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Beating the rap on style

 
Published Feb. 14, 1992|Updated Oct. 10, 2005

Marky Mark Wahlberg makes underwear baggin' out the back of his pants look cool. Hey, the perfectly chiseled rappin' Adonis has even been known to drop his overalls and give the audience a better look. Boxer shorts seem to be his intimate garment of choice, but the 20-year-old body-building Bostonian, whose hits include Good Vibrations and Wildside, has been spotted sporting your basic white BVDs on occasion.

Baggin' cloths, shirt optional and baseball cap (strickly wool _ Marky don't mess with the strap variety) make up Marky Mark's basic fashion attitude _ a far cry from the sequin-studded hi-tech hairdo that is his questionable peer, Vanilla Ice. Both are white rappers, popular with adolescent girls and excelling in a predominantly black field of music _ but Marky Mark gets something that Vanilla Ice is finding hard to come by these days: respect.

Unlike Vanilla Ice (aka Robert Van Winkle), Marky Mark doesn't feel the need to pad his biography with street-wise fibs to prove to the world he's got the right to rap. One of nine children raised in the lower middle class Boston neighborhood of Dorchester, Marky Mark makes no bones about the fact that he's a former street corner hood currently living with his mom and pursuing his GED or that his brother, Donnie Wahlberg, is in the clean-cut kiddie group, New Kids On the Block.

Of course, it probably doesn't hurt Marky Mark's rough 'n' tough image that Bro Donnie is the bad New Kid _ the one with the fuzz on the chin who got busted last year for allegedly setting fire to a hotel where he was staying.

Truth be told, Marky Mark, along with big brother Donnie, made the cut as one of the very first New Kids back when Maurice Starr was putting together the NKOTB package, but, when Starr honed in on the ballad market, Marky Mark bowed out. "I couldn't see myself singing I'll Be Loving You Forever," he states in the official Marky Mark press release.

Instead, Marky Mark went back to high school, dropped out, had a few scrapes with the law and started making rhymes of his own. Donnie offered to produce a record, and Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch were set to go. With Donnie co-writing much of the tracks and contributing on vocals, the R

&

B Funk debut, Music for the People, also includes legendary rapper MC Spice, who co-wrote and produced several songs, and the vocals by Funky Bunch dancers, Andy Thomas, Scott Ross, Hector Barrows and DJ Terry Yancey.

Well on his way to making his own fortune, Marky Mark says he doesn't miss the millions his brother went on to earn, preferring to stay true to the hip hop music he has loved since the age of 4.

Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch sample as freely as the next rap group, but, while Number One hit Good Vibrations includes clips from the disco hit Love Sensation, the MTV clip also features an appearance by the original singer, Loletta Holloway. Wildside borrows from Lou Reed's Walk on the Wildside as well as real-life news bites of Boston street crimes, and So What Chu Saying is a Marky Mark proclamation of his dedication to the undiluted, pure art of street rap.

AT A GLANCE

Marky Mark & the Funky Bunch will perform at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Bayfront Arena, St. Petersburg. Tickets are $17.50.