Tone Capone

Anthony Douglas Gilmour was born in Berkeley, California, and raised in North Oakland near Bushrod Park. Public obituaries give his age at death as 59 without a full birth date. His household soundtrack was classic funk and soul, from Earth, Wind and Fire and Parliament to Kool and the Gang, Curtis Mayfield and Donald Byrd.

At Berkeley High School he learned to DJ on borrowed turntables. With friend Nick Peace he played fraternity parties and dances at the Lake Merritt boathouse. A photograph from about 1982 later circulated showing the two behind the decks. After high school he moved from party DJing into beatmaking with the tools of the mid-1980s: four-track cassette recorders, drum machines, turntables and tape decks.

Buying a Technics 1200 marked a turning point. In his own telling to SPIN, the late 1980s were spent hustling toward an SP-1200. When he finally bought one around 1990 he was arrested soon afterward, placed on probation, and redirected his energy into learning the machine and making beats for a living.

Capone's earliest paid work sat between independent Bay Area rap and major-label R&B. He produced for Oakland's Capital Tax and, under the name DJG, contributed to sessions connected with SWV. Bobby Beats, father of Digital Underground's Money-B and a former Black Panther, helped manage him for a time.

He adopted the name Tone Capone around 1992 or 1993. Street friendships brought him to Dru Down and to Chris Hicks, who managed the Luniz. Promoter Eric Brooks, after hearing Capone's work, signed Luniz-related material into the Virgin / Noo Trybe orbit. Those ties set up the session that would define Capone's career.

In 1993 Yukmouth and Numskull arrived at Capone's North Oakland studio with a song idea hatched while freestyling about pitching in for weed in an East Oakland trap house. Capone built the beat from Club Nouveau's Why You Treat Me So Bad. Mike Marshall, Capone's Berkeley High classmate and the voice of Timex Social Club's Rumors, was already at the house; Capone pushed for Marshall to sing the hook instead of Yukmouth's chant.

Released on 23 May 1995 from the album Operation Stackola, I Got 5 On It became an immediate Bay Area hit and reached the Top Ten of the Billboard Hot 100 (peaking at No. 8) and No. 2 on Hot Rap Songs. Capone also produced the high-profile remix featuring Dru Down, Spice 1, E-40, Shock G and Richie Rich. The record's afterlife included endless samples, sports and ad clearances, and a stark remake in Jordan Peele's 2019 film Us.

In SPIN's 2025 oral history Capone said he knew the record was catchy but not how large it would become. Yukmouth later called the 1990s the mecca of hip-hop and credited the remix video, packed with Bay Area stars, as the moment they felt they had made it.

After the Luniz breakthrough, Capone followed Oakland rapper Seagram onto Houston's Rap-A-Lot Records. Producer Mike Dean invited him into Scarface sessions for 1997's The Untouchable, which went platinum. Capone's fingerprints include the Rick James flip Mary Jane and Smile, a major hit featuring one of Tupac Shakur's final recorded verses.

Scarface later listed Capone among elite producers in Diary of a Madman, alongside figures such as Dr. Dre, Pharrell and Timbaland. Capone also produced for Geto Boys and Devin the Dude (including Sticky Green), carrying Bay Area bass-heavy funk into Southern catalogues while remaining rooted in Oakland.

Capone's post-1995 Bay Area discography reads like a regional canon. He produced Celly Cel's It's Goin' Down, 3xKrazy's Keep It on the Real, Mac Dre's Fire, Not My Job and Genie of the Lamp, and E-40's Ring It. Collaborators and associates across the years included the Jacka, Dru Down, The Click, Conscious Daughters, Mac Mall, Messy Marv, Andre Nickatina, Spice 1 and San Quinn.

KQED described his beatmaking as steeped in 1970s funk and soul, stressing the first downbeat of each measure, exaggerated bass and live instruments. That mobb music grammar helped define how Bay Area rap sounded on radio and in cars through the late 1990s and 2000s.

In the twenty-first century Capone kept working while experimenting with new tempos and styles. He released material under his own name and through a Dollars and Spence Records imprint. Before his death he had recently collaborated with Punjabi rapper Kanwar. He also took a hospital day job and later retired from it.

From 2021 he lived in the Las Vegas area. He remained a respected elder of Bay Area production, still cited whenever I Got 5 On It returned to charts, films or social media.

Capone kept much of his private life out of the press. Public reporting focuses on friendships forged in Berkeley and Oakland studios rather than on a published family tree. Nick Peace appears in early DJ photographs; Mike Marshall remained a lifelong musical ally; Luniz, Dru Down and the Rap-A-Lot circle were professional kin.

Close family members reported his death online on 13 September 2026. As of the KQED obituary, funeral arrangements had not been announced. He was 59.

Tone Capone died on Saturday, 12 September 2026, aged 59. Close family reported the death online the following day. KQED Arts published a full obituary by Gabe Meline on 13 September 2026. A cause of death was not made public.

Wikipedia's Deaths in 2026 list recorded him as an American hip-hop producer known for I Got 5 on It, citing the KQED report. Tributes from hip-hop writers and fans spread quickly on X and Bay Area forums, often naming Smile, It's Goin' Down and the Luniz catalogue beside his name.

Capone's primary legacy is sonic and cultural: a single that made pitching in for a sack into a worldwide catchphrase, and a production style that moved Bay Area mobb music onto national radio and into Houston's Rap-A-Lot vaults. I Got 5 On It remains a weed anthem, a West Coast standard and, after Us, an unlikely horror motif.

Peers remembered him as both a local architect and a bridge to the South. Scarface's praise, Mac Dre's street classics, Celly Cel's club records and decades of Oakland credits keep his name in liner notes. For younger producers, the SP-1200 story he told in 2025 still reads as a blueprint: get the machine, learn it, and put the funk on the first downbeat.

• Luniz - I Got 5 On It (1995) and Bay Ballas remix
• Scarface - Smile (feat. 2Pac) and Mary Jane (The Untouchable, 1997)
• Celly Cel - It's Goin' Down
• 3xKrazy - Keep It on the Real
• Mac Dre - Fire; Not My Job; Genie of the Lamp
• E-40 - Ring It
• Devin the Dude - Sticky Green
• Further credits across Geto Boys, Seagram, Dru Down, Spice 1 and many Bay Area albums documented on Discogs

Capone built beats from funk and soul DNA rather than cold minimalism. He favored the downbeat, thick bass and the feel of live instruments inside sample-based hip-hop. The Club Nouveau flip on I Got 5 On It showed how he could turn a familiar Bay Area R&B memory into rap architecture, then hand the chorus to a singer who had lived that melody's earlier life.

That approach traveled well to Houston, where Rap-A-Lot artists wanted groove and melody under hard narratives. It also aged well: film, sports and social media kept returning to the same pocket he cut in 1995.