Outside the Lines With Rap Genius - OTL 57: Paul Stewart Excerpt #3 "Tone-Lōc and Young MC" lyrics

Paul Stewart: Let me give Tone-Lōc some street cred. He was a thug. He was like, Hoover's Crip, or whatever he was, you went to Tone-Lōc's house - he had this big house on Olympic, I remember, near like San Vicente/Fairfax - it would be like twenty of his homeboys smoking... You know what I mean. He was really not to be messed with. But he was really affable - a big jolly guy. He was smart enough to kinda like play the role. He wasn't trying to you know, trying to beat up program directors at radio stations or anything (like rapper Sugar Free). He was smart to play the role, and he kinda went along for the ride and everything. Tone was the kinda guy who was in the right place right time, had that amazing voice, you know, and he realized that "Hey, this is a good look for me, I don't wanna rock the boat too much". And Marvin, Young MC - great guy, still friends with him - he was a USC student, came from a middle cla** neighborhood, wasn't an ounce of street, really. Wasn't very street, let's put it like that. He was trying to very decidedly make music that was cleaner and more directed towards a pop audience which was kinda taboo at that time. Besides guys like Will Smith and everything, there weren't people really gunning for that. It was viewed as selling out, which was still kind of a big deal, and you didn't... The labels were still like barely in the rap business and figuring it out, and they did some horrible pop attempts but for the most part, trying to be pop wasn't something that a lot of people were really gunning for. So he was kinda unique in that way, and just a super smart guy and really talented lyricist. Kinda the brains in the way, where he wrote a lot of the stuff. He co-wrote with Tone-Lōc "Wild Thing".