In this week's edition of Damn, I Feel Old, it was thirty years ago today that rapper Tone Lōc released his debut album, Lōc-ed After Dark. The album shot up to #1 on the Billboard album charts by April 1989 and eventually went double platinum in the U.S.
Lōc-ed After Dark featured Tone Lōc's two most successful and recognizable songs: "Wild Thing" and "Funky Cold Medina." The former hit #2 on the Billboard Hot 100, and the latter went to #3.
I love both songs, but I'm going with "Funky Cold Medina" for this week's Retro Video of the Week. What I love about classic '80s and '90s hip hop and rap is that it (unknowingly on my end) introduced me to various rock and funk songs that I would hear in their original form later and say "holy shit, that was the guitar riff in 'The Fuck Shop,'" or whatever it might be. "Funky Cold Medina" may have been one of those songs for you, as it samples "Honky Tonk Women" by The Rolling Stones, "Hot Blooded" by Foreigner, "Christine Sixteen" by Kiss, '"You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet" by Bachman-Turner Overdrive, and "Get Off Your Ass and Jam" by Funkadelic.
The song and video are about an aphrodisiac love potion named Funky Cold Medina that the song's narrator unwittingly uses on a woman who turns out to be a transvestite. Oops! And then he uses it on another woman, who wants to marry him. Double whammy! And then he realizes that you shouldn't mess with the Funky Cold Medina.
Tone Lōc stopped regularly recording music after his second album, 1991's Cool Hand Lōc, to focus on acting. I remember him best as Emilio in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. I haven't seen him in anything recently, so I hope he hasn't gone the way of Roger Podacter.
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