When a 22-year-old West Coast rapper and reformed ex-gang member named Anthony Terrell Smith — soon to be better known as Tone Lōc — stepped into a “hot-ass closet” in a “raggedy part of Hollywood” to record ”Wild Thing,” he certainly didn’t expect that track to sell 2.5 million copies, let alone dominate MTV (with a lo-fi music video, shot by then-rising director Tamra Davis, on a meager $400 budget).
And of course, he definitely never imagined that he’d end up cosplaying as the Handyman on The Masked Singer 37 years later, at nearly age 60.
But so many developments in Lōc’s loco life have not been foreseeable. For instance, his signature rasp (which Yo! MTV Raps-raised Masked Singer judge Robin Thicke instantly identified) was the “unexpected benefit” of a childhood accident when he “snuck and drank” some of his mom’s freshly brewed hot tea and damaged his throat. And he “was not expecting to be in the music business or an entertainer at all,” and was “planning on probably going into real estate or something like that”… until a random referral by his cousin/early manager led to a fateful meeting with former Jean-Michel Basquiat studio assistant and eventual Beastie Boys/Dust Brothers associate Matt Dike.
“Two days later, next thing I know, we were starting to make a record,” says Tone, who became the very first signing to Delicious Vinyl, Dike’s indie record label that also helped launch the careers of Young MC, the Pharcyde, the Brand New Heavies, and Mellow Man Ace.
“[Dike] was a white guy, basically a cool dude with long blond hair… the type of guy you would look at and be like, ‘Nah, he’s just some sort of stoner or whatever; he does not look like he knows music,’” Tone recalls with a chuckle. “But this guy knew everything, from blues to hip-hop to country to rock ‘n’ roll. He knew it all. He had it all in there. In fact, he had so many records in one room [of his apartment] that the owner of the building had to come and ask him to remove the albums — because they were starting to sink into the lower level, coming into the apartment below!”
Tone says it was “totally a Matt Dike thing” to sample classic rock on his debut album, Lōc-ed After Dark — like a pastiche of Foreigner, the Rolling Stones, KISS, Free, and Bachman-Turner Overdrive on his second hit, “Funky Cold Medina,” and, more famously (and more problematically, since it prompted an $180,000 copyright lawsuit), the guitar riff from Van Halen’s “Jamie’s Cryin’” on his first hit. In fact, Lōc admits that he’d never even heard “Jamie’s Cryin’” before he recorded “Wild Thing.”
“I wasn’t familiar with the [Eddie Van Halen] guitar part at all,” he says. “I think [Dike and Delicious Vinyl co-founder Michael Ross] were searching for the bridge of trying to cross over [to pop and rock audiences]. They were more familiar with that, because I had never even heard of the pop charts before.” And while Tone might have been a bit hesitant or skeptical, he decided to give it a shot. “I mean, the beat wasn’t [my style] at first, but I’m like, ’I’ll work it out. I’ll do something to it.’ And it worked out fine.”
Tone reveals that “Wild Thing’s” iconic opening line, “Let’s do it,” was actually an ad-lib, because he was so uncomfortable recording in Dike’s unventilated closet-turned-makeshift studio in East Hollywood. “When I said, ‘Let’s do it,’ it wasn’t like, let’s do a song. I’m like, ‘Let’s do it, because I’m tired of being hot up in here right now!’ … I was like, let’s do it, because it was hot, like, ‘I’m ready to get the hell up out of there!’” he laughs. “That’s why I was ready. Let’s do it and get the hell out. … I did it in, I would say, probably like three takes.”
Lōc-ed After Dark sold double-platinum, went to No. 1 on the U.S. album chart (making it the first album by a Black rap musician to top the Billboard 200), yielded two top three Billboard Hot 100 singles, and even earned Lōc two Grammy nominations, including Best New Artist. (Fun fact: He lost in that category to the soon-to-be-disgraced Milli Vanilli.) So, it’s surprising that he only released one other album after that, 1991’s less successful but still gold-certified Cool Hand Lōc, and then, after recording “Ace Is in the House” with Jim Carrey in 1994 for Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (in which he also played police Sergeant Emilio), he never released any music again.
Tone admitted he felt “pressure” to follow up his debut LP. Delicious Vinyl had unexpectedly exploded and would soon form a partnership with major label Atlantic Records, and, according to a petition that Ross eventually filed in L.A. Superior Court, Dike was beginning to “abdicate responsibility and management” of the label. (Ross later retained ownership of Delicious Vinyl; Dike died of cancer in 2018.) But regardless of any music-business complications and machinations behind the scenes, it was simply impossible for Lōc to recapture the lightning-in-a-bottle (or lightning-in-a-closet) magic he’d created in Dike’s stuffy, humble home studio, back when he and the label were working with no set parameters or expectations.
“For some reason, [Delicious Vinyl] didn’t put in the effort for my second album they’d put in for the first one, so it kind got all messed up in certain ways,” laments Tone. “I didn’t see it in the beginning, but I saw what they really wanted to do. They weren’t really concerned with the rest of the album; they just wanted two particular songs. They’re like, ‘Just let us have two, and you can go on and do the rest and make your own beats and do whatever.’ And the songs that they made, pretty much, it was right when hip-hop was changing straight into the gangsta-type thing, hardcore. So, what they were trying to do was not happening anymore. That type of style, like ‘Wild Thing,’ was over.”
Lōc branched into acting for a while — not just with Ace Ventura, but with roles in films like The Adventures of Ford Fairlane, Poetic Justice, Juice, Heat, Spy Hard, and Car 54, Where Are You?; TV shows like Touched By an Angel, NewsRadio, Living Single, Martin; and animated voiceover work in Bebe’s Kids and King of the Hill — so he decided to “just chill for a while” musically. He insists that he “wasn’t concerned about making any new albums,” since a music career had never been his Plan A. “It wasn’t something that I wanted to do anyway,” he shrugs. But even though he stopped making records, he never stopped playing concerts.
“I perform every weekend. It’s amazing,” Tone grins. “People are still surprised. They’re like, ‘You still do shows?’ But I’ve never really stopped. … I still love doing those songs. Those songs are for people of my age and my era. People tell me, ‘Oh, it brings me back to high school, it brings me back to college or my younger days.’ I hear all the good stuff about those songs, so I love it. Of course, you might hear something… somebody might post something here and there negative about it. But for the most part, people just really want to smile and have a good time and dance to those songs.”
Regarding negative reactions, Lōc is specifically referring to “Funky Cold Medina,” which is a stone-cold classic, but has some lyrics that admittedly haven’t aged very well. He doesn’t address the (in retrospect) transphobia of the song’s third verse about “Sheena,” which (much like the cringey, transphobic Lois Einhorn/Ray Finkle subplot in Ace Ventura) passed for humor in the ‘80s/‘90s. But he does address the fact that the raunchy song, which is about an aphrodisiac adult beverage that render anyone who imbibes it irresistible to the opposite sex, has in recent years been wrongly criticized for supposedly glorifying date rape.
“I just saw something [on social media] about ‘Funky Cold Medina,’ like, ‘Oh, he’s the guy that likes to drug women and get ‘em drunk or give some sort of drug and do whatever.’ … It’s nothing like that,” Tone stresses. “Whatever, you get some of the good and some of the bad. But for the most part, everything is all good and people absolutely love those songs. Well, not everybody. … But you have no idea: I go all over the country, and to other countries, all over, and [audiences love the music] in places that you would not believe.”
While Tone hasn’t released music in more than three decades, he reveals that he does plan to finally record a new single this year, which will hopefully capitalize on his elevated post-Masked Singer profile. “I have a record that I do in my shows, called ‘Hey, What’s Up?,’ that gets a bigger reaction than ‘Wild Thing’ or ‘Funky Cold Medina,’ so that’s pretty surprising. And with the success of that song, I think I will go for it. Why not?” he says. “I’m telling you now, you can look for that single. I’m going to put that out. Will it be in the summertime? I don’t know if I’ll have time, but right after the summer, probably.”
While “Hey, What’s Up?” evokes Tone Lōc’s classic era, sampling the instantly recognizable monster riff from AC/DC’s “Back in Black,” times have changed. When the artist formerly known as the Handyman eventually records the party track, he won’t be doing it in some raggedy, un-air-conditioned apartment closet.
“No, that’s not happening,” he laughs. “Definitely not.”
