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See that guy in the above photo? His name is Romany Malco. You most likely recognize him as the Smart Tech salesman from 40 Year Old Virgin. Perhaps you know him as the green-thumbed pot dealer Conrad Shephard from Weeds, the hotel bellhop from Baby Mama, or the scene-stealing character from a handful of other recent movie roles. He's the kind of actor that never gets the starring role but puts in memorable enough performances that, whenever he does pop up on screen, you're often left wondering where else you've seen him before.
That, at least, has been the case for me, as I've had this lingering sense of recognition every time I see him on tv. I could never place his face, until I recently dug up an old College Boyz cd and saw him on the cover:
Romany is on the lower left of the cover
Born in Brooklyn, Romany started out rapping at the tender age of 7 and later joined up with a Texas group called R.M.G., which would later be renamed to the "College Boyz" after they moved out to L.A. and signed a record deal with Virgin Records. Malco, rapping under the name R.O.M., served as the focal point of the group, offering up lyrics that were an equal mix of just about every style of rap that was popular in the early 90's: west coast gangster, new jack swing and conscious rap. The first single the group released, Victim of the Ghetto, did fairly well, reaching the top 5 of the Billboard charts:
College Boyz - Victim of the Ghetto
The group managed to release two albums but disbanded shortly after the second release, Nuttin' Less Nuttin' Mo'. They put together a few solid songs during their brief career, with their best undoubtedly being the Seven Minutes of Funk-sampling Underground Blues:
College Boyz - Underground Blues
As far as the musical side of his career, Malco's most successful performance was on Paula Abdul's Opposites Attract, where he served as the voice of the infamous MC Skat Kat. After the College Boyz disbanded, Malco transitioned into work as a music producer for various shows before he eventually went into acting. He stayed true to his hip hop roots for his first big role, playing MC Hammer in Too Legit: The MC Hammer Story:
From there Malco's acting career took off, starring in the aforementioned series Weeds, 40 Year Old Virgin and Baby Mama. Though Malco has said in interviews that he never had any interest in acting until well after his music career ended, he put out a song with the College Boyz that dealt with the problems of being a black actor in Hollywood. Hard to say whether the 1991 version of Romany would be pleased with where he's at in 2010:
College Boyz - Hollywood Paradox
For more information on Romany Malco, hit up his website.
5/20/2010 6:15:51 PM posted by Fresh