Mike Ross on Wild Thing, Bust a Move, and Dilla

Mike Ross co-founded Delicious Vinyl with a business card from a sandwich shop and found his first artist by cold calling a stranger's cousin. That cousin was Tone Loc. Wild Thing went to the top of the country off a $500 video shot in a friend's studio by a director who had never made a rap clip.

On episode 60 of Mixed and Mastered, Mike walks Jeffrey Sledge through all of it. Growing up in Long Beach on Jackson 5 45s and Soul Train. Bringing Uncle Jam's Army to DJ his UCLA fraternity party because he refused to be whack. Meeting his partner Matt Dyke in the Impact Record Pool, where they were the only two white guys. Interning at MCA under Gerald Busby, where nobody would let him talk, and trying to get them to sign Sir Mix-a-Lot.

Then the run. Two or three 12 inches on Tone before Wild Thing. Funky Cold Medina four months later, unrecorded when Wild Thing dropped. Young MC rapping down a phone line from USC. The Chris Blackwell deal at Island. Getting a record on the shelf at Rock and Soul in New York, which he calls the moment that mattered most.

He tells the Pharcyde story in full, including the passing me by demo he refused to let out of his office, and how Q-Tip handed a beat from an unknown kid named James Yancey to the group in a Jersey studio. Mike put JD on a plane to LA a month later. He also tells the one that still stings: one MTV rotation slot, Passin Me By against Onyx's Slam, and who won.

Find Mike Ross and Delicious Vinyl at Delicious Pizza on West Adams in LA.

This is Mixed and Mastered with Mike Ross.

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