


They wouldn’t even talk about going to bed.

If you go back and listen to Sugar Hill Gang, Flash and the Furious Five, there was no swearing in it. I was so into “Rapper’s Delight” because I could hear the hi-hat in the record because it was on FM. You wanted to appeal to as many people as possible. But my view on rap music was calling up WBLS hoping that they would play “Rapper’s Delight” again at 12 years old. I didn’t really feel like I needed to live up to anything I wasn’t even living in a neighborhood like I grew up in. Well, I was going back to a college dorm every night when I was making that record. How did you stay so clean in the era of Public Enemy and N.W.A? “My record wasn’t necessarily rebellious, but it was clever enough to grab in a decent segment of people that didn’t listen to rap music.” “People looked at rap and hard rock as the type of music that you slam your door after you argue with your parents, and bang your head in defiance,” says Young. Hot on the heels of Tone Loc’s “Wild Thing” (a song which Young also wrote), “Bust A Move” broke down barriers on radio and MTV playlists, while its corresponding album, Stone Cold Rhymin’ was a rap record that many adults still remember as the first their parents let them play. Fueled by a sample-heavy production, Flea’s popping bassline, and infectious rhymes written in a University of Southern California dorm by economics major Marvin Young, “Bust A Move” helped usher in the era of pop-rap - songs squeaky clean enough for the whole family and infectious enough to bombard Billboard. Twenty summers ago, Young MC’s “Bust A Move” was inescapable, a G-rated funk-bomb integral to hip-hop’s eventual mainstream acceptance.
