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The surviving members of the Beastie Boys — Mike D and Ad-Rock — found out about Eminem’s homage to the trio’s seminal album License To Ill when everybody else did. On the night Kamikaze was released (August 30), people couldn’t help but notice the cover art was nearly identical to the 1986 classic.

Beastie Boys Celebrate 30 Years of License To Ill
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During a recent interview with The Strombo Show, Mr. Diamond and Mr. Horowitz talk about seeing the Kamikaze cover for the first time — but not before Mike assured Ad-Rock that Slim Shady likes them. 

“All of a sudden I get like 10 text messages, 20 text messages,” Mike D says around the 43:40-minute mark. “Then I’m like, ‘Why do I all of a sudden have 50 text messages? I better see what’s going on.’ Everybody’s forwarding me the album cover from, like, the Twitter feed, or whatever. So, that’s how we found out about it.”

Ad-Rock adds, “I don’t know him I’m sure that was nice. I met him once in a bathroom in Rome. Not a big deal.”

Elsewhere in the interview, the two Hip Hop pioneers opened up about their upcoming memoir, the Beastie Boys Book. 

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The Amazon description explains the book will provide “revealing and very funny accounts of their transition from teenage punks to budding rappers; their early collaboration with Russell Simmons and Rick Rubin; the almost impossible-to-fathom overnight success of their debut studio album Licensed to Ill; that album’s messy fallout; their break with Def Jam, move to Los Angeles, and rebirth as musicians and social activists, with the genre-defying masterpiece Paul’s Boutique.

The book is expected to arrive on October 30.

In the meantime, watch the full interview above and revisit the Beastie Boys Breakdown below. [apple_news_ad type=”any”]