“They’d be trying to find a sound, and you’d randomly hear a drum break that was on a Beastie Boys song,” producer Tyran Donaldson says
If you listen closely to Mike D‘s upcoming solo album, Thank You, you might hear familiar sounds. When composing music, the rapper’s sons, Skyler and Davis Diamond, who comprise part of the band Mike D 5D, used an E-mu SP-1200 sampler, whose vintage is from sometime in the Eighties, on loan from Mike D’s Beastie Boys bandmate, Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz. The instrument came with floppy disks preloaded with Beastie beats.
In a New York Times interview, producer Tyran Donaldson, who has also worked with SZA, recalled chuckling at listening to the Diamonds work with the instrument. “It’s a time machine,” he said. “They’d be trying to find a sound, and you’d randomly hear a drum break that was on a Beastie Boys song.” (Nobody in the article said whether or not the group used any of the actual Beasties breaks on the album.)
Thank You, due Aug. 28, will be the first new music to come out of the Beasties camp since the 2012 death of Adam “MCA” Yauch. Mike D told the Times that he spent years grieving and unable to make music. “The amount of grieving and sadness that I would feel, the easiest way to not feel that was to shut the computer down and walk away from it,” he said. “It was too much for me to process to stay focused and creative.”
He spent much of the decade-plus since Yauch’s death producing for others and taking care of his family. It was Skyler and Davis, members of their own band Very Nice Person, who helped him to feel creative again. (When the Times asked Ad-Rock why he hadn’t released any of the music he’d been working on daily for years, he replied quixotically, “Good question.”)
The music Mike D has released from Thank You so far shows an experimental bent with leanings into psychedelia on “What We Got,” “Switch Up,” and “True Colors.” Mike D 5D will embark on a tour this summer.