After years of anticipation, diehard fans of the Beastie Boys will finally get their hands on a fully authorized memoir. According to group member, Mike D, the long-discussed autobiography, which has been teased sporadically since 2013, is now just months away from publication.
In a new interview with Beats 1 host, Matt Wilkinson, the emcee says that he expects publication in “fall of this year” and claims that the work will be “unlike any other music book”. When news of the memoir initially broke, the surviving Beastie Boys duo promised something different than a strict retelling of the rise to hip-hop and cultural dominance, but not much has been revealed of the project since.
As previously mentioned, the currently untitled book was confirmed to be in the works nearly five years ago, and just a year after founding member Adam “MCA” Yauch passed away due to cancer. New York Times reporter, Ben Sisario, had an inside scoop on the memoir deal and got a whole fanbase excited with some potential details on the whole shebang. In his 2013 article, Sisario says that the piece will “keep with the group’s hypereclectic style — be a pastiche of voices, images, irreverent humor and pop-culture reference points”.
This week’s Beats 1 interview on Apple Music had Mike D confirming the memoir’s supposed tone. The rap legend also managed to sprinkled in a few more tidbits about the pending release. “To tell our story,” he began, “we have to give the cultural history of where we came from. So New York City in the ’80s, you had all these incredible, exciting music, art, film, all that sort of has to converge to be able to explain.”
Later in the sitdown, Mike D explains that the memoir will be built to entertain just as much as it is to inform. “I think a lot of times when I read a book or I watch a music documentary, maybe I’m just kind of A.D.D., I get a little bored, but actually I don’t think they do the subject matter justice because it’s kinda surreal what happens in bands’ lives so you kind of have to use all dimensions to tell the story more accurately.”
Expect the untilted Beastie Boys book to drop later this year. In the meantime, you can listen to Mike D’s interview on Beats 1 below.
