Delicious Vinyl 3000
Producers: Matt Dike, Michael Ross, and the Dust Brothers
Track listing: On Fire (Remix) / Wild Thing / Loc’ed After Dark / I Got It Goin’ On / Cutting Rhythms / Funky Cold Medina / Next Episode / Cheeba Cheeba / Don’t Get Close / Loc’in on the Shaw / The Homies
April 15, 1989
1 week
By 1987, Mike Ross, who studied mass communications at UCLA, and Matt Dike, a former New Yorker, were the hottest club DJs in Los Angeles, spinning hip-hop records at the hippest nightspots. Yet the duo, both in their mid-20s, soon become bored with the routine. “We decided we would try our hand at making records, instead of playing other people’s records all the time,” Ross says. “We had some tracks we were fiddling around with, but we needed someone to come in and rap over them.”
Ross and Dike, both heavily into the smooth, cool style of Eric B. & Rakim, put the word out that they were looking for a rapper. A friend suggested his cousin, a 22-year-old named Anthony Smith, who auditioned over the phone. “I called him up,” Ross says. “And his voice was just so amazing, we knew we could do something cool with him.”
After Ross borrowed some money from his father, he and Dike formed Delicious Vinyl. Smith, the first artist on the new label, started using his gang-banging tag Tone Loc, as in loco or crazy Tony. “I used to gang-bang for awhile,” he admits. “But I was a different kind of gangster. I didn’t do it because I didn’t have money or I didn’t have love from my family, I did it because I just liked to fight.”
It was Tone Loc’s mother who can take credit for his distinctive baritone. When he was nine, his mother fixed him a mixture of hot tea and brandy to ease the pain of a strep throat, but young Tony drank it before allowing it to cool, scalding his throat and forever changing his voice.
After two initial singles created a buzz on the West Coast, Tone Loc struck gold with “Wild Thing.” The cut (not a remake of the 1966 Troggs classic) was inspired by a line from the Spike Lee film She’s Gotta Have It. For the track, Dike sampled a guitar and drum riff from Van Halen’s “Jamie’s Cryin’.” After Tone Loc’s initial rap was deemed too racy for radio play, Young MC, another rapper in the Delicious Vinyl posse, rewrote the lyrics.
“Wild Thing” found a home on the playlists of alternative rock stations. A video parodying Robert Palmer’s “Addicted to Love,” produced for a mere $400, made its way onto MTV. It soon became the second-best-selling single of all time, next to USA for Africa’s “We Are the World,” but since radio programmers in middle America would not program the track, it never topped the Hot 100 chart, where rankings are determined by a mix of sales and air- play.
When Loc-ed After Dark was released, Tone Loc finally made it to the top, hitting the Number One spot in just eight weeks and becoming the first African-American rap act to top the album chart. A second similarly party-themed single, “Funky Cold Medina,” was also a huge hit, leading many to overlook the fact that Tone Lao’s roots were firmly planted in the streets. “Loc’ed After Dark is full of gang-banging rhetoric,” Ross says. “It’s an autobiographical record that is as tough as Tone is.”
THE TOP FIVE
Week of April 15, 1989
1. Loc-ed After Dark, Tone Loc
2. Electric Youth, Debbie Gibson
3. Like a Prayer, Madonna
4. Don’t Be Cruel, Bobby Brown
5. Mystery Girl, Roy Orbison