Mike D is back with some souped-up flavor for your ears. The charter Beastie Boys member dropped his first-ever solo track on Friday (May 8), the beat crazy experimental hip-hop track “Switch Up.”
The track, the first new music from any member of the legendary New York rap trio since their final studio album, 2011’s Hot Sauce Committee Part Two, is a heady mashup of U.K. jungle beats, Lee “Scratch” Perry-like sonic collage and digital hardcore attitude. According to a press release announcing the project, the song’s origins trace back to “carefree, low-pressure experiments” in Mike’s home studio.
The sessions began with his sons Davis and Skyler, and their indie rock band, Very Nice Person, and then expanded to include a number of other collaborators and sessions in other locations. “The spontaneous, free-flowing and intuitive nature of these various sessions is apparent in the aptly titled single and its fluid direction shaped by community and creative chemistry,” according to the release.
The release came a few weeks after D (born Michael Louis Diamond), 60, made a surprise appearance at a Very Nice Person show last month, where he popped out to perform some B-Boys classics, including “So What’cha Want” and “Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun.” D celebrated the release of the new song by performing it live on Thursday night (May 7) at the Plaza Nighclub & Dance Hall in Los Angeles at the first of four planned small club shows promoting the single; he’ll follow up with a gig on Sunday (May 10) at the Sid the Cat Auditorium in South Pasadena, Calif., as well as shows on May 22 and 23 at Xanadu Roller Arts in Brooklyn, N.Y.
“Thought I’d get reception, needs some self-reflection/ Try to take a beat ’cause I can’ take the message,” D raps in a distorted voice over the frenetic, glitchy beats. The track was produced by Carter Lang & Very Nice Person and mixed by Derek “MixedByAli” Ali at No Name Studios.
Mike has not released any music since the death of Beastie Boys co-founder Adam “MCA” Yauch, 47, in 2012 following a long battle with cancer. The group went on an indefinite hiatus in the wake of Yauch’s death, with D later suggesting that he and fellow charter member, Ad-Rock, would never make music under the group’s name again. In 2018, D and Ad-Rock released the comprehensive, Easter egg-packed memoir Beastie Boys Book, which was later made into a 2020 documentary, Beastie Boys Story.
Watch the “Switch Up” visualizer below.
