The record's cover mimics the artwork for the hip-hop group's 'Licensed To Ill'

Beastie Boys have commented on the artwork for Eminem‘s recent surprise album ‘Kamikaze‘ in a new interview.

The record’s artwork is very similar to the New York hip-hop group’s sleeve for ‘Licensed To Ill‘. Both records feature the back end of silver planes with similar markings. Beastie Boys’ artwork showed their name on the plane’s tail, while Eminem’s has the album name in its place.

Speaking to George Stroumboulopoulos on The Strombo Show, Ad-Rock and Mike D said they were given no advance warning that ‘Kamikaze”s artwork would look like that of ‘Licensed To Ill”s.

“I got maybe 10 text messages, 20 text messages,” Mike D said. “And I’m like, ‘Why do I all of a sudden have like 50 text messages? I better see what’s going on.’ Everybody’s forwarding me the album cover from the Twitter feed or whatever, so that’s how we found out about it.”

The pair shared no opinion on the sleeve but clarified with the host that the rapper hadn’t dissed them on the album. “He’s bringing back the diss track,” Mike added. “He likes us, I think.”

Asked if it was nice for their record to be remembered, Ad-Rock replied: “Sure. I don’t know him. I’m sure that was nice.”

Eminem is currently embroiled in a back-and-forth of diss tracks with Machine Gun Kelly after calling him out on the track ‘Not Alike’. Yesterday (September 16), Kelly responded to Eminem’s latest musical takedown of him, ‘Killshot’.

Writing on Twitter, the rapper said: “2 weeks and 3 interviews later…” ‘Killshot’ saw Eminem mock Kelly’s “man bun” and boast: “I’m 45 and I’m still outselling you/By 29 I had three albums that had blew.”