LP pioneer in many ways. Although the rapper is a native of Compton, he detaches himself from the gangsta [rap] in vogue at the time and delivers a great pop success. A few months after its release, the album was first on the Billboard 200, first record from a black hip-hop artist to top the chart: until then, only "Licensed to Ill" by Beastie Boys was able to reach that peak among the hip hop records, two years earlier. Paradoxically, the album will not go beyond the third position on the hip hop chart, clearly it couldn't touch that. It also gets double platinum, and perhaps only three/four hip hop artists had this certification from the RIAA.
Two excellent popular cuts both written by Young MC ("Wild Thing", "Funky Cold Medina"), one of the very first weed homage ("Cheeba Cheeba") which anticipates more or less everyone and then, then, then there's the rough voice of Anthony "Tone-Lōc" Smith who accompanies you for fifty minutes. Former member of Los Angeles street gang Crips — title and cover give clues, the latter is also a homage to that one of Donald Byrd's "A New Perspective" —, he says practically nothing that you haven't already heard, but the relaxed way in which he delivers his storytelling takes you away with him towards the platinum horizon. The production invented by Matt Dike, Mike Ross and The Dust Brothers is quite good, consolidated by surprising samples (George Clinton, Kiss, Van Halen, Rolling Stones, Foreigner, Stevie Wonder, Isaac Hayes, and is one of the first to sample Chaka Khan), an album fluid and funky comes out, but not essential.
Released by Dike and Ross label Delicious Vinyl, the debut disk of Tone-Lōc is one of the best-seller records of the year in US, Canada and Germany, appreciated by crowd worldwide and by critics.
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