The low, circling groove beneath Luniz's "I Got 5 on It" traveled from a North Oakland studio to radios around the world, then returned decades later as the ominous musical pulse of Jordan Peele's Us. Tone Capone, the Bay Area producer born Anthony Douglas Gilmour who built that beat and shaped records across West Coast and Southern rap, died on September 12, 2026. He was 59. KQED reported that close family announced his death online the next day.

That one production became an unusually durable piece of cultural memory. Released in 1995, "I Got 5 on It" rose to number 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number 2 on the Hot Rap Songs chart, according to SPIN. It also became a major international record. The Official Charts Company records a number 3 peak in Britain and 15 weeks in the UK Top 100. A Bay Area remix gathered Dru Down, E-40, Richie Rich, Shock G and Spice 1 around the track, turning the record into a roll call of the regional scene Capone helped define.

Gilmour's musical vocabulary had formed years before that success. Born in Berkeley and raised in North Oakland near Bushrod Park, he grew up hearing Earth, Wind & Fire, the Crusaders, Parliament, Kool & the Gang, Curtis Mayfield and Donald Byrd at home. At Berkeley High School, he learned the mechanics of DJing on a friend's turntables. He and Nick Peace, who also became a producer, went on to work fraternity-house parties and dances at the Lake Merritt boathouse.

He said he began DJing in 1981, when a cassette deck's pause button could serve as an editing tool. By the middle of the decade, he was constructing beats with four-track recorders, drum machines, turntables and tape decks. That apprenticeship taught him to build movement from limited equipment. His early industry work included assignments connected to Oakland rap group Capital Tax and R&B trio SWV. He used the credit DJG on the SWV work before adopting Tone Capone around 1992 or 1993.

The record that fixed the new name in hip-hop history began as a song without a finished beat. Luniz members Yukmouth and Numskull brought their idea to Capone's North Oakland studio in 1993, asking him to work from Club Nouveau's "Why You Treat Me So Bad." Michael Marshall, Capone's schoolmate from Berkeley High, was there too. In a 2025 oral history, SPIN reported how Capone reshaped the groove and pressed for Marshall to replace Yukmouth's chanted hook with a sung chorus. The producer's choices gave the track both its weight and its plaintive pull.

Capone understood the local possibilities immediately, even if the eventual scale surprised him. "I knew the song was catchy and I knew it could’ve been a hit," he told SPIN. "But I just didn’t know how big it would hit." The hit gave him a platform, but he did not reduce his craft to a single formula. He studied the arrangements and instrumentation of funk groups whose records producers routinely sampled, then used live replayed parts to control a song's breaks and structure more precisely. His productions favored a firm opening beat, deep bass and live instrumentation, a combination that fit the Bay Area's mobb music sound while traveling easily beyond it.

One path ran south to Houston. Work with Oakland rapper Seagram connected Capone with producer Mike Dean, who brought him into sessions for Scarface. Capone contributed production to Scarface's platinum 1997 album The Untouchable, with credits that included "Mary Jane" and "Smile," the hit featuring Tupac Shakur. Scarface later distilled Capone's gift into one word. "Tone Capone may have one of the best vibes in the world," the rapper said in a 2007 interview with AllHipHop.

Back home, Capone's records became fixtures of Northern California hip-hop. His catalog included 3XKrazy's "Keep It on the Real," Celly Cel's "It's Goin' Down," Devin the Dude's "Sticky Green" and E-40's "Ring It." With Mac Dre, he produced "Fire," "Not My Job" and "Genie of the Lamp." He also worked with the Jacka, Dru Down, the Click, the Conscious Daughters, Mac Mall, Messy Marv, Andre Nickatina, Spice 1 and San Quinn. The list mapped an ecosystem rather than a detached collection of credits: Oakland, Berkeley and Vallejo artists shared sounds, studios and collaborators, while Capone supplied rhythms that could connect their individual voices.

The afterlife of his best-known beat offered proof that his work could change meaning without losing its identity. In 2019, Peele's Us used a slowed and shadowy variation on "I Got 5 on It," moving the tune from party memory into horror. Capone welcomed the record's continuing circulation. "People are even using it today for viral clips," he told SPIN in 2025. "I don’t mind any of it, because it helps the record stay alive." He kept testing new tempos and styles in the 21st century, and near the end of his life worked with Punjabi rapper Kanwar. Away from sessions, he also held a hospital job before retiring. He had lived in the Las Vegas area since 2021.

Tone Capone's work persists wherever the first notes of "I Got 5 on It" trigger recognition, but its reach is larger than one familiar loop. It runs through Marshall's sung refrain, the Bay Area remix's gathering of voices, Scarface's Houston sessions, Mac Dre's catalog and the regional records still passed between generations of listeners. Together, those tracks preserve the patient ear of a Berkeley DJ who learned on borrowed turntables and made a local bass language travel.