‘Is This Supposed to Happen?’: How Matt Dike Dominated Eighties Hip-Hop Music

Embed In 1980s Los Angeles, Peter Relic’s”Bust a Move: Matt Dike, Delicious Vinyl, and the Hip-Hop Hits that First Conquered Popnarrates the strange scenarios that resulted in the starting of independent record label Delicious Vinyl, and the development of 3 of the most significant crossover songs of that period: “Wild Thing” and “Funky Cold Medina” by Tone Loc, and Young MC’s “Bust a Move.”

“The reality that those enduring hits– along with Beastie Boys’ timeless album ‘Paul’s Boutique’ — were produced in Matt Dike’s dirty, 2nd flooring home utilizing patched-together devices makes this one of the fantastic DIY success stories in music history,” Relic, a Wanderer and Ambiance factor states “I had no concept how genuinely remarkable this story would be entering into it, never ever mind how the secret of Matt Dike would drive my whole examination.”

As the record label Dike cofounded with fellow club DJ Michael Ross increased to international prominence, the charming manufacturer was provided the opportunity to deal with artists consisting of Aerosmith and Brian Wilson. Rather, Matt Dike vanished.

“All I had was his telephone number, and the understanding that Matt had actually not provided an in-person interview to journalism because 1990. What I never ever thought was what was going to occur that night after he lastly got the phone.”

In the following excerpt from the book, 3 of the essential gamers discover themselves at an incredible, absurd tipping point in hip-hop and popular song history.

Tone Loc was stuck. Like a huge, brawny genie caught in a dirty bottle, the rap artist in the wraparound tones required to be released to release his magic.

Here, onstage at the Fabulous Forum in Inglewood, California, with purple-and-gold Los Angeles Lakers champion banners hanging from the rafters and 18,000 teenyboppers baying for beats, the semi-reformed gangster might just blink through the tendrils of solidified carbon dioxide swirling around him, his heart thumping faster than the tom-tom turn-around of his success “Wild Thing.”

Out in the crowd, 2 young guys passed a flask of Jack Daniel’s and guffawed at the sight of Tone jammed in a giant prop bottle identified FUNKY COLD MEDINA. “Oh my god, this is so Spine Tap” gasped the high gangly one, his lank blonde hair tented below a tied-back bandanna. His friend with the remarkably dimpled chin could just glug in incredulity: “Is this expected to occur?”

The response was no. None of it. Not the ludicrous prop breakdown. Not rap music made in LA beating New York to the top of the pop charts. Nor any of the remarkable scenarios that had actually led Matt Dike, Michael Ross, and Tone Loc to this minute.

The date was Aug. 13, 1989. 2 years previously, Dike and Ross had actually been damaging away at a primitive drum maker in a grungy house in the incorrect part of Hollywood. With a $5000 loan, they ‘d began a record label called Delicious Vinyl, taped a number of slightly lascivious tunes with unidentified regional rap artist Anthony” Tone”Smith, and pushed up a couple of hundred 12-inches to hawk at swap fulfills and regional stores.

Within eighteen months, their recently established label had actually offered almost 10 million records worldwide. They had actually stunned New York, and damaged down the barriers of a recording market still mainly bent on keeping hip-hop out.

Here was Tone Loc, headlining Club MTV Live Tour, a performance revue including a smattering of ready-to-serve stars of the minute: techno-poppers Information Society, funk goofballs Was (Not Was), dance queen Paula Abdul, and mime mannequins Milli Vanilli. No complete stranger to smoke inhalation, Loc had actually had enough of this guff, and in a minute of twin-fisted fury prepared to slam his escape of his Plexiglas casket.

“We’ve got ta get up there!” Dike yelled at Ross. The 2 cofounders of Delicious Vinyl, ALL ACCESS passes gummed to their chests, started weaving their method towards the phase.

Covering the program that night for the Los Angeles Times was reporter Jonathan Gold. Twenty years later on, Gold’s courageous gastronomy and appealing prose as LA Weekly food critic won him the Pulitzer Prize, however throughout the 1980s, Gold’s main beat was music. He had actually penned several admiring stories recording Dike’s hot string of underground dance clubs and the subsequent increase of Delicious Vinyl.

In his evaluation in the early morning paper, Gold scolded Club MTV host Downtown Julie Brown and the night’s other acts before singling out Tone Loc for unique appreciation: “In just a couple of months, the good-natured rap artist appears to have actually made the shift to headlining a sold-out Forum with impressive ease. The beats, type of misshaped with the other Club MTV entertainers, sounded richer and funkier played truly loud, as if they were expected to be that method. He shook hands with the audience, bantered with the audience– acknowledged that there is an audience, which is most likely contrary to Club MTV home policy, however what the hi– and made rap clichés persuading for the very first time because 1982. Which voice– whiskey-warm, wearing, insinuating, amusing– is the very best instrument in rap, cutting easily through cranked guitar chords and bongo beats and cowbells.”

Complimentary of his prop bottle, Tone provided “Funky Cold Medina,” go-go joint “I Got It Goin’ On,” and pungent weed ode “Cheeba Cheeba,” while behind him onstage, next to the turntable riser manned by DJ M.Walk, Matt Dike and Mike Ross peered out at the crowd, dealing with down their not likely group: pale teenagers whose orthodontic braces were hooked on the antenna of MTV.

Came the cash shot, a roof-rattling performance of the year’s most popular jam. “Wild Thing” had actually been tape-recorded on a patched-together video cassette recorder in Dike’s house, with samples of a stopped working, decade-old Van Halen single, its accompanying video produced hardly $400, and now Dike and Ross, dancing and deliriously intoxicated, were believing the exact same thing as Jonathan Gold: This sounds incredible.

The minute was special. It could not get any much better.

And after that, picking up the extensive nature of the celebration, Matt Dike turned his back, bent over, and mooned the crowd.

Excerpted from Bust a Move: Matt Dike, Delicious Vinyl, and the Hip-Hop Hits That First Conquered PopCopyright © 2026 by Peter Relic. Released in the United States by Citadel Press, an imprint of Kensington Publishing Corp.

This post initially appeared on Rolling Stone.