Hello Nasty by Beastie Boys

Hello Nasty, the Beastie Boys' fifth album, came out on Grand Royal and Capitol in 1998, and it's the sound of hip-hop veterans raiding a thrift store full of analog gear and coming out wearing everything at once. Mario Caldato Jr. produced, and the record ricochets between old-school rhyming, space-age electro, bossa nova lounge and dub, a sprawling, gleefully weird mixtape that never sits still long enough to get dull.

"Intergalactic" is the calling card, robot voices and vocoder bleeps over a boom-bap beat, with the rhymes traded back and forth like it's still a block party. "Body Movin'" bounces on a cheesy retro groove, "Remote Control" is a fuzzed-out rocker, "Super Disco Breakin'" digs back into turntable-scratch basics, "The Negotiation Limerick File" rides a woozy, swinging loop, and "Flowin' Prose" struts on a loose, jazzy loop.

It moved 681,000 copies in its opening week, entered at number one on the Billboard 200, then took two Grammys, Best Alternative Music Album and Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group for "Intergalactic". Years later, in Beastie Boys Book, Ad-Rock called it the group's best record.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.