If you were to walk past a high school house party in 1998, you could tell a lot about the people inside based on what kind of music was playing.
If it was Sugar Ray rattling the windows, the party was probably full of frosted tips, baggy jeans, and Stiffler lookalikes.
If it was more of a Dave Matthews Band party, there might be a healthy contingent of plaid-wearing party-goers who smell like weed, and can summon acoustic guitars from the ether for sudden impromptu singalongs.
I know all this partly because I attended a fair number of house parties in 1998, and because I didn’t go all-in on any particular social group, choosing instead to float between them. At various points, I found myself at Cypress Hill parties, Ani DiFranco parties, even the occasional Neutral Milk Hotel party.
The Beastie Boys, and their 1998 record Hello Nasty were one of the few transcendent bands that could safely be played at just about any party. In the same way that fresh buttered bread can be added to just about any meal, the music of the Beastie Boys went with everything. Pair it with Green Day or DJ Shadow or Barenaked Ladies or Tupac or just about any 90s mainstay, and it somehow fits.
Strangely though, there is one song on Hello Nasty that doesn’t seem to fit with the rest of the material. Most of the tracks on the 70-minute behemoth of an album are standard Beastie Boys; goofy lyrics that are shout-rapped over eccentric samples. But then, 15 tracks in, “I Don’t Know” happens.
A laid-back, samba-inspired track that is sung instead of rapped, this song is as out-of-place as a frat boy at a Sarah McLachlan party.
What makes this a beautiful song:
1. If you’re going to put some samba percussion on your record, you may as well do it right; the Beasties got Brazilian Duduka Da Fonsesca for this one, whose credits also include work with Astrud Gilberto and Antonio Carlos Jobim.
2. The guest vocalist, Miho Hatori, from Cibbo Matto, delivers probably the song’s catchiest element, those casual doot-doos of the chorus.
3. The lyrics are – and I mean this with all respect and admiration – adorably juvenile. They echo the kind of deep conversations that many of us may have experienced at the tail end of a 1998 house party: “I’m walking through, like, time, man!” “It’s not as simple as I try to wish. But then again, what is?”
Recommended listening activity:
Sipping on a horribly sweet vodka cooler and wondering what you’ll be when you grow up.