The 600-page Beastie Boys book will be released as an audiobook and will include a handful of narrators including Nas, Chuck D, Talib Kweli, LL Cool J and more according to Pitchfork. The full list can be seen below.
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In an excerpt from the forthcoming book, the rap group recounted how Capitol Records wanted them to write a diss record about MC Hammer.
"…Capitol brought us in for a marketing meeting to launch the record. They had us sit down with their 'street team' to figure out how to get the word out to 'the streets,'" Adam Horovitzsays before elaborating further.
"The street team had a plan. They had been given the title Street Awareness Program. And so on their presentation paperwork it spelled out S-A-P in big letters across the top of each page. Already funny. SAP, SAP, SAP. Their marketing plan was for us to make a diss record against MC Hammer,” he says. “They said that diss records always get some kind of attention, and ’cause Hammer was so huge, that’d be great. Oh, and that because Hammer was also on Capitol Records, it’d be easy to contact him to let him know that it wasn’t for real. We told the saps that we’d never met Hammer and had nothing against him, and that he seemed like a nice enough guy. Maybe we should just try to get the songs on the radio and in clubs and stuff instead. To be fair…me, Adam, and Mike were sitting in that meeting obviously high as kites and dressed in our best Madilyn Grasshoff outfits, looking like we were on our way to a Cymande concert. I’m sure the lack of confidence was mutual."
The Beastie Boys Book is out October 30. Following its release, Horovitz and Michael Diamond will embark on a tour in support of the book.
