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\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\tPolaroid of Mike Ross and Matt Dike<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Michael Ross<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\tTone Loc was stuck. Like a big, brawny genie trapped in a dusty bottle, the rapper in the wraparound shades needed to be freed to unleash his magic.<\/p>\n
\n\tHere, onstage at the Fabulous Forum in Inglewood, California, with purple-and-gold Los Angeles Lakers championship\u00a0banners dangling from the rafters and 18,000 teenyboppers baying for beats, the semi-reformed gangster could only blink through the tendrils of dry ice swirling around him, his heart thumping faster than the tom-tom turnaround of his big hit \u201cWild Thing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n \t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n
\n\tOut in the crowd, two young dudes passed a flask of Jack Daniel\u2019s and guffawed at the sight of Tone jammed in a giant prop bottle labeled FUNKY COLD MEDINA. \u201cOh my\u00a0god, this is so\u00a0Spinal Tap<\/em>!\u201d gasped the tall gangly one, his lank blond hair tented beneath a tied-back bandana. His buddy with the impressively dimpled chin could only glug in incredulity: \u201cIs this supposed to happen?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\tThe answer was no. None of it. Not the ridiculous prop malfunction. Not rap music made in LA beating New York to the top of the pop charts. Nor any of the extraordinary circumstances that had led Matt Dike, Michael Ross, and Tone Loc to this moment.<\/p>\n
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\t\t\t\t\t\t\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\tThe date was Aug. 13, 1989. Two years earlier, Dike and Ross had been battering away at a primitive drum machine in a grungy apartment in the wrong part of Hollywood. With a $5000 loan, they\u2019d started a record label\u00a0called Delicious Vinyl, recorded a couple of mildly lascivious songs with unknown local rapper Anthony \u201cTone\u201d Smith, and pressed up a few hundred 12-inches to hawk at swap meets and local shops.<\/p>\n
\n\tWithin eighteen months, their fledgling label had sold nearly ten million records worldwide.\u00a0They had shocked\u00a0New York, and\u00a0battered down the\u00a0barriers of a recording industry still\u00a0largely\u00a0intent on keeping hip-hop\u00a0out.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n \t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n
\n\tYet\u00a0here\u00a0was Tone\u00a0Loc, headlining Club MTV Live Tour, a concert revue featuring a smattering of ready-to-serve stars of the moment:\u00a0techno-poppers Information Society, funk goofballs Was (Not Was), dance queen Paula Abdul,\u00a0and\u00a0mime mannequins Milli Vanilli. No stranger to smoke inhalation, Loc had had enough of this guff,\u00a0and in a moment of twin-fisted fury prepared to bash his way out of his Plexiglas coffin.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cWe\u2019ve\u00a0gotta\u00a0get up there!\u201d Dike shouted at Ross. The two cofounders of Delicious Vinyl, ALL ACCESS passes gummed to their\u00a0chests, began weaving their way toward the stage.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tCovering the show that night for the Los Angeles Times<\/em> was journalist\u00a0Jonathan Gold. Two decades later, Gold\u2019s fearless gastronomy and appetizing prose as LA Weekly<\/em> food critic won him the Pulitzer Prize, but throughout the 1980s, Gold\u2019s primary beat was music. He had penned multiple admiring stories documenting Dike\u2019s hot string of underground dance clubs and the subsequent rise of Delicious Vinyl.<\/p>\n\n\tIn his review in the morning paper, Gold chided Club MTV host Downtown Julie Brown and the night\u2019s other acts before singling out Tone Loc for special praise: \u201cIn only a few months, the good-natured rapper seems to have made the transition to headlining a sold-out Forum with astonishing ease. The beats, kind of distorted with the other Club MTV performers, sounded richer and funkier played really loud, as if they were supposed to be that way. He shook hands with the audience, bantered with the audience \u2014 acknowledged that there is an audience, which is probably contrary to Club MTV house policy, but what the hey \u2014 and made rap clich\u00e9s convincing for the first time since 1982. And that voice \u2014 whiskey-warm,\u00a0rasping, insinuating, funny \u2014 is the best instrument in rap, cutting effortlessly through cranked guitar chords and bongo beats and cowbells.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tFinally free of his prop bottle, Tone delivered \u201cFunky Cold Medina,\u201d go-go joint \u201cI Got It Goin\u2019 On,\u201d and pungent weed ode \u201cCheeba\u00a0Cheeba,\u201d while behind him onstage, next to the turntable riser manned by DJ\u00a0M.Walk, Matt Dike and Mike Ross peered out at the crowd, facing down their unlikely demographic: pale adolescents whose orthodontic braces were hooked on the antenna of MTV.<\/p>\n\n\n
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