Mike D has released his debut solo single, "Switch Up," and followed it with his first-ever UK and European headline shows. The move gives Michael Diamond his first solo run in public after decades as one of Beastie Boys’ most recognizable names.

The timing matters because "Switch Up" arrived in May as the first new music tied to any Beastie Boys member since the group’s final studio album, "Hot Sauce Committee Part Two," in 2011. Fans have spent years waiting for anything new from that camp, and now Diamond is not only back with music but also putting dates on the calendar, with the announced run starting in London in June.

The song did not begin as a solo mission. Diamond said it started in the home studio he shares with his sons, Davis and Skylar, and he described the whole process as deeply family-driven. He said he walked in and had to ask how to hit record, with his sons stepping in to help. He also said he had spent years making mental notes of collaborators he liked while watching their work, and that those ideas eventually turned into the project he is now putting out in the open.

Davis Diamond helped shape that start on the technical side and also produced "Switch Up" with Skyler, his brother and the other half of the alternative act Very Nice Person. Diamond said it took him a minute before he began doing vocals and that he was not completely sure of himself at first, which is part of why the release lands as more than a nostalgia play. He is presenting himself as ready now, but the route to that point ran through uncertainty and a home studio where he needed his sons to show him the basics.

That makes the new music feel less like a victory lap than a deliberate restart. Beastie Boys broke commercially in 1986 with "Licensed to Ill," the first rap album to top the Billboard 200, and the group’s catalogue still carries outsized weight. Against that backdrop, Diamond’s second solo single, "What We Got," and his first headline dates in the UK and Europe mark a rare new chapter for a figure whose name has been tied to hip-hop history for nearly four decades.

What remains unanswered is the shape of the live run itself. The announced dates begin in London in June, but the full schedule has not been detailed in the material released so far, leaving the first show as the clearest marker of how far Diamond is willing to take the project beyond the studio.