Songfacts®:

• Beastie Boys get biblical on this song, telling their version of the Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego story. The three men are taken to Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, who orders them into a fiery furnace when they won't bow down to him image. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego emerge unscathed, protected by God. Seeing the light, Nebuchadnezzar sets them free and becomes a believer.
• The group wrote this song with the Dust Brothers (John King and Michael Simpson) and their friend Matt Dike, whose home studio they used for demos. It was released as the second single from their second album, Paul's Boutique, following "Hey Ladies."
  
  After hitting the big time with their 1986 debut album Licensed To Ill, the Beastie Boys had a falling out with their label bosses, Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons. They jumped ship to Capitol and moved from New York to Los Angeles, with the Dust Brothers replacing Rubin as their producer. They got off to a rough start at Capitol, which changed management shortly before they delivered the album. Capitol dropped the ball on promotion and distribution, so it only sold about 500,000 copies when it was first released - a far cry from the 10 million of Licensed To Ill. The Beasties and their label soon reached a detente, and Paul's Boutique eventually sold over 2 million.
• The Beastie Boys weren't Bible scholars, but they did like their funk. This song is an homage of sorts to a 1974 song by Sly & the Family Stone called "Loose Booty," where Sly Stone sings, "Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego," which is sampled about a minute into the track. The female vocal ("hey-e-yay-e-yay...") is also a sample from that song.
  
  The drums come from the oft-sampled "Funky Drummer" by James Brown, and the "Never gonna let 'em say that I don't love you" breakdown is from "Never Let 'Em Say" by Ballin' Jack.
• This followed "Hey Ladies" as second single from the Paul's Boutique album.
• Beastie Boys performed "Shadrach" on Soul Train January 27, 1990. It was their second appearance on the show; they did "Brass Monkey" in 1987.
  
  Soul Train performances are almost always lip-synched, but the Beastie Boys wanted their "Shadrach" performance to look live, so they recorded a version specifically for the show with an extra verse and some ad-libs, including a call-and-response shout-out to the host, Don Cornelius ("Everybody say Don... Cornelius"). Cornelius wasn't in on it and was visibly confused during the post-song interview.