“That first phone call, I was falling out of my chair laughing at Young’s rhymes,” said Ross. At the time Marvin called, however, Delicious only had two rappers on its roster: a gravel-voiced, semi-reformed gangster called Tone-Loc, and a Cuban-American dandy from South Gate named Mellow Man Ace. Within 18 months, Delicious Vinyl sold 10 million records worldwide, becoming a key label in the expansion of hip-hop from New York sensation to global phenomenon. Funk fanatics Matt Dike and Michael Ross had founded Delicious Vinyl in early ’87 with a $5,000 loan, setting up their gear in Dike’s railroad apartment over a carburetor repair shop in East Hollywood. Marvin had rung the right place at the right time. “I rapped for them over the phone and they sent me a contract in the mail to my dorm room at USC,” he said. “Eric said, ‘Yo, I know these guys in LA who are starting a label, Delicious Vinyl, you should give them a call.’” When Marvin returned to USC that fall, he cold-called the Delicious Vinyl office. After dropping off his bags at his parents’ home in Hollis, Queens, he hopped the train into Manhattan to his favorite record store, the venerable Rock and Soul, tucked away in the shadow of Penn Station.Īs he perused Rock and Soul’s spidery wall racks stuffed with funk, R&B, disco, electro, boogaloo, jazz and hip-hop 12-inches, he was approached by a young clerk named Eric Flewellen, who knew that Marvin had aspirations to be a rapper, and that he was attending college out in LA. In the summer of 1987, Marvin Young wrapped up his sophomore year studying economics and computer data processing at the University of Southern California and headed home to New York City.
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