Franklyn Leon Smith (January 29, 1940[1] – March 8, 2019[2]) was an American funk musician and R&B/soul songwriter.
Smith went to college in Tennessee for elementary education with a minor in music.
[3] He was also influential in the careers of the rappers Tone Loc, Ice Cube and Snoop Dogg.
With his 1981 single "Double Dutch Bus", released by WMOT Records,[4] Smith popularized a nonsensical form of slang (from his song "Slang thang", 1981 WMOT, Records), in which "iz" is placed in the middle of a word (for example, the word "place" becomes "plizace"), or the last letters of a word are replaced with "-izzle" ("sure" becomes shizzle).
A type of infix, it found greater popularity later on in hip hop and rap with its usage by Snoop Dogg.