Mike D on Tupac and Biggie

[gumkojima]

http://m.rollingstone.com/music/news/beastie-boys-mike-d-tupacs-determination-to-be-authentic-killed-him-20140729

[Bernard Goetz]

Apparently Mike rode his bike to the office.

[YoungRemy]

http://www.vanityfair.com/vf-hollywood/mike-d-tupac-death-hip-hop

VF.com interviewed Diamond at length about his memories of the 1990s, which James Wolcott looks back on with mixed emotions in his column in Vanity Fair’s August issue. For Wolcott, “The 90s were the decade when the last tatters of privacy were torn aside, a national forest of woodies seemed to sprout up thanks to the rollout of a little blue pill called Viagra, reality TV unthroned soap opera as the medium’s queen of discord, and political theater lit up like a porno set.”

Not surprisingly, Diamond, whose pioneering hip-hop group soared through the decade on a wave of popular and critical success, takes a fonder view of the era. For him, it’s memorable for its great music, innovative videos, and D.I.Y. sensibility.

Come back tomorrow and Thursday for more from the interview. Tomorrow, Diamond muses on such 90s phenomena as grunge, zines, cannabis logos, and The Arsenio Hall Show. On Thursday, he’ll describe the making of the Beastie Boys’ famous “Sabotage” video, directed by Spike Jonze, and explain why the group’s 1989 album, Paul’s Boutique, didn’t catch on with audiences or critics until years after its release.

(y)

[Bernard Goetz]

Exciting!
Not that it really matters but holy shit this is some awful writing: “The 90s were the decade when the last tatters of privacy were torn aside, a national forest of woodies seemed to sprout up thanks to the rollout of a little blue pill called Viagra, reality TV unthroned soap opera as the medium’s queen of discord, and political theater lit up like a porno set.” Blech.

[Lex Diamonds]

^ Haha, what the fuck? That's fucking horrendous.

[YoungRemy]

http://www.vanityfair.com/vf-hollywood/mike-d-90s-nostalgia-grunge-arsenio-hall


Watch Mike D Explain Why You Can’t Wear Spandex at a Gas Station Anymore

Continuing his nostalgia tour of the 90s, the Beastie Boys founder remembers grunge fashion, pot culture, The Arsenio Hall Show, and hip-hop’s “apex moment.”

What, if anything, do you remember about the 90s? For Michael “Mike D” Diamond of the Beastie Boys, it’s the decade when hip-hop reached an “apex moment,” widespread pot-smoking planted the “seeds” (his pun!) of the legalization movement, people communicated via zines, and grunge changed burnout fashion forever.

“All of a sudden, grunge came in, it wasn’t cool anymore, if you were a guy at the gas station, to be into Warrant,” he says in Part 2 of this exclusive video interview with VF.com. “You couldn’t have big, fluffy long hair—you had to have fucked-up shorter hair and a plaid shirt. You couldn’t be walking around the gas station in spandex anymore.”

Diamond also pays tribute to The Arsenio Hall Show and its embrace of hip-hop at a time when names like Ice Cube and LL Cool J still struck fear into the hearts of scaredy-cat suburbanites.

Case in point: this clip of the group performing on the Fox late-night show in the early 90s: (So Whatcha Want with Hurricane and Cypress Hill)

Yesterday, Diamond shared his memories of the Biggie–Tupac feud, which claimed the lives of two iconic rappers and ushered in hip-hop’s metal-detector era.

Tomorrow, he’ll describe the making of the Beastie Boys’ classic “Sabotage” video and explain why it took years for people to grasp the greatness of the group’s second album.

[cj hood]

cool interview... but why now?

[WesleyOHSnaps!]

Curiouser and curiouser.

[abbott]

Mike D dropping some wisdom

[Michelle*s_Farm]

Mike D dropping some wisdom

I agree. People sometimes become obsessed with authenticity and it can kill them especially if being "authentic" is engaging in self-destruction behavior (sex, drugs or violence). Interestingly I was surprised to learn that Henry Rollins and J Mascis stayed away from drugs and booze early on as they both found it boring (everyone else was doing it) or did not agree with them. When being authentic means being independent of the norms of rock (or rap music) that is cool indeed. Feel bad for all of those who have been caught up in these things to such a degree as it cost them their lives.

[YoungRemy]

cool interview... but why now?

they roped him in for their 90's nostalgia piece as a hip hop elder, but i agree it seems pretty odd that they started the three part interview with the Tupac/Biggie feud, considering he mentioned that he never even met Biggie in a previous interview.

but it definitely looks like Mike Diamond is making himself available and no longer dodging interviews or questions about his former life as a beastie boy.


here's part three of the interview with VF

http://www.vanityfair.com/vf-hollywood/mike-d-sabotage-pauls-boutique-video

Mike D Explains Why Nobody Wanted to Hear Paul’s Boutique in 1989
And says which 70s cop show inspired the Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage” video.

The modern nostalgia cycle is remarkably stable. At any given time, it’s more or less a given that people will take a special interest in the pop-cultural events and artifacts of 20 years ago. So it was that the 70s gave us Grease and Sha-Na-Na, the 80s gave us Platoon and The Wonder Years, the 90s gave us Dazed and Confused and That 70s Show, and the current decade gives us BuzzFeed Rewind and the article you are currently reading—part of a three-day discussion of the 1990s with Beastie Boys legend Michael “Mike D” Diamond.

The Beastie Boys were early to the 70s-nostalgia party that would turn the 90s into a semi-ironic disco jam replete with Bootsy Collins cameos and John Travolta reclamation projects. They released Paul’s Boutique, their funk-infused follow-up to Licensed to Ill, in 1989—the last year of a decade when the 70s were still remembered as a long, humiliating comedown from the inspiring, idealistic 60s. As Diamond puts it in Part 3 of his exclusive video interview with VF.com, “The whole polyester, bell bottoms, the whole aesthetic . . . it literally hadn’t come of cellar age yet.”

Diamond also acknowledges that Paul’s Boutique faced another, perhaps greater obstacle: fans wanted more of the playground rap and party anthems they heard on License to Ill, and the Beastie Boys did not oblige. “People knew us for one thing, and instead of us giving them that at all, we were, like, completely disinterested in that. Our whole thing was, ‘O.K., how do we go totally beyond that?’” he recalls. “In Paul’s Boutique’s case, when it came out, that was not something people were comfortable with or ready for or wanting to hear. . . . It didn’t check any of the boxes for them.”

Not that he’s complaining: “Whatever, we were lucky. We got to actually have a career and keep making records so then people could circle back to it and it eventually became, like, this record where people were like, ‘Oh, that was always my favorite record those dudes made.’”

Paul’s Boutique went on to become a college-campus favorite in the early 90s. Today, it has a perfect 10.0 rating on Pitchfork.

By 1994, when the Beastie Boys collaborated with Spike Jonze on the music video for “Sabotage,” they were hardly alone in their fondness for handlebar mustaches, chunky aviator glasses, and shows like The Streets of San Francisco. “We all watched video tapes, VHS video tapes of Streets of San Francisco and other shows and we were like, ‘O.K., that would be awesome if we could actually pull off our own version of that,’” he says. “We bought a car that was about to die, and we had some kind of, like, loose shooting permits, but it’s not like we had fire-department [permits] or any of the stuff we should have had with the car. And we just drove the car ourselves.”

This is the third and final installment of Diamond’s exclusive video interview with VF.com, which comes on the heels of James Wolcott’s column on 90s nostalgia in the August issue of Vanity Fair. Earlier this week, Diamond shared his memories of the deadly Biggie-Tupac feud and explained why grunge put an end to “big, fluffy long hair.”

video
http://video.vanityfair.com/watch/making-of-beastie-boys-sabotage-video

[Lex Diamonds]

"...and the current decade gives us BuzzFeed Rewind."

Fuck, that's depressing.

[Lex Diamonds]

Thinking about it, this whole feature couldn't have been worsely written. Just horrible, horrible journalism. It's a shame Mike didn't speak to someone better.

[pm0ney]

I think it's pretty cool how Mike matter of factly states the truth that Tupac was a dancer who went to a prestigious art prep school and was never a gangster. I never liked Tupac or his bullshit thug life image. Biggie was fundamentally better in every single way.

By the way, hearing Mike reluctantly say the words "Thug Life" was worth the price of admission. You know the three of them used to sit around during that time lamenting about how wack that whole scene was.

Don't get me wrong, I love gangsta rap (at least the early death row stuff) but Tupac as an individual was wack. I'm disappointed Mike Tyson reveres him so much.

[3stooges]

I think it's pretty cool how Mike matter of factly states the truth that Tupac was a dancer who went to a prestigious art prep school and was never a gangster. I never liked Tupac or his bullshit thug life image. Biggie was fundamentally better in every single way.

By the way, hearing Mike reluctantly say the words "Thug Life" was worth the price of admission. You know the three of them used to sit around during that time lamenting about how wack that whole scene was.

Don't get me wrong, I love gangsta rap (at least the early death row stuff) but Tupac as an individual was wack. I'm disappointed Mike Tyson reveres him so much.

I was never a Tupac fan. I never liked his stuff, for the most part. To me he always came off as trying too hard. I do think his "thugness" was probably more real than you think though. Being a dancer doesn't mean anything. And yeah, he did go to an art school. But just because someone is given these opportunities doesn't mean they didn't have some difficult and damaging experiences in their life, which affect the choices they make and the way that they act. Tupac certainly had his share. I do believe a lot of what he was doing was "acting" to fit in with the image, but I also think there were parts of his life that had a path available in that direction, if he decided to choose it, and in many ways he obviously did.

As an artist, like I said I wasn't a fan of his. But I acknowledge his talent. He was a very gifted vocalist with a great voice and a very sharp delivery. He put together some very strong rhymes. And don't forget his passion. No one had more passion than Tupac, and it was evident every time he got on a mic.

I much prefer Biggie over Tupac just as you do but I'm just saying, let's not dismiss him so easily as some "wack", "fake thug". It may not be my style but that doesn't mean there is not something worthwhile there.

By the way I think it's curious your comment about Mike Tyson liking Tupac. It doesn't surprise me. They were both people who had difficult challenges in their lives, and overcame them to achieve great success in a certain way. And then they were both very self-destructive, making a lot of poor choices and mistakes. I think Mike probably identifies with Tupac a great deal.

[Micodin]

I'm not the biggest Tupac fan but towards the end he was living that Thug Life. He got into a shoot out with undercover cops and shot one of them, he was arrested numerous times, he did a bid at Rikers, he was shot up in NY for his jewlery, and he was shot many times by a AK-47 in Vegas and died shortly after.

I'm not saying he was John Gotti but he's lived on the edge closer than other rappers that talk about shit but have never done it.

[Lex Diamonds]

He also demonstrated the reason why most rappers claiming "thug" don't really behave like that: it will get you killed.