“Intergalactic” by Beastie Boys

"Intergalactic" blasted off in June 1998 as the lead single from Hello Nasty, the Beastie Boys' fifth studio album on Capitol, and it sounds like the future as dreamed up in a basement full of old records. Ad-Rock, Mike D and Adam Yauch wrote it with Mario Caldato Jr., who co-produced it with the band and engineered it, with Suzanne Dyer and Steve Revitte adding engineering, and Biz Markie turns up on the credits with a vocal too.

It's hip-hop dressed up in space-age junk: a clattering electro beat, a robot-voiced hook, scratched-in scraps and the Beasties volleying lines back and forth like a tag team that has been doing this forever. Goofy and cool at once, it plays like a sci-fi B-movie with a big beat.

The public ate it up. It climbed to number 28 on the Billboard Hot 100, the last time the Beasties cracked the top 40 there, and to number five in the UK, where nothing they've released has ever gone higher. At the 1999 Grammys it took Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group, and "Body Movin'" followed it as the next single.

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