# ‘Is This Supposed to Happen?’: How Matt Dike Dominated Eighties Hip-Hop Music

- URL: https://talkfuse.com/story/is-this-supposed-to-happen-how-matt-dike-dominated-eighties-hip-hop-music/
- Published: 2026-11-14T14:00:00+00:00
- Updated: 2026-11-14T23:36:54+00:00
- Original publisher: Rolling Stone
- Original article: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/bust-a-move-matt-dike-book-excerpt-1235655262/
- Topics: Entertainment, Music

## Key points

- Delicious Vinyl became a major success from a makeshift Los Angeles studio.
- The label sold nearly 10 million records in 18 months.
- Matt Dike later disappeared from public view.

## Summary

In August 1989, Tone Loc was trapped inside a giant bottle prop during a performance at the Fabulous Forum, while Delicious Vinyl co-founders Matt Dike and Michael Ross watched from the crowd. The mishap captures the unlikely rise of their Los Angeles label, whose rap hits broke through into mainstream pop at a time when the recording industry largely kept hip-hop out.

Two years earlier, Dike and Ross had started Delicious Vinyl with a $5,000 loan and made records in Dike’s apartment using basic, patched-together equipment. Within 18 months, the label had sold nearly 10 million records worldwide, including Tone Loc’s “Wild Thing” and “Funky Cold Medina”; it also released Young MC’s “Bust a Move” and worked on the Beastie Boys’ “Paul’s Boutique”. Peter Relic’s book traces the label’s beginnings and Dike’s later withdrawal from public life.

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Summarised by TalkFuse (https://talkfuse.com/). Quote the original publisher for the reporting and link this page for the summary and discussion.