Okay, this is awesome: To promote the collector’s edition of Check Your Head, out later this month, BeastieBoys.com has unearthed a performance of “So What’cha Want†from The Arsenio Hall Show, which we feel confident stating unequivocally is the artistic peak of the early nineties. And here are all the things we love about it, in chronological order: the announcer, promising “the music of Beastie Boys†like they’re a chamber-music quartet; the B-Boy’s clothing, showing heavy shades of our seventh grade closet; Mike D and Ad-Rock, never quite figuring out which camera to frantically mug into; every close-up of MCA, looking like he got into more than the rider-mandated brown M&Ms, if you know what we’re saying (marijuana); every instance of synchronized hopping; and the forgotten DJ Hurricane, spitting a verse we’ve never heard before. By the time the beat flips and B-Real and Sen Dog show up — both wearing Cypress Hill T-shirts — our brains were too fried to truly appreciate it. (Bonus: Find the mini ping-pong table on the Paul’s Boutique rerelease site for hours of competitive time-wasting.)
Beastie Boys on the Arsenio Hall Show [BeastieBoys.com]