''I wanna know,'' asks the Beastie Boys' Mike D., ''what physically, actually, happened where people will say, 'I used to think the Beastie Boys were three jerks, but now I kind of think that they're all right?' ''
''Are they saying that?'' asks Beastie MCA.
''Somehow people do say that,'' says Mike D.
People are mistaken.
So are some critics, who, in reviewing the Beastie Boys' second album, ''Paul's Boutique,'' have latched onto the glint of a social consciousness that surfaces amid the mayhem and hip-hop anarchy. Newsday, for instance, termed it ''a grown-up musical delight,'' owing to the fact that the Beasties seem to think homelessness is a bad idea and no one should dump on a dude because he's of another race.
''A complete misinterpretration,'' says Mike D., a k a Mike Diamond.
MCA, a k a Adam Yauch, offers an obscene directive to anyone who holds that view, then takes the undersized Sharper Image basketball he's been clutching and wings it off the wall; the rebound catches the third Beastie, King Ad-Rock, a k a Adam Horovitz, in the back of the head. ''I think that pretty much sets the record straight,'' says Mike D. ''Sometimes, they say, actions speak louder than words.''
The Beastie Boys are a walking, jive-talking cartoon with a bad attitude. And all they gotta do is act naturally. Starting as three young New York punk-rock kids in 1981, they turned into a rap act and blitzed the music biz in 1986-'87 with their major label debut, ''Licensed to Ill,'' a No. 1 hit, ''(You've Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party).''
''This is what we live for,'' says Mike D., sitting in a Four Seasons hotel room last weekend. ''Selling things. We're here to sell ourselves and our product.''
They are, but they aren't. They're on a brief promotional tour, preceding a concert tour that will begin in December or January. But the Beasties don't do standard promo. Consider the answer to whether they felt pressure in following up their multi-platinum debut. (''Paul's Boutique,'' an inventive disc, has gone gold, but not platinum.)
''Hit, shmit,'' says MCA. ''What we've been doing all along is making the music we felt like making, so we're just gonna continue to do that.''
''It really bugs you when everything else that's selling records these days sucks,'' adds King Ad-Rock, whose father is playwright Israel Horovitz. ''Everybody else making records sucks.''
Mike D.: ''I don't think anybody expected us to go as far as making this record.''
MCA: ''We were just trying to say as much def stuff as we could.''
Mike D. (as a Marine might): ''I feel that I need competition to better myself constantly. I have an over-riding need to be a better emcee at all times.''
Some hip-hop vocabulary:
Def: an adjective: the best, tops.
Dis: a verb: to disrespect, e.g., ''Yo! I dissed that emcee!''
The Beasties dis everyone. Last weekend, the targets and running gags included: Grace Slick, Billy Joel, Herb Alpert, Pete Townshend, the previous night's loud waitress, homosexuals and aging rock stars (Mike D.: ''Ian Hunter and Mick Jones are in Billy Joel's video. It's upsetting. Does this mean in 15 years we're gonna appear in a video with Billy Joel?''). Former friends and cohorts, producer Rick Rubin and Def Jam Records owner Russell Simmons, with whom they're involved in a tangle of lawsuits, come in for a special drubbing. The Beasties allege they weren't paid proper royalties; Def Jam claims the Beastie Boys broke their contract, by signing with Capitol.
''What's actually really funny,'' muses Mike D., ''is we got completely ripped off but I love those guys like blood relatives.''
''He's goofing,'' says MCA.
''Because they were our friends we could never really imagine it would come to what it did come to. It's worse when friends have stolen from you.''
So that leads to the strange case of Beach Boy Brian Wilson's father selling off the Beach Boys publishing . . . and that leads into a discussion about Brian Wilson's once-prodigious acid taking . . . and that leads into the Beastie Boys' takes on their own experiences with acid.
''I dropped acid skiing one time and lost my wallet,'' says MCA.
''When we were in Vegas,'' says Mike D., ''and I was tripping, I lost hundreds of dollars, but it doesn't matter 'cause all of a sudden it's just paper. You really question the existence of it, you know?''