Life is good for Marvin Young.
Better known as Young MC, the rapper released two new singles late last year and has a new video debuting this week. Next year will mark 20 years since the London-born, Queens, New York-raised artist moved to Scottsdale after finding more success than he ever imagined during a long run in Los Angeles.
Even in his 2021 track, “Worry Bout That,” his first original single in more than 12 years, Young MC covers everything that he “ain’t got to worry about these days,” from the music business, to how his next rap line goes, or his clout, or anything really. Well, maybe at the time coronavirus. His lyrics reflect his inner peace in the desert: “I ain’t got to worry about skills or worry about hip hop paying my bills. Except for the ’rona I’m in Arizona with beautiful views of the hills.”
With age 58 approaching this spring, Young reflects on how one breakout song, “Bust A Move,” released just after his 22nd birthday in 1989, changed everything for him.
“I was still coming from the place where I didn't think rap music was going to get that far,” he said Monday. “I didn't think rap music would be able to take me that far.”
He’s not a one-hit wonder, though, technically.
Young MC co-wrote “Funky Cold Medina and “Wild Thing,” two monster singles off his buddy Tone Lōc’s debut album that same year. Young MC’s other single, “Principal’s Office,” hit the rap chart’s Top 10 and was nominated for Best Rap Video at the 1990 MTV Video Music Awards.
But, hey, it is mostly about “Bust A Move.”
Its irresistible hook and fun lyrics — not to mention Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers on bass — went platinum on its way to being a crossover hit at No. 7 on Billboard, and it stayed on the pop charts for 40 weeks. He won a Grammy for Best Rap Performance in just the second year rap was given its own category.
His single spent that October in the Top 10 with Madonna, The Rolling Stones, and Janet Jackson, whose “Miss You Much” was in the top spot. It would also appear in countless movies, TV shows and commercials.
“I was more wide-eyed and amazed in the moment, but really appreciative looking back,” Young said.
Young MC was at the forefront of a widely changing landscape for rap and for Black artists at the time.
Rap music through the early 1980s was primarily a New York phenomenon, and a young Marvin in Queens — like the rest of his generation — heard something revolutionary with the underground “Rapper’s Delight” by Sugarhill Gang. Run-DMC’s self-titled debut album in 1984, two years before their crossover record “Raising Hell,” for Young was “the first one that I looked at as a real, tangible album in rap music” without it even cracking the pop Top 40.
While rap music slowly made its way west, Young was finding his own way west as an economics major at USC.
On the verge of the genre about to bust out in Los Angeles, Young MC was writing lines that differed from much of the hip hop experiences of the time.
“I wasn't a street guy, I was a college kid,” he said. “I wanted to make my music more about how I lived. I didn't want to front. I didn't want to lie and say I was something that I was not.”
Audiences loved it. White music fans were buying up rap records, and FM radio stations were getting in on what was happening, playing Young MC songs alongside The Smiths and The Cure.
Rappers were emerging from points beyond New York City and were bringing new messages to the scene that weren’t necessarily from the street, including the Bay Area’s MC Hammer (“U Can’t Touch This”), Philadelphia’s DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince (“Parents Just Don’t Understand”), and Seattle-based Sir Mix-a-Lot (“Baby Got Back”).
The Black community’s contributions to hip hop were changing overnight as were the community’s Black fans, many of whom didn’t have roots in the streets either. Young MC was among the early pioneers of the new direction.
“I just never approached (my music) like that. I wanted it to be fun, but I wanted it to be me,” he said. “I'm not as presumptuous to say what impact I would have, other than that I showed an example or showed what was possible.”
Today hip hop enjoys a bigger audience than ever.
Kendrick Lamar this month played halftime at the Super Bowl before 133.5 million viewers, the highest halftime TV audience ever recorded, Roc Nation reports. Artists who blend rap music with pop (Teddy Swims, Shaboozey, Post Malone, Jack Harlow) registered four of the top five biggest songs on Billboard in 2024.
Young MC, too, found himself back on the charts in 2024.
His latest single, “Kinetic,” which came out in December, hit the Top 40 on Billboard’s Rhythmic Airplay, a weekly chart that tracks songs played on radio stations that feature mostly hit-driven R&B/hip-hop, rhythmic pop, and some dance tracks. Lamar’s “TV Off,” featuring Lefty Gunplay, is currently No. 1 on the Rhythmic Airplay chart.
Young MC’s legacy in widening the genre is firmly established.
His Grammy was among the first in rap; “Bust A Move” is sitting at 151 million streams (and counting) on Spotify and was ranked No. 47 on VH1's “100 Greatest Songs of Hip Hop”; and even a paper entitled “Musical Innovation in the South Bronx” authored for a course in Hip Hop Music at Cal-State Northridge in 2024 named Young MC among those to push rap music into a whole new commercial level.
Not that he had any idea then that they were changing the game.
“Tone Lōc and I joked around at the time that we hoped, because I helped write ‘Wild Thing’ and ‘Funky Cold Medina,’ that we had hoped that it would sell 30,000, 50,000, even 100,000 records,” he said. “So that he could get a car and then I could pay off my student loans.”
Instead, they changed the culture.
“It was something,” he added, “that really opened my eyes to say, ‘Wow, this is what the genre is capable of, especially my involvement in the genre, this is what we're capable of.”
*
There’s way more to Young MC’s 36-year career than “Bust A Move.” Check out these cuts right now:
“What’s The Flavor?” (1993)
“Nocturnal” (2007)
“What It Look Like” (2000)
“Rollin’” (2008)
“Keep Your Eyes on the Prize” (1991)
Steve Stockmar
News Editor | Sun Life Magazine & Arts & Entertainment
YourValley.net
sstockmar@iniusa.org
Meet Steve
Steve Stockmar joined Independent Newsmedia, Inc., USA, in 2017, and has been an Arizona journalist for almost 30 years. He serves as editor of Sun Life Magazine and contributes to West Valley communities where he focuses mostly on arts & culture, education, and profiles of neighbors making a difference.
Community: Every season Steve serves as a “buddy” with the Miracle League of Arizona in Scottsdale, has volunteered his time with Family Promise in Glendale, and previously served on the Ghostlight Theatre board in Sun City West.
Education: Graduated from Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff with a Journalism major and English minor.
Random Fact: Steve once won a 50-player live Texas Hold ’Em poker tournament.
Hobbies: Anguishing over his beloved Chicago Cubs and Bears; listening to Beatles and Grateful Dead music.
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