After the death of Adam Yauch—aka MCA and one-third of the Beastie Boys—the remaining members, Mike D and Ad-Rock, walked away from creating music. Fourteen years later, Mike D, or Michael Diamond, is back with a solo album, Thank You, to be released next month. Ben Sisario talks with the 60-year-old musician, who refers to the forthcoming project as “musically immature, but lyrically more mature.” Introspective and therapeutic, the album reflects Diamond’s life stage as a Gen X rapper and as a parent; his grown sons, Davis and Skyler, are credited for helping Diamond make his return to music.
The studio was packed with a menagerie of ancient gear that the musicians tinkered with like lost toys; songs like “That’s Right” throb with noisy feedback and prickly, distorted rhythms. Horovitz lent Skyler and Davis a 1980s-vintage sampler that came with floppy disks still holding Beastie Boys beats. “It’s a time machine,” Donaldson recalled with a chuckle. “They’d be trying to find a sound, and you’d randomly hear a drum break that was on a Beastie Boys song.”
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