Samples

• Adam Yauch's answering machine message
• "Rob Swift Versus Rhazel" by Rob Swift from the albumRob Swift Presents Soulful Fruit

References

• Doo-Doo Style - style that's "the shit"
• Manhattan - a borough of New York City
• Miracle Mile - Los Angeles neighborhood
• Rose Royce - Los Angeles-based group who gained national notoriety for its debut on the Car Wash soundtrack
• Mix Master Mike - Beastie Boys DJ and member of the San Francisco turntable crew, the Invisibl Skratch Piklz
• Krispy Kremes - donuts from the popular donut shop
• Kenny Roger's "Gambler" - a 1978 song by country singer/songwriter Kenny Rogers
• Mario C - Mario Caldato, Beastie engineer/producer
• Scorpio - astrological zodiac sign for birthdays falling between October 23-November 21
• Mop-n-Glow - namebrand of floor wax/cleaner

Sample & Reference Breakdown

• "Hey, yo, Adam. What's up? This is Mix Master Mike. I'm calling from Sacramento. Umm, I've been wanting to hook up with you maybe on some tracks. I've got some shit right here. If you could...I set my turntable to a wah wah pedal. It's called the tweak scratch." - this is a real message Mix Master Mike left on Adam Yauch's answering machine
• "I wanna get next to you, like Rose Royce" - "I Wanna Get Next to You" is a song by Rose Royce from the Car Wash soundtrack
• "Kenny Rogers' Gambler is my gamblin' theme" - "The Gambler" by Kenny Rogers from The Gambler LP
• "Well, my name is Adrock/I'm a Scorpio" - Adam Horovitz's birthday is October 31st, placing him under the zodiac sign of Scorpio (Oct 24 - Nov 22)
• "You came off with that one, Joe. Oh, my goodness" - voice of Biz Markie
• "God damn that DJ made my day" - a sample from "Rob Swift Versus Rhazel" by Rob Swift. Note: this is in the album version, not the Live Video Version of "3 MC's and One DJ"
• "'Cause nobody can do it like Mix Master can" - in 1979, McDonald's advertising theme was "Nobody can do it like McDonald's can"
• "Mix Master, cuts, cuts faster" - similar to lyrics from "The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel" by Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five (Grandmaster, cut faster; Grandmaster, cut faster; Grandmaster, cut, cut, cut faster)

Beastie Boys

"I had this idea for 'Three MCs and One DJ': What if I just cut a beat, and [the Beasties] rhymed over it? It would be the first time ever in history with a DJ cutting the drums. I was fucking around, doing some tricks in the studio, and Yauch was like, It would be sick if we could rhyme over that. So we just did it in three hours. They left, and me and Mario laid down the music for it while they went to write rhymes" - Mix Master Mike, excerpted from The Skills to Pay the Bills (2005) by Alan Light

Press

"...a live-in-the-studio rhyme session with Mixmaster Mike cutting up the beats on the spot" - Rolling Stone, 1998

"...[an] old-school feeling - the two-turntables-and-microphone style that emerged from New York house parties and predated the Beastie Boys -- gives much of Hello Nasty a minimalist vibe, but it enhances the communal spirit of the rhymes and reasserts the music's implicit DIY connections with punk" - The Worcester Phoenix, 1998

"...the album's head-bobbingest cut" - Newsweek, August 1998