The Beatnuts were originally a trio before Fashion (born Berntony Smalls on January 13, 1970), now known as Al' Tariq, left the group to start a solo career.

At a high school in Flushing, Queens, a friend DJ Loco Moe introduced Les to fellow producer JuJu.

Afrika introduced them to Native Tongues members including De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest and the Jungle Brothers.

The Jungle Brothers claimed that they were not kings, but rather two nuts for their comical nature and the fact that they were crazy enough to carry hundreds of records to every show they played.

Over the next two years, they produced songs for rappers including Common, Pete Nice & DJ Richie Rich and Kurious, as well as a full album for Chi-Ali.

In 1993, The Beatnuts produced more songs for the artists they had previously collaborated with as well as Fat Joe, Suprême NTM and Da Youngsta's.

Street Level was the last Beatnuts album released before Fashion left the group to become a devout Muslim and solo artist under the alias Al' Tariq.

The album is hailed for its "eclectic" and "textured" beats as well as its "rough, rugged, and raunchy" lyrics with slightly more content variation than past releases.

Their 2001 album contained two slightly popular singles, "No Escapin' This" and "Let's Git Doe", but was unable to match the commercial or critical success of A Musical Massacre.

While The Beatnuts were free agents, a rumor surfaced that JuJu and Psycho Les were going to collaborate with Al' Tariq under the group alias 'Intoxicated Demons'.

Steve Juon of RapReviews.com remarked on the correlation between The Beatnuts' critical and commercial success: If they are less known and don't sell as well being on an indie imprint like LandSpeed Records, it will still be worth it if the increased quality of their beats and rhymes remain this high.

Milk Me contained the song "Confused Rappers", a track that dissed Jennifer Lopez for allegedly stealing the beat from The Beatnuts' "Watch Out Now" on her 2002 hit "Jenny from the Block".

The beats on both "Watch Out Now" and "Jenny from the Block" sample the Enoch Light cover of "Hi-Jack" by Fernando Arbex of the Spanish group Barrabás.

Barrabás created the original drum and bass lines, with the flute transposition of the melodic loop (the famous sample in the Beatnuts and Jennifer Lopez tracks) introduced in the Herbie Mann and Enoch Light covers.

Later that year, The Beatnuts had a track included on the Official Joints mixtape, a collection of previously unreleased songs by NYC rappers.

The Beatnuts partnered with the West Coast Hip hop group Tha Alkaholiks in 2016 to make a super crew known as the Liknuts which toured together.

Both JuJu and Psycho Les contributed beats for Tony Touch's The Piece Maker 3: Return of the 50 MC's,[18] They went Tik Tok Viral with the song "Se Acabo" and re-released it in Remix version in 2022 featuring Method Man.