Fact #159605
When:
Short story:
Wild Thing by Tone Loc becomes the highest-charting rap single to date when it hits No2 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the USA.
Full article:
The hottest club DJs in Los Angeles, Mike Ross and Matt Dike, were looking for “someone with a unique voice, a laid-back, kinda cool voice.” And they found Tone Loc.
Just like his name, Tone Loc’s voice was not there at the start. He was born as plain Anthony Smith, and his unique baritone croak came about when his mother fixed him a hot drink of tea and brandy to ease the pain of a sore throat. Instead of waiting for it to cool down, young Tony gulped it over, scalded the inside of his throat, and changed his voice. “By scalding my throat, Mom gave me a career,” he now says.
Enter Ross and Dike. “We decided we would try our hands at making records, instead of playing other people’s records all the time,” remembers Ross. “We had some tracks we were fiddling around with, but we needed someone to come in and rap over them.”
Anthony Smith was now 22 and, as befitted a member of a west side LA street gang, he had earned a gang name, Tone Loc, in which Tone was an abbreviation of Tony and Loc was short for loco - to put it another way, he was Crazy Tony. On the recommendation of a mutual friend, Ross got in touch with Tone Loc. “I called him up, and his voice was just so amazing, we knew we could do something cool with him.”
“Once they heard the voice,” confirms Loc, “it was like ‘Oh, we gotta get that voice on wax.’”
After two singles paved the way, the idea for Wild Thing came to Ross and Dike when they remembered a line Fab Five Freddy had used in the Spike Lee flick She’s Gotta Have It - “C’mon baby, let’s go back to my pad and do the wild thing.” Dike had also made good use of a sampled Van Halen guitar riff from the song Jamie’s Cryin’, and Loc came up with some suitably wild lyrics. Even in the estimation of Ross and Dike, they were way too wild for radio play, so Young MC was brought in to do a re-write.
A black and white video, shot for $400, parodying the icy eroticism of Robert Palmer’s Addicted To Love promo, served the single well on tv, and it was soon in heavy rotation on alternative rock stations all across America. Despite being too radical for mainstream radio play, it went as high as No2 in the Billboard Hot 100, and was eventually certified double-platinum.
Despite his runaway success, Tone Loc remained uncertain about his future in music. “I’m wondering if I want to make another record or not,” he said. “Music’s not it for me. Not at all…. I’ve made enough money that, if handled wisely, I wouldn’t have to work again a day in my life…. I’m easy going… I’m LA all the way, one hundred per cent… I got to have access to a vehicle and sunshine and women. Hey, that’s it. That’s life. What’s left?”
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Just like his name, Tone Loc’s voice was not there at the start. He was born as plain Anthony Smith, and his unique baritone croak came about when his mother fixed him a hot drink of tea and brandy to ease the pain of a sore throat. Instead of waiting for it to cool down, young Tony gulped it over, scalded the inside of his throat, and changed his voice. “By scalding my throat, Mom gave me a career,” he now says.
Enter Ross and Dike. “We decided we would try our hands at making records, instead of playing other people’s records all the time,” remembers Ross. “We had some tracks we were fiddling around with, but we needed someone to come in and rap over them.”
Anthony Smith was now 22 and, as befitted a member of a west side LA street gang, he had earned a gang name, Tone Loc, in which Tone was an abbreviation of Tony and Loc was short for loco - to put it another way, he was Crazy Tony. On the recommendation of a mutual friend, Ross got in touch with Tone Loc. “I called him up, and his voice was just so amazing, we knew we could do something cool with him.”
“Once they heard the voice,” confirms Loc, “it was like ‘Oh, we gotta get that voice on wax.’”
After two singles paved the way, the idea for Wild Thing came to Ross and Dike when they remembered a line Fab Five Freddy had used in the Spike Lee flick She’s Gotta Have It - “C’mon baby, let’s go back to my pad and do the wild thing.” Dike had also made good use of a sampled Van Halen guitar riff from the song Jamie’s Cryin’, and Loc came up with some suitably wild lyrics. Even in the estimation of Ross and Dike, they were way too wild for radio play, so Young MC was brought in to do a re-write.
A black and white video, shot for $400, parodying the icy eroticism of Robert Palmer’s Addicted To Love promo, served the single well on tv, and it was soon in heavy rotation on alternative rock stations all across America. Despite being too radical for mainstream radio play, it went as high as No2 in the Billboard Hot 100, and was eventually certified double-platinum.
Despite his runaway success, Tone Loc remained uncertain about his future in music. “I’m wondering if I want to make another record or not,” he said. “Music’s not it for me. Not at all…. I’ve made enough money that, if handled wisely, I wouldn’t have to work again a day in my life…. I’m easy going… I’m LA all the way, one hundred per cent… I got to have access to a vehicle and sunshine and women. Hey, that’s it. That’s life. What’s left?”