Beasties Ready Summer Release

The Beastie Boys are planning a June release for their long-awaited sixth album. The set will be the New York trio's first collection of new material since Hello Nasty six years ago.

"I know you're like, 'What's up fool? Where's the record?'" reads a note by the Boys to their email list. "We are in the studio finishing it now, so ease up already. We're putting the final touches on the mixes right now and it will be out beginning of June. Until then, cool your jets, step back, relax and ease off the throttle. The shit's on its way, no delay."

Actually, delays are nothing new for the band -- Nasty came four years after its predecessor Ill Communication -- though the current wait tops the group's previous silences. "We always work a little slower than others," Beastie Adam Yauch told Rolling Stone last year. "I don't quite know how bands put out a record every year. It takes a year to make the record, a year to tour and then a year of vacation. We just happen to stretch that vacation part to two or three years."

The Beasties started writing material for the record in late 2001 and initial recording sessions were held in early 2002. Last year, the Beasties knuckled down on the record in their new New York City studio. Since wrapping promotion for Nasty, the Beasties have flown way below the radar. The group played a benefit for slain DJ Jam Master Jay's family last year, hosted the New Yorkers Against Violence concert in October 2001 and made a handful of other festival and benefit performances. The only new music to surface during that time was "In a World Gone Mad," an anti-war cut that the Beasties put on their Web site last spring.

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Song Stories

“Tonight's the Night”

The Shirelles | 1960

The lead cut and title track from this girl group's debut album, "Tonight's the Night" was written by 19-year-old bandmember Shirley Owens, who sings lead, and producer Luther Dixon. The band from Passaic, New Jersey met in high school, first calling themselves the Pequellos. The song's frank thoughts about sexual and emotional surrender was racy for the time, but that didn't stop the Chiffons from cutting a similar version immediately after the original came out. "We were the first female group to write some of our own material," band member Beverly Lee recalls. "We did have some say-so in our writing."

More Song Stories entries »

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