Hidden Remote
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Rapper and director Young MC chats about his rapping career and what’s next

By Michael Valverde

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Courtesy: Aaron Marion PR

Young MC talks about his rapping career and also his embarkment on the movies.

Young MC was born in London to Jamaican immigrants. He arrived to Queens, New York at the age of eight. Young would then earn an economics degree from USC. There, he met record producers Michael Ross and Matt Dike who signed him to a contract after he rapped over the phone to them. The contract was delivered to his dorm room.

Young MC would then write hits and collaborated with Tone Loc on “Wild Thing” and “Funky Cold Medina.” He then wrote “Bust A Move” which would land number eight on the top 100 Billboard. Young MC would win a Grammy for his performance of the hit song, and it would also help his record Stone Cold Rhymin’ to reach platinum status and number nine on the top 200 Billboard. His next single ‘Principle’s Office’ would also get him to number 33 on the top 100 and win him the  MTV music award for best rap video in 1999.

He would continue to make albums up and into 2008. However, “Bust A Move” would prominently be played in various movies and television shows, including in the movie IT. Young MC would show off his acting chops and be invited to take part in various game shows. In 2015, he created the movie Justice Served. Where he writes, directed, and acted in the film. You can now see him in concert in the I Love the 90’s tour.

Hidden Remote: How’s your day been so far?

Young MC: Day’s good. I’m in between shows and my last year and a half, almost two years have been a lot on the road, so you know getting a chance to talk about my touring is actually a good thing. So I’m looking forward to speaking with you.

Hidden Remote: I have to say that the honor is strictly mine. You know just growing up, I’m a child of the 70’s who loved beat music and 90’s rap so, I grew up listening to your music so, it’s definitely an honor.

Young MC: Thank you.

Hidden Remote: You know, I was serious. The big song, “Bust a Move,” I was curious on where does that idea drive from?

Young MC: Just being a 20-year-old guy looking for girls, I guess and I wanted to do it kind of like, Twilight Zone, Rod Sterling from a third person thing. I didn’t want to make it first person. I wanted to be something where I’m telling a story and having it where people can relate to it. So, that’s pretty much where it was and then the funny thing was that I really didn’t want to get caught up in trying to make a song that sounded like everybody else’s.

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I must say when you write something and it’s your first foray as an artist for everybody to hear you, there’s not really a lot of pressure. You put some pressure on yourself but you say, “Okay, I did a good job.” Once you’ve had a song that big, every time you pick up a pen you feel some modicum of pressure thinking, “Will I be able to duplicate that?” Or “what do I need to do to duplicate that?” It took me awhile to get over that.

Hidden Remote: Now, was this… I mean I was wrestling to guess that it wasn’t the first lyrical rap that you wrote but…

Young MC: No, I’d written a bunch before. I learned to rhyme on the east coast so a lot of it was how good a rapper you are, a lot of it was mid-tempo and I’m better than this, I’m better than that. I win battles. Blah, blah, blah. Then some storytelling; I guess I did more storytelling than most but nothing that speed, nothing really with that subject matter, nothing with that much storytelling in the third person and all that stuff. That was pretty new.

Hidden Remote: That was a pretty new approach. And you know what’s interesting and I didn’t really pick it up until I got older was the fact that, not that it’s simplistic in its nature, but the lyrics itself are very complex, very interesting. Like, “don’t hang yourself with a celibate rope.” You know, that’s fun to rap to but listening to that message brings out a whole new meaning and is that what you intended or was it just something that flows naturally?

Young MC: No one intends, especially when you have a record that big, no one intends all the deep meanings that are seen in the song. A lot of times when you write something and you try to have a deep meaning in it, people either miss it or it’s not as impactful as you thought it would be. So, what I intended was just a play on words with the previous lines. You know what I mean? So, it wasn’t even a question of, “Oh, let me do this to get to the celibate rope line,” it was more celibate rope kind of reflected what was going on in the lines previous.

Hidden Remote: Right.

Young MC: So, in doing that I didn’t think, “This is going to be so impactful. That’s going to be such an impactful line.” I’m thinking, Okay, this just kind of reinforces what I was saying before, just another way to say it, and a clever way to say it that I hadn’t heard in any other rap song. That’s it, that’s it. And in the moment when I’m writing it, that’s it. I’m not thinking anything else but that’s a great line that I got out and nobody else has gotten a line like that out. Very cool.

Hidden Remote: I was interested in how you got together and collaborated with Flea on that song?

Young MC: Well, that was something that the producers did. So, I had never met Flea. You know, the Chili Peppers were an LA band at the time, it goes that far back so, he was known as one of the hottest bass players in LA and I believe Matt Dike, one of the producers knew him, and hired him to come in and play the baseline. That was pretty much it.

Hidden Remote: Wow, they made it work. So, that’s kind interesting, them being not really known at the time and then showing their skills as they are, it’s almost like it’s meant to be. You know, when you have all of these different little factors that come together that…

Young MC:  You only see that in hindsight, though. At the time, I’d written “Wild Thing” and “Funky Cold Medina,” so I’d seen The Tones blow up. I mean, just had such incredible success with those songs and then I’m thinking, “okay, will people accept me as an artist? My song is slower. My song has no rock elements in it. My song has a girl singing in it.” These are all different elements then both The Tone’s multi-platinum hit that I had the fortune of co-writing. So, will I even get a chance to be heard with “Bust a Move”‘ That was my thought process because you don’t know.

Hidden Remote: Yeah, you have no idea and just to have it blow up in front of you. I also, didn’t know “Funky Cold Medina” and “Wild Thing,” I think both of them came out before “Bust a Move.”

Young MC: Yeah, “Funky Cold Medina” came out a little bit before Bust a Move but yeah both of them did.

Hidden Remote: Did that motivate you to do your own song?

Young MC: Oh no, I came to the label as a stand-alone artist and I was asked by the label to help with Tone’s songs while I was making my own. So, Wild Thing came out and obviously, they pursued that and I’m still recording, recording, recording and then helped write ‘Funky Cold Medina’ and then right after ‘Funky Cold Medina’ started taking off. That’s when we took the approach to come with ‘Bust a Move’ as their first single for me or the first national single for me because really the third single off the album. But it was the first real national single with a video and everything. That was the approach that we took so, I had no clue of what my record was going to be. I knew what Tones records had done and I was nervous because it was a bit different and my style was a bit different and people always ask me, why didn’t you write, ‘Wild Thing,’ for yourself? Why did you write ‘Funky Cold Medina’ for yourself?

Those records fit Tone’s voice. They fit his cadence. They fit his rap style and they don’t really fit mine, so I don’t think I would have done those records justice if I was motivated to write … And I don’t know how motivated I would have been to write those for myself. You see what I’m saying? Whereas, Bust a Move … The intricacy of the lyrics in a record that’s like a happy pop record but if you try and do that karaoke and you don’t know it, you’re going to stumble. I like that. I like making something really difficult sound really easy.

Hidden Remote: Yeah, there’s no way even though I’ve heard the song countless times, that if I actually went out there on that karaoke stage, I’d be just trying to follow that dot and just get all lost.

Young MC: Yeah, they don’t have places to breathe in karaoke, that’s the problem. You’ll keep going thinking you don’t need to breathe somewhere when you actually did and get caught. So, that’s what happens with most of the people who tell me.

Hidden Remote: If we look back, you have the cleaner rap that started out and it broke down racial barriers, but the turmoil wasn’t as prevalent as today.  Then you have more of a gangster rap where maybe race and age wasn’t on the national stage as it is now. And again, we are going back to clean rap. Do you see a correlation there? What are your thoughts about that?

Young MC:  I came up during a time where everybody, at least me and a lot of people I knew wanted to get on the radio. So, the idea of cursing… You wouldn’t be able to get on the radio. So, I didn’t have the comfort .. You know, I’m capable of cursing. I curse in real life a little bit but I didn’t have the comfort of writing my rap lyrics with curses in it because I wanted to get on the radio.  So, the thought process of getting on the radio and then when my record hit, it was establishing rap. Especially on the west coast, so I just felt that the more accessible my music could be, the more people who could listen to my music, the better it would be for me but also, the better it would be for rap and west coast rap and the whole bite; because that’s always been my approach.

You fast forward to the late 90’s, rap had been on the radio, Grammy’s, the whole nine yards and NWA had taken over and a lot of other groups. So, the thought of cursing in your records, you weren’t really worried about the genre. You see what I’m saying?

Now you have it commercialized where record companies are like yeah, cursing and talk about this, talk about killing, talk about that and a lot of times that’s not the lifestyle of the artist. They’re not really speaking their truth, they’re just saying something shocking so they can get sales. So, that’s what I think people got sick of. If someone is cursing in a record and you can hear the sincerity and you can hear how genuine they are about something they’ve been through or their life or something like that, you listen to it and you’ll hear the message. But if someone’s just cursing just for the sake of being shocking or for the sake of just getting attention, then people can interpret that too and I think that’s what happened. You’d have party records or records about women or whatever and it would just be vulgar and misogynistic and the whole bit Then you expect women to go out and buy that, consistently and listen to it over and over again and feel fine about that, when that’s more than half the people you’re expecting to buy your music? That’s tough.

Music is just like history. You go through such a time when things change but then, it always repeats itself. It always comes back to its original roots.

Hidden Remote: It’s clear when you listen to your music that you not just grew with it but you listened to the words and those kinds of things. So, I totally agree.

Young MC: Thank you.

Courtesy: Aaron Marion PR

Hidden Remote: I’m going to switch things up a little bit on you here. We’ll go into movie sales and I’m curious about your writing, acting, now directing with ‘Justice Served.’ I was wondering if you could tell maybe a little bit about each one of those cast and maybe a little bit distinctive of what you feel is different between writing some music and writing a movie.

Young MC: Well, obviously the movie’s a lot longer and even if you’re making an album, you’re writing one song at a time. But the irony of it is that a lot of times I’ll do three verses and my third verse will often have a twist either lyrically, instrumentally, it’ll sound differently than the other two verses and that to me…. I’ve always looked at that as how there’s a twist going into the third act of a film or a twist of the third act of a film and I try and do that in my music. The thing about screenwriting is, being a college graduate, it felt like a long-term paper that I really wanted to do. I would do the research happily. I would take the notes and do the re-writes happily as opposed to how I’ve got to get a grad on this and that kind of thing.

So, that was my initial approach and a lot of the things I used in college or a lot of the things I used in school, a lot of those approaches I used in terms of writing to scripts to try to make sure they were accurate. As I’ve gotten older, that’s been a really important thing to me so that … Especially now in the age of Google, somebody can just Google something and see that you’re lying through your teeth about a lot of things in your movie. So, I’m pretty intricate about the writing. One thing I will say is that the acting, the directing, all that stuff is the same as the rapping in as much as, I’m a better musician because I write well and I’m a better director and actor because I write well.

People were saying in Justice Served that I had done such a good job acting and what I did was I was the writer so I was able to choose. I did a Marvin polish. I took two days and I read every line that my character had out loud and if it didn’t sound natural, then I just changed it to something that sounded natural and I was able to do that in the context of the story. It’s the same thing I would do rapping, oh I have too few words in this line, too many words in that line. So, let’s change it so it sounds natural and my delivery of my lines, I can guarantee the sincerity and the natural sound of it came from my approach as a rap artist and a musician writing my own stuff.

Hidden Remote: I don’t want to guess what you were going to say here so I’m going to ask you. There’s a lot of singers out there who can act really well and do you think that because of what you’re saying, as far as making it natural, that the performer knows how to make it natural that when they do act that you think

Young MC: Not to cut you off, but the thing about music is that either you write your songs or you pick your songs and you can be very discriminating in terms of what you perform as an artist. If it doesn’t sound right coming out of me, not my key, not my whatever, I won’t do it. Whereas, in a script, if they’re auditioning for a character that’s being made and somebody wrote, you’re pretty much stuck to what’s there. You can do a little ad-libbing on the set but unless you’re really an established actor or have a really cool director or something like that, you’re pretty much stuck to what’s there. That was always an issue with me, why I didn’t go on a lot of readings because I just wasn’t a fan of a lot of stuff I was reading. For a black man in his 20’s what are the roles going to be?

Hidden Remote: Right.

Young MC: Especially for someone whose not as experienced an actor, you’re not going to get the greatest roles. So, that was the reason why I didn’t do a lot of acting while I was younger, did a little bit of stuff here and there but nothing major only because, I didn’t like a lot of the stuff I was reading. So, the one advantage that I had when I’m writing ‘Justice Served,’ I’m thinking of every actor the way I think of myself. What would make a person want to play this role? I would take that into every character. So, I did a Marvin polish but polishes over time are pretty much every characters… What are the arcs? Where does it start? Where does it end?

If I’m an actor coming in and I’m playing this role, am I just window dressing or am I actually doing something that effects the story. So in ‘Justice Served,’ I’d say probably the top eight to ten characters do something to affect the story. If you took them out, the story wouldn’t be the same and that meant a lot to the actors because the actors read the whole script and say, “Hey, my character might not be a major character but it has impact.” That was something coming from the actor’s standpoint that I wanted to provide as a write and as a director, because it’s easier to direct people when you’re sincerely coming out of like, “Okay, that could be me acting. If it was me acting in this role, what would I want?” And try and give that to them.

Hidden Remote: I see. That totally makes sense. So you’re relating to them? You’re understanding from their standpoint and because you’re understanding from their standpoint, you can relate and talk about what is needed to make the move better.

Young MC: Sure, the biggest actor I had in this film was Lance Henriksen and to be a first time director, second day on set, you’re directing Lance Henriksen is mind-boggling. I know guys that have made several films that have not worked with someone as big as that but Lance really fed into the role. He really liked the role and a lot of the actors we got and the advantage we had was built around the fact that Lance really took to the film. Having said that, I’m there directing it and I’m thinking, “Okay, how can I relate this to my music stuff?” And the biggest producer, best producer I’d ever worked with was Dr. Dre on ‘All in the Same Gang’ and it was just maybe, not even two hours I was in the studio laying my verse down.

It was great thing but it was him producing me, telling me what I needed; what he needed from me. It was very simple, very straightforward. He let me do my verse, however, I wanted to do it, then told me what he needed to have it fit into the rest of the song … Very simple, never felt any pressure … Knocked it out, cool. I’m like, “Okay, Lance is coming. Lance has ideas. As a director, if he gets me from my A to my Z, like starting my scene and finishing my scene … If he can get me from my A to my Z and he takes some detours or takes some personal liberties in between, as long as it fits in the story and that’s his character development, I’m good. That’s what I did.

I’m directing Lance and Lance will say a line or something that’s not on script. I’m not a guy like, “Oh, dot my I’s, cross my T’s, cut!” I’m not that guy. I’m like, “Well lets see where it finishes,” then he gives me his performance and I’m like, “Wow, he gave me what I needed and he put something else in there from his life experience.” And him having over 200 films, being an older gentleman having life experiences I don’t have all those things; he was able to give me things that I never would have seen writing the movie or writing the character. I never would have been able to see those things. I took that and I put that in the back of my mind because he was obviously the best at it. Then when other actors would add things, I would say, “Okay, does this fit the film,” and sometimes it did and sometimes it didn’t.

There’s one actor in particular that had taken incredible liberties, I guess based on the fact that he didn’t like his last performance in his last film. So, he was doing a lot of extra stuff and a lot of it … Not only that but all the scenes that he was in, I ended up having to cut down because the things that he was trying to add did nothing for the story and in some ways detracted from the story. It was interesting because I’m trying to be an actor’s director on set but when I sit there with the footage and I’m comparing what he did to what Lance did, compared to what Gail did, compared to what Lochlyn did, it really stuck out. So, I was like, okay now I know what to do. What to keep and what to not keep and that was a really good experience for me and really a learning experience as a director.

Hidden Remote: Now, I’m curious, just some fun questions here, if you had to perform just one song for an entire tour that wasn’t “Bust a Move,” what would it be and why?

Young MC: There’s a song on my album ‘Engage the Enzyme’ called, ‘Feel the Love’ that I have a lot of fun performing and it’s one of the best songs that I’ve produced. Lyrically it’s very fun and it’s one of the songs when people hear for the first time, they invariably tell me that they like it.

Hidden Remote: I see.  Now, if you could take one song that you find that encapsulates you as a person or artist, which one would that be?

Young MC: Oh, wow. That’s hard because there’s not really one song that does that. Especially, me at my age now. If you asked me when I was 22, 25 I might have something for you but there’s not really… I could say an album, my ‘Engage the Enzyme’ album from 2001 or 2002, that album represents me as an artist the most. It’s not one song but if you say the album that represents me the most and the album I’m most proud of, it’s the ‘Engage the Enzyme’ album.

Hidden Remote: Now, if you could take any movie ever made and direct that movie yourself, which one would that be?

Young MC: That’s interesting. I’ll give you two, just in terms of drama, action, street stuff, would be ‘King of New York’ with Christopher Walken. That would be the movie and then in terms of acting, I would say a movie called ‘Closer’ that had Clive Owen and it was based on a play but the acting was just so moving. Those are the things … They’re physical things that happen on screen but they’re also emotional things or reactions to lines and a lot of times you won’t get that in the same piece or they empathized in the same piece. So, I would say ‘King of New York’ on the one hand, on the action side and ‘Closer’ on the emotional and dialogue side.

Hidden Remote:  I’m going to give you the floor, tell me where people can find you, maybe on Twitter? I know you’re doing the ‘I Love the 90’s’ tour.

Young MC: There was a bunch of us in the same time period and genre and instead of having a typical tour, where you have two or three acts, we have six, seven, eight acts go on. We’ll do shorter sets as if you have an iPod shuffle of hits from that time but for me, I still get a chance to do some newer stuff and really get a chance to perform for people. Some of the shows, I actually get a chance to play a trailer for ‘Justice Served’ behind me while I’m performing a song called, ‘Nocturnal’ which appears in the movie. So, it’s been a really fun time. It’s just been really time-consuming. It’s just been… because as a director, you’d say, “Okay, we’re going to take this distribution wise and we’re going to do this promotion,” and I haven’t really had a chance to do much. I’ve done a good amount of press and gotten some reviews but only now am I really going to be able to get on top of it in terms of getting the film out there and people to get a chance to see it.

Hidden Remote: I see and I love that idea about the song and the movie playing behind you. That will be great. So, where can we find you on social media?

Young MC: My Twitter, @officialyoungMC. I have my Facebook fan page. Also, YoungMC.com. You can go there and obviously, I’m out on tour in the 90’s show. I have Bethel, Pennsylvania coming up and I have on the 15th, we’re in New Orleans coinciding with one of the bowl games. It’s pretty interesting and then we have the cruise. The Island of the 90’s cruise, next January the 11th-the 15th starting Miami to Key West and Cozumel; so that’s, I think, the first throwback hip-hop cruise from what I can remember. So, it at least seems like the way it is so, I’m looking forward to all of that and then I have a bunch of dates next year. Then hopefully, we’ll be able to get Justice Served’out to where people can see it streaming and the whole bit. We’re working on all that stuff right now.

We thank Young MC for his time! Keep an eye out for Justice Served! 

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