The Rapping and Unwrapping of Marky Mark

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Mark Wahlberg

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''When did this become okay?'' marvels David Letterman on Late Night one late night. Dave is talking about how he was in his car and passed a bus featuring a six-panel poster of Marky in his Calvins. ''He's got a hold of himself!'' shouts Letterman. ''I guess I'm the dumbest guy alive Is it okay to do that? When I was a kid you could get arrested doing that anywhere near a bus.''

Marky Mark quit school at the age of 16 after repeating the ninth grade. He is working, he says, for his high school equivalency diploma. He is charming and shy and tough. He lives at home, where he still has to deal with things like lawsuits laid on him by homeboys who say he beat them up. (One such case was dropped last year.) He is rich. He himself will not quote numbers. ''I'm better off than I ever was, but I'm out there strugglin', ya know, I'm out there workin' hard.''

Marky is of the moment, and moments go by fast. Inevitably, he appeared on the ''out'' side of a few New Year's in-out lists.

''The core audience still wants cute Mark,'' says Marc Benesch, general manager of Interscope Records, explaining the less than impressive sales of Marky's second, tougher album. ''Whenever an artist breaks so big the first time around, the expectations are equally great. But the marketplace is always changing.''

How far can his career go? ''Music is intertwined with TV and movies, and so are artists,'' says Benesch. ''It's not like 5 or 10 years ago, when you had a musical career and that was it. Mark, I believe, has been blessed with a talent, whether it's music or TV or movies or all of them combined.''

''Obviously, Mark's record is not exactly burning up the charts,'' says Goldsmith. ''How many rap albums can you put out? I would be looking for projects for him in the avenue of entertainment. I would want him to take acting classes; he picked up working in front of the camera very quickly. The Wahlberg family has a lucky star over their house.''

It's 4 p.m. The limo is on its way to pick up Marky and his crew from the apartment/studio and take them back to Boston. To home.

Marky Mark resquashes his hat on his head and considers what makes his rap music different. ''I touch on different things, ya know?'' he says analytically. ''I got, ya know, house music. I got that boasty jive that's hard-core. And I got that very positive type of, uplifting type of, music, which I think is my strongest.''

He pumps, he adjusts his loose pants, he thinks about his future. ''I hope maybe that I'll be able to do other things. Maybe do educational films,'' he says. ''I'm lookin' at possibly doin' somethin' that can be helpful. Somethin' that would suit me. Somethin' that fits or that deals with somethin' I can really relate to. I think that would be cool.'' ''Okay,'' says his road manager, Miguel. ''The car is here.'' ''Yo,'' says Marky Mark. ''Hnnh.''