Tone-Lōc – Lōc-ed After Dark (1989)
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There’s no way around this: Tone Lōc’s 1989 debut, Lōc-ed After Dark, is COMPLETELY ADORABLE. The elementary, dubious and occasionally tortured rhyme scheme (”lax-adaiscal’ with “that’s the way to go,” “night” with, uh, “tonight”)! The sustained reports about how skilled a rapper one can be without actually rapping anything! The neurotic reliance employment of the first four break-beats in the history of the world! Lōc-ed After Dark may be the only album with the word “motherfucker” in it you sort of feel like you could play for your kids.

Compared even with the nascent gumball-rap of the time, Lōc-ed — recently reissued in a remarkably inessential “Deluxe Edition” with a couple of recycled remixes and instrumentals — is like an, um, super-chewy gumball. It’s dated like Def Leppard-drummer jokes and lousy with lines that’d seem wacky even in the Camelot Music-era context — mall-shopping, Stroh’s beer, Fila wear (brought up often enough to convince you they kicked in for the studio time) — to say nothing of Lōc’s constant egging on of his DJ in what is an oddly seductive fashion (check out title track, in which Lōc requests the fella to “scratch his back for me,” while he moans, provocatively). Danger is only hinted at; the bad words come infrequently enough to seem like tiny hugs. Even Lōc’s obsession with pot (”Cheeba Cheeba”) comes with caveats both psychological and economical: “It’s not harmful like heroin, and also, it’s cheaper.” See! You’d be silly not to smoke this stuff! (more…)