and the military muscle that he wants to flex/By the time Bush is done, what will be left?'.

Yauch says that their albums have always been indicative of the times that they were made in.

'These times are more political for Americans than when we made the other records,' he adds. 'It would be a lie not to comment on that.'

The group is currently in Japan on a promotional tour and will return to the US before embarking on a longer world tour at the end of the year.

A stop in Singapore is not out of the question, says Yauch, who snuck a peek at the tentative list of countries they will be visiting.

He passed through on vacation several times in the early 1990s, and says he remembers one visit to a comedy nightclub with cross-dressers - presumably the Boom Boom Room.

'It was crazy,' he says. 'I thought it was totally funny.'

When it comes to the Beastie Boys' longevity in the future, he is evasive at first.

Then he says: 'We didn't start out thinking we were going to be remembered. We didn't think we'd last more than a few weeks.'

But when asked whether he feels they still have music left to make, he replies: 'Is there any doubt?'


To The 5 Boroughs is out in stores.

[Bourgie]

nice.....thanks (y)