Early in Jordan Peele's Us, the Wilson family is on the way to the beach when the Luniz come on the radio. Winston Duke's Gabe treats "I Got 5 On It" as a nostalgia trip, at least until his kids work out what the song is about. Lupita Nyong'o's Adelaide tries to get her son snapping along and can't find the beat herself. Late in the film the record returns, slowed and rescored by composer Michael Abels, under the soundtrack title Tethered Mix.

The beat under both versions was built in North Oakland by Tone Capone, born Anthony Douglas Gilmour, who died Saturday (Sept 12) at 59. Relatives shared the news online the next day with no cause of death made public.

Capone's credits stretch from Mac Dre's "Not My Job" to Scarface's "Smile," yet the record that kept earning was "I Got 5 On It." He built that 1995 single by replaying a Club Nouveau melody by hand rather than sampling the record. After Us opened in 2019, he told TheWrap that his payments on the song had risen nearly 400 percent.

The song started in 1993 at an East Oakland trap house, where Numskull pointed out that rappers talked constantly about smoking weed and never about chipping in to buy it. He and Yukmouth wrote the whole thing over a rhythm they beat out on a table, Yukmouth told SPIN in 2025. The next day they stopped at a record store on the way to Capone's North Oakland studio and handed him Club Nouveau's "Why You Treat Me So Bad."

Capone didn't sample it. He took the melody at a slower tempo and recorded his own version, explaining to TheWrap that "my bass is way up, and I've got it doubled with electric piano." Bells carry his lead line where Club Nouveau used strings, and by his account, the only samples on the finished track came from Audio Two's "Top Billin'" and Kool & the Gang's "Jungle Boogie."

Michael Marshall, who graduated from Berkeley High with Capone in 1984, had already scored a hit with his group Timex Social Club on "Rumors." Marshall says the melody first appeared on Timex's 1986 song "Thinkin' About You" before producer Jay King carried it into Club Nouveau. King has told a different story, saying his new group changed the rhythms and melodies and wrote a new song. Capone had spent years coaxing Marshall back into a studio, and Marshall happened to be at his place the day the Luniz came through. When Yukmouth returned two days after chanting the hook himself, Capone played him Marshall singing it.

Released on the Luniz debut, Operation Stackola, in 1995, the single peaked at No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 2 on Hot Rap Songs. Speaking with SPIN, Capone tied its reach to California's smoking culture and to timing, with the state a year away from legalizing medical marijuana when the record broke.

Capone told TheWrap that he, King, Club Nouveau's producers, Marshall and the Luniz all received publishing payments on the record. Marshall has said he didn't know he held any publishing until he hired a lawyer, and BMI started paying him in 2005 with nothing for the decade before.

Capone grew up near Bushrod Park, where the family stereo ran the Crusaders, Curtis Mayfield and Donald Byrd. He learned to DJ at Berkeley High on a friend's turntables and was soon spinning at frat parties and the Lake Merritt boathouse. He bought an SP-1200 drum machine around 1990 and, by his own account, quit hustling to learn it after an arrest put him on probation. His first credits came before the Tone Capone name, which he didn't adopt until 1992/1993, and included major-label work for the Oakland group Capital Tax. On an SWV album he worked alongside Brian Alexander Morgan under the name DJG.

In a WhoSampled interview, he described "treating the production game like a science," studying the players on Parliament-Funkadelic, Ohio Players, Zapp and Bar-Kays records. "I Got 5 On It" pushed him toward replaying hooks instead of sampling them, and Micro-Chop noted that later artists sometimes sampled his replays rather than the originals. A replayed melody still pays its songwriters, but it leaves the owner of the original recording out of the deal.

Houston, Mike Dean and Scarface's Short List

The route to Texas ran through Seagram, an Oakland rapper signed to Houston's Rap-A-Lot Records. Working with Seagram introduced Capone to Mike Dean, who invited him into Scarface's next sessions. Those sessions produced The Untouchable, a platinum album from 1997 with Capone credits on the Rick James flip "Mary Jane" and on "Smile," which carries one of Tupac Shakur's last recorded verses. "Smile" went out as a single in February 1997, five months after Tupac's death. Capone stayed in the Rap-A-Lot orbit with Devin the Dude's "Sticky Green" and tracks on Scarface's 1998 album My Homies, and he was back on My Homies Part 2 in 2006.

Scarface has produced a large share of his own records. In Diary of a Madman, his 2015 memoir, he set his beats against everyone else's and voiced that only six producers came close: Dr. Dre, Timbaland, Pharrell, Tone Capone, Mike Dean and N.O. Joe. Four of those six, Capone and Dre included, share production credits on The Untouchable.

The Bay Records, and a Remix Full of Names

At home in the Bay, his credits include 3X Krazy's "Keep It on the Real," Celly Cel's "It's Goin' Down" and E-40's "Ring It." He met Mac Dre in the late 1990s and produced "Fire," a single that nods to the Ohio Players, along with "Not My Job" and "Genie of the Lamp." The "I Got 5 On It" remix put Dru Down, Spice 1, E-40, Shock G and Richie Rich on one record. The single shook loose deals around the region, Capone recalled, from Richie Rich's Def Jam contract to Dru Down and Mac Mall signing with Relativity. Capone also worked with Jacka, the Click, the Conscious Daughters, Andre Nickatina and San Quinn.

Capone had lived in the Las Vegas area since 2021, working a hospital day job before retiring. His recent sessions reached as far as the Punjabi rapper Kanwar.

Thirty Years of Clearance Requests

The eerie remix had been a talking point since Us's first footage, and Peele's team released the full stream ahead of opening day, with Marshall's name in its title credit. The soundtrack carried both the Luniz original and the Tethered Mix. Marshall said Us made more people aware that he held a publishing share, and more of them began contacting him for clearance. The latest approval he described in that 2025 interview came from the NBA, which wanted the song during its All-Star Game.

TikTok's sound page for the Tethered Mix lists more than 440,000 videos. Capone brought up those viral clips himself in the same conversation with SPIN. "I don't mind any of it," he said, "because it helps the record stay alive."