It started in a smoky trap house in East Oakland, teens banging on a table, freestyling about scrounging up enough cash to buy a twenty sack.
A chant: “I got five on it.”
What happened next was part accident, part alchemy. That beat, that hook, a young rap duo repping Oakland coming together to create one of the most iconic West Coast rap singles of the ’90s. Now 30 years later, Luniz’s “I Got 5 On It” featuring R&B singer Michael Marshall remains a timeless weed anthem, a pop culture staple, and the unexpected horror soundtrack for Jordan Peele’s movie Us. But the story behind the song is more twisty than its perfect hook, unfolding kind of like a rolling paper in the wind—never where you thought it’d go.
Luniz themselves were barely out of high school when they released their debut album Operation Stackola on July 4, 1995, tapping producer Tone Capone, who went on to mint a number of Bay Area classics, including Celly Cel’s “It’s Goin’ Down” and Mac Dre’s “Not My Job.” “I Got 5 On It (feat. Michael Marshall)” peaked at No. 8 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100, and No. 2 on Billboard Hot Rap Songs. And while Luniz’s sophomore follow-up, Lunitik Muzik, in 1997 did not chart as high, it drew the likes of E-40, DJ Quik, Raphael Saddiq, Redman, and Quincy Jones III (QDIII)—a testament to the duo’s staying power in the ’90s.
Then there’s the crooner, Michael Marshall, featured on “I Got 5 On It.” In an alternate timeline, Michael Marshall would have continued to soar as the Bay Area’s Nate Dogg and even has the same gospel origin story. Instead, Marshall is mostly a hip-hop footnote, though he has worked to get his due, getting credits for the song on Us and even appearing and singing in indie darling film The Last Black Man in San Francisco. What Marshall wants you to know is that he wasn’t just a hookman on one of the biggest rap records of all time, but also laid down the original 1986 R&B sample for the song—though most critics only draw a direct line to a Club Nouveau track released around the same time. “‘Why You Treat Me So Bad?’ That’s from a song that I did called ‘Thinking About You,’” Marshall told me. But we’ll get into all of this later.
To celebrate 30 years, we spoke with the artists behind “I Got 5 On It (feat. Michael Marshall)”: Yukmouth of Luniz, producer Tone Capone, and singer Michael Marshall to get the full story behind the ’90s classic.
“We turned a dope deal into a record deal”
Yukmouth (Luniz MC): I was raised in East Oakland. In junior high school, I linked with Num [Numskull] and we started rapping. He had this group called Brothers With Potential. We was rapping since the eighth grade with a few other brothers. Me and Num were best friends. Once we left high school, everyone kind of separated but we stayed together hustling. When I was in jail for a year, that’s when I came up with the concept of the LuniTunes, which later became Luniz. This was 1992. Once I came out, we hit the block freestyling, traveling from school to school battling on the bus just trying to get our name out there. That was basically the come-up before we got our deal.
We were looking up to [MC] Hammer, Too Short, of course. New York had a big influence on us: Kool G Rap, Rakim, Big Daddy Kane. It started from there and then got influenced by gangsta hip-hop with storytelling. That definitely comes from Ice Cube, NWA, Scarface, and Geto Boys.
So here we are with a new plan, with the Luniz and whatnot, but it didn’t work quick at all. So we went back to hustling. We got plugged in with an individual that was down with [Too Short’s] Dangerous Crew. I noticed a dude that was in Too Short’s videos, Baby Jesus [Al “Baby Jesus” Eaton]. I told him “Yeah, we rap. We the LuniTunes.” So we was at Dangerous Studios the next day rapping against Rappin’ Ron and Bad-N-Fluenz trying to earn our stripes in front of everyone. We held it down. From then on at the end of ’92 and the beginning of ’93, we was in the studio with Dru Down finishing up his album. We gave up songs that were supposed to be for our own album, like “Ice Cream Man.” It’s called paying your dues. But that’s how we got signed, man. We turned a dope deal into a record deal.
The beginnings of a weed anthem
Yukmouth: After Dru’s album was done, we started getting deal offers and whatnot. So we wanted to put out a mixtape before our own album. The first song we did was “5 On It” but we put that to the side while we finished up the mixtape. We had it tucked in ’93 and then released it in ’95 on our album. From the rip, me and Num was in one of C&H’s trap houses/[chill] spot where we write rhymes, smoke, and chill.
We at the spot and Num came up with the idea. He’s like “Everybody talking about smoking weed on their songs, but nobody talking about what it takes to get weed.” We young at this time, 18 to 19 years old. As youngsters, we used to have to pitch in: two people pitch in five and you get a ten sack, four people pitch in five, you get a twenty sack. That’s how the junior high schoolers and high schoolers was doing it. Num was like “man, let’s make a song called ‘I Got 5 On It.’” We just started freestyling and beating on the table. We didn’t even have a beat. We wrote the whole song without a beat. Next day, we go to Tone Capone’s studios. Everybody’s doing a remake, so I come up with the idea to do Club Nouveau’s “Why You Treat Me So Bad.” Everybody used “Rumors” but no one used this.
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