This samples Van Halen's "Jamie's Cryin'." It was not the first time an Eddie Van Halen guitar riff helped a black artist appeal to a white audience: Eddie played the guitar solo on Michael Jackson's "Beat It," which helped make that song a huge hit.
"The Wild Thing" is slang for sex. It was a popular and benign euphemism that worked well in the late '80s when people like Arsenio Hall needed to talk about sex without arousing censors (the phrase "making whoopie" was hopelessly outdated).
This was the first rap song by a black artist to crossover to pop radio, and also the first rap single to be certified Platinum (Tone-Loc's "Funky Cold Medina" was the second). The Beastie Boys crossed over the year before with "(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Party)." "I think it's a great stepping-stone for hip-hop," Loc told Entertainment Weekly in 2016. "It opened the door for a lot more listeners, a lot more white listeners. It changed a lot of hip-hop."
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