While Mark Wahlberg is a well respected actor today, it wasn’t always that way. Recently, Mark’s brother Donnie Wahlberg revealed that he invested around $500,000 in his younger brother in the 1990’s as an effort to help him launch his career and keep him “out of the streets.” In an interview with SiriusXM’s “Andy Cohen Live” the New Kids on the Block alum said he was determined “help my brother, you know, stay out of the streets because his life was going nowhere fast, and he was in good shape and, you know, he’d come out to shows and fans would be like, ‘Oh my god, he’s cute,’ and I’d be like, ‘He is cute. Make this kid famous.’” Donnie explained that he wanted to show the world that he was more than a boy band member and could write songs, so he co-wrote Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch’s first album. “We became really successful,” Donnie said of New Kids on the Block, “and we just got so much criticism for being, you know, a false. We were false. We can’t write songs. We can’t do anything, and I was really a hip-hop fan, as a lot of us were, and I just wanted to produce songs and make music.”

Donnie recalled the first time he played the demo for what would become Mark’s 1991 hit “Good Vibrations,” fellow New Kid on the Block member Jordan Knight told him it was a “hit.” “I was like, ‘Wow.’ I felt so inspired by his reaction to it,” he said. “Then my mother had the same reaction and said, ‘That’s going to be a No. 1 record for Mark. You’re going to be so great Donnie.’” But, Donnie said that the first time Mark came to record the track, he wasn’t ready. “He didn’t practice enough, and I sent him home.” He added, “I was like, ‘Go home. You’re not ready. Come back tomorrow,’” saying he had already invested hundreds of thousands of dollars into his brother’s music career. “I rode him hard because, you know, it could have been my record,” Donnie explained. “It could have been my song. It could’ve been a New Kids song. I could have rapped and, you know, we could have done whatever we want. But I was also spending like, you know, investing like a half-million dollars into his career, and I was like, ‘Don’t waste my time. Don’t waste my money. Go home, practice, come back,’ and I drove him hard.”