10 Iconic Rock Stars Who Guested On Pop Songs
3. Bust a Move - Flea
As the artist Young MC has said, Bust a Move was a lot of people's first girlfriend when it came to hip hop, and he's not necessarily wrong either. When hip hop was first starting to find its way onto the singles charts, this was just the kind of song that launched it into prime time, being just an old school romp about getting young guys on the dance floor. And a lot of the pulse of this song is more indebted to rock than hip hop.
Since this was the golden age of sampling, Young MC hit on one of the meanest grooves that he could have asked for, with the main lick being a looped section of a song from the '70s jazz band Ballin Jack. The original is funky as all hell, but he managed to bring in an extra layer of funk by having Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers provide some bass to the track.
You have to remember that this was also the late '80s, long before the Chili Peppers were the biggest band around off of stuff like Under the Bridge and Give It Away. For some of us, this was the first time we got to see Flea in action, and this set the stage up pretty well. Because if you have a bass player who's able to go this hard on top of a hip hop beat, just imagine what he's going to sound like with the rest of the band behind him.