I first met Mike D (aka Michael Diamond) back in the days Def Jam had an office located down on Elizabeth Street where Rick Rubin lived upstairs, rap stars parked their rides outside and people smoked crack across the street. It was a raw era in New York and the Beastie Boys, who hung out on the lower east side and had been in a punk band called the Young & Useless, embodied the kind of smart ass street kids who prowled dirty downtown avenues. I liked them all, but got along particularly well with Mike who, for me, was the most approachable of the trio. I interviewed them for a short lived music news series, the Rock & Roll Evening News, at diner and spend a week in the Mondrian Hotel with them, and Run-DMC, when they were playing the Hollywood Bowl. A wild time was had by all.
After the Beastie’s breakthrough ‘Licensed to Ill’, they Beastie’s broke free of Def Jam and moved to Los Angeles where they established a label, Grand Royal, signed bands, published a magazine and opened a production facility/club house in Eagle Rock. During the early ‘90s I was out in LA a lot working with director Tamra Davis on the film that became ‘CB4.’ On the last day of filmming Tamra jetted out to met Mike who she was soon to marry.
Years later Mike, Tamra and their two sons moved to Brooklyn as the Beastie’s opened a studio on Canal Street. It’s there that I interviewed Mike D for Finding the Funk. It was very important to me that the influence of funk on hip hop be well documented. I thought talking with Mike about how they used funk to create their tracks was a great way to expose the range of that music’s impact on subsequent generations. Mike, always a good talker, gave me more than I needed, so its been a plessure to post up most of our conversation on You Tube this week. Here are four clips but there are others there as well. Since the death of Adam “MCA” Yauch, the remaining members put a out a book and made a docmentary with Spike Jones, but otherwise haven’t been active. This interview views inside in the creative process of one of the most daring trio’s in hip hop history.