E-Mail This Article to a Friend Borough boys (continued)

Q: Do you feel old doing what you’re doing?

A: No, we have new shit out that sounds different from we’ve done before. And I’m into it. I don’t know what happens when you decide, ‘Oh, I’m old.’ Maybe it’s when you’re not excited about your records anymore. I do think that if we had just kept making Licensed to Ill records, then maybe people would have gotten sick of us. Fortunately, that’s a maybe I don’t have to worry about.

Q: The new CD isn’t a radical departure from what you’ve done in the past.

A: It’s a radical departure from Hello Nasty. If you listen to that, it’s got so much crazy shit on it in terms of styles of music. That record is weird. And this record is just your basic rap record. It’s not experimental. It’s not that out there. It’s just not a weird record.

Q: Was that a conscious decision?

A: Well, it’s a lot different from the last record, but it’s not that different from the first one.

Q: So you’ve come full circle?

A: No. No. Because I don’t want to go back there. I don’t want to go full circle. I want to go keep going straight. It’s just that we wanted to make some stripped-down things with big beats. If you start adding tons of samples and all of that stuff, then that doesn’t accomplish what we wanted.

Q: In the past, you guys have been politically active and somewhat outspoken. Why isn’t the new CD more political?

A: When we started to record it, all the songs were really slow, really heavy anti-Bush songs. And it started to sound so depressing. If I let George Bush take over every aspect of what I’m doing in my life, then he’s won. I can’t let him in my head that much. So, yeah, I’ve got to say stuff about politics, I’ve got to say stuff about the right wing and all of these things. But I can’t not go to the party because of them. At a certain point, it was ‘Let’s have fun for a while.’ So we tried to be fun and be political at the same time.

I gotta say it’s also very different with writing songs, like melodic songs or punk-rock songs, as opposed to rapping. Because you hear three guys talk about this stuff non-stop and it’s like enough already. Very few people can do that. I think Chuck D is one of them, and there are very few other rappers whom you’d want to listen to go off on political diatribes. It comes off sounding preachy, even though you’re not saying anything people don’t already know. I wouldn’t put a Rage Against the Machine record on to listen to around the house, but they’re so good that I would if they weren’t so one-dimensional. And even Public Enemy have songs that aren’t political.

At the same time, it’s a very important time to get angry and to talk out right now. I feel George Bush is a clown who needs to go away. And if people don’t get angry and speak out about it, then he’s not going to go away. But it’s weird because 95 percent of the kids who come to our shows already agree with us on that. It’s just a matter of getting them to vote. And it seems so crucial for those people to vote right now. It’s so scary, you go see Fahrenheit 9/11 and a lot of people are still like, "Oh well, fuck it, who cares?"

Q: Could it be that people feel that Bush can’t be as bad as he’s been portrayed?

A: Well, honestly, the youth vote is tough. I mean, I didn’t give a shit about that stuff when I was a kid. So we wanted to make sure we had this record done and out by summer so that we’d be on tour leading up to the election, and maybe we can make a small difference in terms of motivating younger people to vote against Bush.

Q: As a trio, you’ve always been closely associated with New York City, and so much has changed there since Hello Nasty. Did you feel a responsibility to address that on this album?

A: We definitely wanted to make a song about it. We didn’t want to make a whole album dedicated to it. But after we recorded the album, we realized it had a lot to do with the city, and that’s why we called it To the 5 Boroughs. Weird that Boston never made a record about Boston.

Q: Now there’s a deep thought. I bet Mixmaster Mike could do some interesting stuff with some of Boston’s greatest hits.

A: Oh yeah. I mean, it’s always been the three of us doing all the music and artwork and everything. But now that Mixmaster Mike is around, it’s a whole different thing because it feels like the record wouldn’t be right if Mike didn’t come in and do his thing. Me, Adam, and Mike still write all the songs and do all that, but a song’s not really done until Mike comes in with his bag of tricks.

Q: How has your relationship with the other two guys evolved over the past two decades?

A: It’s a lie. It’s all a lie. I don’t trust them. And if I were you, I wouldn’t trust them. They are problems. They are not assets to the team . . . No, seriously, we made a decision a long time ago that we wouldn’t do anything that the three of us weren’t completely happy with. And we decided to make sure that the three of us would stick together no matter what. And we lucked out. That’s the best way to put it.

Beastie Boys appear this Tuesday, October 12, at the Centrum in Worcester; call (617) 931-2000.