Mike D
Thank You
CAPITOL
Fifteen years since the last Beastie Boys album, and nearly as long past the death of fellaheen Adam Yauch, rapper and drummer Mike Diamond—or Mike D—is making silly, angry, slippery music with his sons (and his sons’ friends, also brothers, together called 5D) that maintains the close-knit familial vibe he started with in 1981, putting aside the cocky snark of his Boy-hood. And why not? If you don’t grow up, you grow out, and look like the old man in the club. Instead, the youthful effusion that D held onto seems to concentrate its gushiness on refrigerator-magnet poetry tinged with 21st century LA street slang, all laced with squelchy synths, glitch-hop beats, and noise. All of which, oddly enough, works when combined into the happy mess that is his debut solo album, Thank You.
Like the late, great post-Beat spoken-word performance artist John Giorno, Diamond seems to practice his snaggle-toothed raps and wriggling rhymes in the same manner he digs his tinny, programmed beats and squirrelly, surrealistic old synth lines: looped, repetitive, hypnotic. Herein, Mike D cajole-barks loosely knotted reiterative lyrics about “people in your ear” (“Crypto”) and life’s mysteries (“Secrets Pt. II”) in a mantra-like manner that talks it loud, but says little. Then he turns around and finds something poignant and quietly profound by sing-song-edly riding through the down beat of “I Don’t Care,” and arriving at pronouncements such as, “We all have a role / I didn’t see mine / Start with a goal / Get lost in the deadline.”
Still, nothing says it all with low-key emotionalism quite like “Here We Are” when it comes to defining where I believe Mike D and 5D want to go with this debut solo album: “Start small, nothing heroic,” says this Diamond in the rough in regard to just getting it on. And how refreshing is that?
