Peter Relic: Bust a Move
A not-so-bitter rivalry and the greatest untold story in hip-hop.
Peter Relic and I were rivals. Unbeknownst to him, for decades, we were arch rivals. Coming out of high school and coming out of undergrad, I wanted to be working in magazines. My heroes — Andy Jenkins, Mark Lewman, and Spike Jonze — all worked in magazines — the coolest magazines. When I was in high school in the late 1980s, they helmed the BMX and skateboarding magazines that my friends and I read religiously (Freestylin’, Homeboy, etc.). When I was in college in the early 1990s, they were doing Dirt (a.k.a. Sassy for boys) and Grand Royal (with the Beastie Boys). One day in the masthead for an issue of Dirt, I saw the name Peter Relic for the first time. He was the intern. He was the “new kid.” He was exactly where I wanted to be.
I told him all of this when we first met in 2019. I’d moved to Savannah to teach at the Savannah College of Art and Design where Peter works in the publicity department. I told of my envy seeing his byline in XXL, Vibe, Rolling Stone, and Rap Pages. We laughed and rode bikes and talked about music and zines and poetry. During my three years living in Savannah, we had many long talks and many bike rides. We even collaborated on a few things.
Since I moved away, Peter finished his book, Bust a Move: Matt Dike, Delicious Vinyl, and the Hip-Hop Hits That First Conquered Pop (Citadel, 2026). As I wrote about it,
Part mystery, part oral history, Bust a Move exposes a hidden hub in the hip-hop network and the characters it connected on the cusp of the 1990s. This is the secret story of music obsessive Matt Dike and a Who’s Who of those who knew him, as well as a fresh look at how LA Loc’ed and loped onto the map of rap—Relic’s writing is as delicious as the vinyl.
Thankfully, once we met, our decades-old, one-sided rivalry didn’t hinder our friendship.
Roy Christopher: How has our rivalry affected your writing career?
Peter Relic: Rivalry is usually healthy, right? You know, we both came up in the decade called the Nineties, when there was this super lively ecosystem of music magazines, and we wrote for some of the same publications, so I had seen your byline for many years before we met. There was always a vibrant ontological angle to your writing that represented a break from the norm. It was refreshing. You inspired me to go a little deeper with my own investigations. It also meant that when we finally met, we had a foundation for a friendship.
RC: True, and I think it’s hilarious that you told Mike D “no” to helping with the Beastie Boys Book (Random House, 2018).
PR: Well, you know, I knew Mike D a bit in the Ill Communication era, and even dog-sat for him once when the band was away on tour. Great dog, Rufus. And yes, it’s true, Mike D did reach out to see if I could work with him on the Beastie Boys Book. That must’ve been 2016, and I had just started a new full-time job at the time so had to politely decline. Beastie Boys Book turned out to be a real treat, I think — both Mike and Ad-Rock are gifted storytellers. (Side note: the guy who wound up working on Beastie Boys Book, Keven McAlester, is also an intrepid documentary filmmaker. Keven’s doc You’re Gonna Miss Me, about Roky Erikson, is well worth your time.)
RC: So, the book… How did you happen upon this amazing and surprisingly untold story?
PR: What Delicious Vinyl achieved is one of the great DIY success stories of all time in music — really in all art and business, full stop. I had no idea going into it how crazy it was. I think the huge success they had in 1988, 1989 meant those songs achieved a sort of cultural ubiquity that had a flattening effect — you know, there couldn’t possibly be much of a story there. In fact, the opposite proved true.
Then there was a moment around 2010, when the world was treating hip-hop as this music of historical importance, and telling the story of the culture in books and in documentary films at a volume and with a degree of seriousness that seemed significant. I started thinking about who was important, and why, and I noticed that the story of Delicious Vinyl — the key LA label that cross-faded the culture into the mainstream — was being overlooked.
I approached Delicious Vinyl cofounder Mike Ross and said I’d like to write a book. Mike’s cool, he said sure, go for it. He also told me that he hadn’t seen his former creative partner and Delicious Vinyl cofounder Matt Dike since 1994. I thought that was odd. Little did I know that the mystery of Matt Dike would become an obsession, a sort of hypnotic beat that drives the entire narrative.
RC: The story really reads in part like a mystery. Why are you telling it now?
PR: These songs — “Bust a Move” by Young MC, and Tone Loc’s hits “Wild Thing” and “Funky Cold Medina” — have far, far outlasted the shelf life of most popular culture nuggets. Every generation seems to love and get up to these songs, and they still trigger something, they inspire us to have fun. There’s a fantastic fight montage in that newish Sydney Sweeney boxing movie Christy set to “Bust a Move,” and it’s like, why this song when there are millions of other songs to choose from? There’s an enduring resonance. I wanted to dig into the creative process and see if there was some sort of secret about how these songs were made that would illuminate a key moment in hip-hop culture. The revelation floored me.
RC: The whole music journalism world has changed a few times over since you and I were grinding out stories. Who do you like writing about music these days?
PR: Great question. We’re at an age now where I’m reading young writers writing about artists I don’t know. There’s something really edifying about that. I had never heard of the band Twen before I read a great piece by Taylor Lempke on Pop Passion.
Peter Berry writes incisively about Vince Staples, which continues to incentivize me to enjoy his music. Ramona Park Broke My Heart (Motown, 2022) is such a dope and daring album. Is it a coincidence that Vince Staples is a rapper from LA who banged as a teenage Crip, just like Tone Loc did decades earlier? It’s all connected.
To mention one more: there’s a young Spanish writer named Andrea Abreu whose novel Dogs of Summer (Astra House, 2022) totally rocks. It’s 180 pages of lip-of-the-volcano hilarity and madness starring these pre-teen girls who are obsessed with the bachata band Aventura, and the narrator describes their songs as “whisking my insides around with a stick.” I love it.
RC: Sounds visceral. What’s coming up next for Peter Relic?
PR: A book of poetry with Margins Press out of Ojai, California. A book about two airplanes colliding over Tybee Island in 1958. Watching the cucumbers grow (not a euphemism). Speaking of vines and taproots, shout out to Vaishali at Holy Cow Vegan whose beet salad with garlic oil makes summertime divine. Yo, Roy, bring that beet back!
Out to Launch
Bust a Move is available for preorder now from Citadel Books. The move finally busts next week, and there’s a launch event on June 30th at Delicious Pizza in LA. Peter Relic will be in the building!
Thanks to Peter for answering my questions and for being a better friend than rival.
And thank you for reading,
-royc.
Love the interview and backstory. I cannot wait for the release of this book. This is the story of LA hip-hop for me. Delicious Vinyl, The Dust Brothers, LA's finest! Have my own connections to both, what a time it was...