But I feel for the ones who have worked so hard to pioneer this art form. WAHLBERG: Well, you know, I’m not comin’ out in a leprechaun suit or nothin’. INTERVIEW: But you must be the first Irish rapper, maybe since James Joyce. A lot of people don’t even question whether N.W.A.’s for real, because they’re from Compton and they’re supposed to be in gangs and stuff. I question a lot of rappers, whether they are really as hard as they say. It could be made by anybody who is going through things like that. INTERVIEW: Still, as a white artist your raps are going to be different from, say, Ice Cube’s “The Nigga Ya Love to Hate.” I think that that particular rap could have been made only by a black person. Just like I feel it doesn’t matter that I’m a white dude doin’ black music. INTERVIEW: If you had had the choice to have been born black or white, which would you have chosen? His first album, Music for the People (Interscope), produced by Donnie, is a slugfest of contagious hip-hop and synthesized funk-from the spiritual calisthenics of “Good Vibrations,” featuring Loletta Holloway, to the down-and-dirty “Bout Time I Funk You.” Marky Mark’s American tour continues in Miami this month and reaches L.A. Now 20 and backed by the Funky Bunch, he is to New Kids what heavy petting is to a peck on the cheek. Marky Mark Wahlberg, brother of Donnie Wahlberg and founding member of New Kids on the Block, dropped out of the group before they went big time. We interviewed him right as he started igniting Beatle-esque teenage girl mania with the Funky Bunch. We’re not really sure what that means exactly, but it gives us a chance to ogle at some throwback Mark Wahlberg, and there’s really nothing wrong with that.
MTV is honoring Wahlberg’s “renaissance man” status ( MTV president Stephen Friedman’s words, not ours) with their annual Generation award at the MTV Movie Awards. All the more reason to catch up with the Wahlberg that still lived at home, and nurtured a feud with Vanilla Ice between crotch-grabbing national tours. In the years since, he’s established himself as a Hollywood mainstay in comedy and drama, sporting the stoic leading man look more often than his dusty Marky Mark image. Dropped pants, white briefs, cocky smirk and all. The cover of Interview from February 1992 brings it all back.
Mark “Marky Mark” Wahlberg transitioned from rapping to acting and producing so smoothly that sometimes we forget he used to just be Marky Mark.