Garrett Caples

The premise — a family stalked by its disfigured doppelgängers — was chilling, but much of the online reaction focused on the teaser’s use of “I Got 5 on It,” the 1995 platinum hit by Oakland rap duo Luniz. As the trailer opens, the song plays over the car radio while the family discusses its meaning, prompting the dad’s accidental double entendre: “It’s not about drugs, it’s a dope song!”

Known as the San Francisco Bay Area’s premier pot-smoking anthem, the track gets a makeover as the trailer turns darker — slowed down, then beefed up with orchestral overdubs, becoming a terrifying, atmospheric motif.

“You’d never think of it as a scary movie song,” said Anthony Gilmour, 52, the Bay Area rap producer known as Tone Capone, who made the original track. “But when they slow it up, it just sounds creepy.”

Peele told Entertainment Weekly that the track had haunting undertones: “I feel like the beat in that song has this inherent cryptic energy, almost reminiscent of the ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ soundtrack.” (He also liked that it was a Bay Area classic, appropriate for a film set in Northern California.)

Luniz’s Garrick Husbands, 43, known as Numskull, said he was ecstatic to learn the song would be included in the film’s promotion. “It was the best thing, besides my children being born, I had ever heard,” he said in a phone interview.

For many younger rap fans, this was their first encounter with Luniz, who originally formed as the LuniTunes in 1992. Linking up with Tone Capone the following year, Luniz helped usher in the Bay Area’s “Mob Music” sound — slow, brooding, 808-drum-machine-driven grooves often known as “slumpers.” The duo’s 1995 debut, “Operation Stackola,” went platinum on the strength of “I Got 5 on It.” Follow-ups in 1997 and 2002 didn’t reach the same heights, and the duo split around 2005, reuniting in 2015 for a mixtape called “High Timez.” In 2018, it released an EP, “No Pressure,” and it is currently working on new singles.

“I’ll give you a hint: They’re definitely around what’s going on with the movie,” said Luniz’s Jerold Ellis, 44, the rapper known as Yukmouth. (On March 8, the day “Us” had its premiere at SXSW, the duo released a revamped version of the track, “I Got 5 on Us,” with a video inspired by the film.)

“I Got 5 on It” initially appeared in two scenes in “Us,” but the horror version — known as the “Tethered Mix” — was added to the soundtrack “as a result of its success in the trailer,” said Stacey Zarro, vice president for publicity at the movie’s distributor, Universal Pictures. The “Tethered Mix” was the brainchild of Joe Wees, senior vice president for creative marketing at Universal, and trailer editor John Cantu. (Michael Abels was the composer for “Us.”)

“We struck it down to where we had just a bit of the lyrics and some tones, added in our own effects, and then hired composition companies to help fill those in,” Wees said. (The “Us” team declined to name who finished up the mix.)

Tone Capone was more than happy to dissect the revised track, noting some low-frequency oscillation on the bells and plucked strings. “They’re playing it at a slower tempo, using a turntable or a processor and then a computer to keep the pitch the same,” he said.

As a producer, Tone Capone’s bona fides in Bay Area rap run deep. Working under the name DJ Cool G, he provided turntable scratches on the 1987 album “Surf or Die” by the Surf MC’s, a novelty group that nonetheless edged out the scene’s acknowledged founder, Too Short, as the first local rap act to sign to a major label. He provided an early influential remix of Eric B. and Rakim’s “Casualties of War” in 1992, and was soon directing label scouts to the region, yielding deals for Luniz, Dru Down and the Keak da Sneak launchpad 3X Krazy. Apart from “I Got 5 on It,” he is most famous for coproducing the Geto Boys’ Scarface, including the 1997 smash “Smile,” one of the last guest appearances Tupac Shakur recorded before his death. Along the way, he worked with Bay Area luminaries like E-40 and Mac Dre; Dirty Southerners like Devin the Dude; and New Yorkers like Lloyd Banks.

His work lately has drifted toward R&amp;B, developing vocal talent like the singer London Savoy. In recent years, he’s taken on a day job as a supply technician at UCSF Medical Center, but he estimates about half of his income comes from licensing and publishing from his classic catalog, a fact he ascribes to his old-school, major-label paperwork and publishing rights.

“All I can say is, producers, stop giving your stuff away for free because you devaluing the game,” he said. “Even if you just chuck it out on the internet, you still got to have the business part done if you want to eat.”

Still, even Tone Capone is amazed at the evergreen success of what was already what he called his “top breadwinner.”

“It’s been good to me,” he said. “'5 on It’ blew up, and it’s blowing up again, which is crazy because it’s 24 years later.” If that’s what being a one-hit wonder means, he joked, “I’ll be a one-hit wonder.”

This article originally appeared in <a id="dc9bf007-b080-4bf3-bf17-ea0db9edff9c" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/25/arts/music/us-jordan-peele-i-got-5-on-it-luniz.html">The New York Times</a>.

The trailer for Jordan Peele’s new horror movie, “Us,” set the internet on fire in December.

Pot anthem gets a spooky second life

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Garrett Caples

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Pot anthem gets a spooky second life