← Takin' A Walk - Music History with Buzz Knight
Takin' A Walk - Music History with Buzz Knight
"Busting Moves and Breaking Barriers with Young MC"
00:18:48
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- [00:00]
Inner Child
Hi friend, it's your inner child calling.
- [00:04]
Nikki Glaser
And they want churros.
- [00:10]
Young MC
A new toy.
- [00:14]
Inner Child
And a new adventure.
- [00:18]
Nikki Glaser
Or maybe five with the bestest besties on earth. Find your moment at Walt Disney World Resort.
- [00:30]
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- [01:00]
Young MC
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- [01:28]
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- [02:00]
Young MC
Is coming to Apple tv. Plus, what you all did five months ago was one of the most painful moments in the history of this company. Our message got out. We're famous. All of us equally or one of.
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Podcast Host
Us is like the star.
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Young MC
What did you see? My Audi's wife was Ms. Casey. If you want to find out what happened to her, I'll help. She's still alive. I want to see my wife. He should have left. Severance new ceaseplay streaming January 17th only on Apple TV. Taking a walk Any bitterness that might have been there because I hit and somebody else didn't, or they had an experience I didn't have or whatever, that kind of goes away with age. So I'm really talking about the artists that were around during my time, maybe a little after my time. You know, you go through this for a while and you realize what it takes and then you have a lot more respect for the people that are doing it as well.
- [02:51]
Buzz Knight
Welcome to another episode of the Taking a Walk podcast where Buzz Knight speaks with musicians of all genres about their career and their love of music. If you like this episode, please share with your friends and subscribe so you never miss an episode. Today, Buzz speaks with Grammy winning rapper and songwriter Young MC. Born Marvin Young in London, England, Young MC rose to fame in the late 1980s with the chart topping hit Bust a Move. The infectious dance track not only won him a Grammy for best rap performance, but but it also solidified his place in hip hop history. Young MC has new music out called Fun Part and Buzz talks about that and more next on Taking a Walk.
- [03:36]
Young MC
Young mc. How are you, sir?
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I'm good, man, how are you?
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I'm doing terrific. I'm talking to you. Thanks for being on Taking a Walk.
- [03:45]
Hey. Hey. I guess I'm privileged talking to you. I got a vet on the phone. We can actually like swap stories. I always like those.
- [03:53]
Congratulations on Fun Part. You must be so excited. Charting on billboard after a 22 year absence. How does it feel?
- [04:03]
It feels good. To be honest. It feels like a validation because it's not like I feel like this song in particular was like lightning in a bottle. It's kind of the progression of a process. So the fact that I'm being acknowledged because I produced the whole track, wrote the whole thing, no guest stars, no no big bells and whistles other than, you know, have a character that I created that's, that's like my label tag or producer tag. So it's been good that the ideas that I've had, I've been able to culminate them in one song and actually get some, get some traction on it.
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You must feel really satisfied by the way it's being received. And can you talk more about the creative process that led to this?
- [04:45]
Well, okay. The creative process has, is different for me now at this age. For the last seven years. Seven, seven to eight years actually. No, because 2016. So yeah, eight. Eight years. Plus I've been on the I love the 90s tour and when my career started, my focus would be getting in the studio, getting the record made and then the shows would be what the shows would be, they'd be either be an income source or, you know, something to get me into a town so I could go to a radio station. Well, since I've been on this 90s tour, my, you know, the, the majority of my income and the majority of my time has Come from story. So when you're on stage in front of people and they want to hear Bust A Move, you still have. For me, I still have like 10 minutes of stuff that I can do that isn't Bust a Move before I get to Bust a move. So my thought process was, if I can give them something that they like, it's great. So I'm giving them something now that they like that they don't know. But if I can give them something they like that they know and still come with Bust a Move behind it, that would be the best of all worlds. So that was my thing. I go back in the studio with the stage in mind. What would sound best on the speakers? Where could I do the call and response? Where could I make it not serve, not so verbose that it, that the echoes off the walls keep people from understanding what I'm saying? All of those things go into my mind when I'm going in the studio. Now, 30 years ago that wasn't the case. So it makes me excited every record I make because I'm like, I can't wait to get in front of people with this. And I think, I'm thinking that's kind of like how rock bands go about it because, you know, they can kind of alter their live performance to the crowd. Whereas if you're a track act, you can only kind of open your, you know, alter your vocal performance. But if I'm crafting the track for the stage, crafting the track for a crowd, for an arena, for a festival, that's pretty cool. And like I said, I've had a 30, got a 38 year career. And it's the first time really in the last year to two that I'm approaching my creative process like that. So that makes it fun.
- [06:41]
Tremendous. Take me back to the University of Southern California. You earned your degree in economics and you met up with Michael Ross and Matt Dyke. Tell me about that meeting and how it ultimately led to big things.
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Okay, I have to give you a little background. So I was living in New York and going to school in Los Angeles at USC. So we're in the summer of 1987. So probably May or June of 1987. There's a record store in New York called Rock and Soul Records. That's where I bought the records that I was DJing with. I even DJ'd my own prom. There was a guy in Rock and Soul named Eric, and he said he had connections at a record company in New York. So I went, made demos with, with Eric, nothing Really came of it. But Eric also knew the guys at Delicious Vinyl. He sent them my demos and then they got me on the phone. So that was Mike Ross and Matt Dyke. I get on the phone with them in August of 87 when I'm going back to USC for my junior year. I get on the phone with them and I basically rhyme about 4. Four verses that would end up on my album. And within a week of that phone call, they sent me a contract in the mail. At usc, I was a student senator representing the student apartments. And the student senate at USC is set up where you had different students that were representing different living groups so they would represent the dorms or the fraternities or whatever. I went to the law school representative of student senate and handed in my contract, the gentleman, the name of Dave Simon. And I said, dave, can you look this over? He had no idea what he was doing. He's not a lawyer yet, but he had more of an idea than I did. Sign the contract and then literally started recording. Within a week after that, we started recording. Let him know my name is Young. And then bust a move was probably about a year after that. Bustin was the last. Bustin was the last record. I recorded around January of 89, came out in May of 89. And the rest literally is history.
- [08:44]
Oh, man. Love it.
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That's why. That's why to make the story so long winded, because the context really adds to it.
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It's a great story. How do you think, looking back, you dealt with immediate fame a lot better?
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I dealt with it a lot better than if I was doing it today. Because immediate fame, everybody in my neighborhood didn't have cable. Cell phones were bigger than a briefcase and cost like 12 to 1500 dollars just for the rudimentary one. So. And the calls were very exp. Like multiple dollars a minute. So the idea of getting on a cell phone and calling somebody mobile was not, you know, a proper idea. There was no Internet. So basically what I'm saying is that I didn't know the record was successful in a city until I got to that city. And then I went to the station or they like it here. And I got on stage or the crowd knows the record. And then you do that repeatedly and you get the idea that you have a big, you know, you have a big record. But I'm not sitting there reading R and R and looking at the trends and even those were, you know, were lagging in terms of time. So the idea of fame was a slow creeping thing. And I was so busy just trying to keep the record going because, you know, we had not seen rap records do this before. I'd seen Tone Loke do his thing with Wild Thing, and I was very close to that. But in terms of traditionally what rap records did, growing up in New York, I had no idea that a rap record could even get out of New York. So going to LA and then seeing that, I'm thinking, okay, I got to get this national. So, you know, get on a plane, go off the coast, whatever you got to do, perform it well, do the interviews, do the radio, do all that stuff. So when you repeatedly doing that over and over again and not knowing, you know, the machinations of the business, it's, you know, it's. It's rare. You know, I got a rare moment where I could sit back and say, wow, you know, I'm really popular right now. I can't. There was no way to go and see all the successes in one place. So, you know, I dealt with it well because of that, but. But, you know, I've seen a lot of the horror stories, and I know people that haven't dealt with it as well. So I'm kind of thankful that I got through it the way I did.
- [10:57]
Do you recall the first time you heard your music on the radio?
- [11:03]
Yeah, that would be. I let him know on K Day 1580am in Los Angeles. It was an amazing feeling in terms of Bust. In terms of Bus To Move, it would be a little bit tougher because Bust a Move happened more nationally than locally. The first station to play Bust a Move or really to Break Me, where I did the summer jam and all that was KMEL in San Francisco. So that's not a station I would be able to hear locally while I was sitting in la. So my recollections of first hearing myself on the radio, more the local stuff before Bust, the Move was even thought of.
- [11:46]
Got it. Got it. So when you look at the music community that you've been part of for so many years, do you find that community generally supportive?
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Yes, to be honest, yes. The community that I. The community I see is supportive because we feel that, you know, there's a commonality in our experiences. So any bitterness that might have been there because I hit and somebody else didn't, or they had an experience I didn't have or whatever, that kind of goes away with age. So I'm really talking about the artists that were around during my time, maybe a little after my time. You know, you go through this for a while and you Realize what it takes, and then you have a lot more respect for the people that are doing it as well. So I think that's helped in terms of younger artists. I mean, the whole business has changed, and the whole approach to releasing music, consuming music, you know, all of that has changed. So I can't expect the same level of respect from them that I would get from peers that have gone through, you know, some of the things that I have.
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Who are some mentors you could single out that really helped you along the way.
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You know, a lot of the. A lot of the older guys, I mean, and these are, you know, not like, I had a lot of time sitting in, like, doing mentor meetings, but just in terms of how they carried themselves, how they moved, how they, you know, conducted themselves in the music business. I consider Chuck D a mentor. I consider some members of the Sugar Hill Gang mentors. You know, there were other groups in different genres that I'd see how they, you know, dealt with things in their careers, you know, but having said that, there was a lot of, you know, explore, exploration, Christopher Columbus stuff that I had to do myself. So I ended up mentoring some people. Even unknowingly, you know, people put me aside and say, I watched how you did this and you gave me advice or something like that. I did it and it worked. So I try and see that as a kind of ongoing process. I'm not. There's a lot of people that try and gatekeep, and I'm not really one of them. So, you know, the people that didn't gatekeep with me, I'm very thankful for.
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Are you still in touch with Chuck D?
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Yeah, I can. Yeah. Yeah, from time to time. Last time I talked to Chuck was on a podcast, and then he had reached out to me. I put stuff up on Instagram about my successes and whatever, and I'll get likes and that kind of stuff. So if I need to reach out to him for something for a question, I can definitely get to him. So it's one of those things where I know his experience can. Can definitely help me in certain situations. So, you know, I wouldn't hesitate to reach out to him.
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And when you look at the state of the music business now compared to when you started, where do you think it's at?
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I mean, that's kind of a loaded question. There are negatives to it and how much music is being put out and how fragmented everything is and the lack of artist development and all those things. Having said that, there's a lot of great music out there. So I try and pull the good things. I try and look at the good things and say, oh, you know, this was a great vibe or a great feeling. Let me try and incorporate this into my music. Or you know, somebody, you know, there's a new sub genre of music. Let me see if I could adapt that into what I'm doing. So those are the, those are the positive things that I try and focus on. But you know, the way that I had, you know, months to go out and promote Bus to Move and it didn't hit right away and it took a while to cross over and we tried different things and, and you know, took. It took a while to get radio. All of those things was like you wouldn't have the opportunity to do that today. They say the records, oh, we don't, you know, we don't, we don't have, you know, this, not even six weeks. We didn't sell this much in the first week. You know, we didn't get this many streams. So we got to really consider if we have a hit here or not. That's the thing, you know, that kind of. I feel bad for the artists now because you're still putting your blood and sweat into it. And there's a lot of good records that really fall by the wayside. And when I find them, I turn them on to people, DJ friends and the like. And like, oh, where'd you get this from? And it could have been something that went through their inbox, you know, three or four months earlier, but they didn't either didn't pay attention to it or if, if it's not resonating with the crowds they're playing for, they got to keep it moving, you know, so that, that makes it tough.
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You moved To Queens at 8 years old, I believe, is that when you sort of like really knew you had a deep connection with music.
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Yeah, I actually moved to Queens. I was probably a bit younger, maybe four or five. But then eight was when I started looking around and seeing what would later become hip hop DJs in the basements spinning records and I started rapping. So I would have been 8 and 75 and by 77 I was rapping. It was more a self expression thing for me because there was no way I was leaving school, but it was a good hobby. I wasn't into graffiti, I wasn't into athletics, I wasn't into, you know, mischief, if you will. So I felt that the self expression of rapping was something that I could really kind of show my individuality. With plus use my vocabulary, be able to think quickly on my feet, be around older kids and fit in. So it served those purposes. And then I was lucky enough to be able to make a career out of it.
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And your time at USC, in terms of studying economics, that really had to have benefited you then and still to this day, is that right?
- [17:59]
It. In an indirect way, yes. Okay. So obviously the stuff I learned in classes, then it teaches you how to deal with money. On the other hand, I've never written my degree down on a job application, so the typical help that a degree would give you, I've not necessarily gotten. Having said that, I always knew when I was in a meeting that I had options, and the people I was meeting with knew that I had options. I didn't have to sit there and take the first crappy deal that you threw at me because I could go somewhere else. And that was before the money came. And then once the money came, they assumed, somewhat correctly, that I wasn't going to waste it. And especially with an economics degree, that I know how to put it aside and make a life for myself and not by myself on the street. So those things help. And this is what I tell people all the time. It's like, oh, what about the. You know, what about going to school for four years and spending that money and spending that time and not writing it down on your job application? What purpose did college serve? And I tell people this all the time. College shows you how to finish. It shows an employer that you know how to finish. It shows you yourself that you know how to finish something. And if I say that that's the greatest thing that I got out of going to college, that would probably be the truth. I pick up a project, oh, it's going to take six months. Oh, it's going to take a year. I've done that before. I went through four years of college, graduated, got it done. You know what I mean? So, you know, those kind of aspects are really the most. The most prized things for me with college.
- [19:29]
You've had a multifaceted career, you know, singing, rapping, acting. What else that you haven't done do you sort of crave to kind of put into your tool chest, if you.
- [19:42]
Will, at this age? There's not really anything that new that I want to explore, you know, for the first time now, I want to take the things that I do and do them better or hone them. That's really my focus. It's like the whole craving of doing something new. It's like, if you, if you're successful at one thing and you can, you know, strive to get more success at that one thing, keep doing it. Keep doing it. I'm not, I'm not going to do something new to prove something to somebody else, you know, and I'd rather take the experience and the knowledge that I have in the field that I do and show that while I still can, you know, while I'm still able to do it. I'd rather have that focus than take time to do something else. I directed a film, I did some acting, even that, you know, I'm glad to have had that in my tool chest. But having said that, my short term and at least medium term future is musical and I'm really looking forward to the music that I can come up with with the perspectives that I have now.
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I want to congratulate you on fun part, brand new music from Young mc. And thanks for all the music that you've given us over the years and you continue to give us. Really grateful for that.
- [20:55]
Thank you, man. Thanks for the interview. It was a wonderful time.
- [20:59]
Buzz Knight
Thanks for listening to this episode of the Taking a Walk podcast. Share this and other episodes with your friends and follow us so you never miss an episode. Taking a Walk is available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts and wherever you get your podcasts.
- [21:17]
Discover Card Ad
Are you still quoting 30 year old movies? Have you said cool beans in the past 90 days? Do you think Discover isn't widely accepted? If this sounds like you, you're stuck in the past. Discover is accepted at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide. And every time you make a purchase with your card, you automatically earn cash back. Welcome to the Now It Pays to Discover. Learn more at discover.com credit card based on the February 2024 Nilsson Report Thursdays on ABC.
- [21:48]
Inner Child
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- [22:20]
Nikki Glaser
Hey, it's Nikki Glaser. So I hosted the Golden Globes at Hollywood's biggest party. Honestly, you've probably seen all the headlines this week, but like any good party, there's a lot of wild stuff that goes down behind the scenes that you don't know about. And since I hosted the Golden Globes, I'm letting my podcast listeners, my besties in on all the behind the scenes stuff that didn't make it to the live TV taping. What went down in rehearsals, who said what at the after party? You're going to hear it all. Listen to the Nikki Glaser podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [22:51]
Dr. Joy Hardin Bradford
Hey y'all, I'm Dr. Joy Hardin Bradford, host of Therapy for Black Girls this January. Join me for our third annual January Jumpstart series. Starting January 1st, we'll have inspiring conversations to give you a hand in Kickstarter starting your personal growth. If you've been holding back or playing small, this is your All Access pass to step fully into the possibilities of the new year. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls starting on January 1st on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [23:22]
Podcast Host
Joel, the holidays are a blast, but the financial hangover? That can be a huge bummer. If you are out there and you're dreading the new statement email that reveals the massive balance that you may have racked up. Well, you could use our help. That's right. I'm Joel. And I am Matt and we're from the how to Money podcast. Our show is all about helping you make sense of your personal finances so you can ditch your pesky credit card debt once and for all, make real progress on other crucial financial goals that you've got, and just feel more in control of your money in general. You know it. For money advice without the judgment and jargon, listen to How To Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.