With a new, all-instrumental album, The Mix-Up, due out June 26, the Beastie Boys are returning a little more low-key than usual. King Adrock has an amusing back and forth with The Stranger’s Jonathan Zwickel.

Adrock on selling out:

“I don’t think that people buying records or whatever really give a shit if you make money or not. I don’t think they think about it. I think they just assume that whoever’s onstage—wherever the stage is—are millionaires. And people still argue if they’re paying more than five dollars for a show at a small place. It’s ridiculous.

And even if you do sell out to a major label these days, it doesn’t mean you’re gonna make any money. The notion of selling out now is flipped. If you sell out it doesn’t mean you’re gonna make any money. The internet and independent ways of getting your music out there could be a more lucrative way in 2007.”

It’s impossible to get any perspective from a guy who’s at the top of the tree looking down. Adrock completely misses the point. It’s not the act of making money that constitutes selling out. It’s willfully offering yourself up to be a cog in the corporate machine. Making money is just the motive behind it, which is obviously not a guarantee.