The RC Online is celebrating 50 years of hip-hop with this moment:
March 26, 1990: Oakland, California’s Digital Underground was an early rap group that brought joy and funk to the world. On this day 33 years ago, D.U. came out with their first album, Sex Packets. It had a new kind of funk and a crazy character who taught everyone how to do the Humpty dance.
Earl “Schmoovy Schmoov” Cook, Ronald “Money B” Brooks, Jimi “Chopmaster J” Dright, David “DJ Fuze” Elliott, and the late Kenneth “Kenny-K” Waters were among the first members of the band Digital Underground when it was created in 1987. As a group, they made grooves that sampled Parliament/Funkadelic and were set to hip-hop beats. This was before Dr. Dre released his version of G-Funk on The Chronic album in 1992.
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The first artist signed to TNT Records was Digital Underground. Atron Gregory, who started his career as a road manager for N.W.A., launched the independent Bay Area company. Tommy Records bought his label, which gave D.U. his start in the music business.
The band’s first album, Sex Packets, is a funk-filled concept album about a scientist who made a drug called “G.S.R.A.” (Genetic Suppression Relief Antidotes) that makes people who take it have a satisfying sexual experience anywhere. This leads us to Shock G’s song “Doowutchyalike,” in which he tells men and women to have fun alone. “I mean rich, poor, high, low, or upper-middle class/all Let’s get together and have a few laughs/And do what you want,” he raps.
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But “The Humpty Dance,” which sounds like rubber and started the Humpty dance craze thanks to Shock G’s rap alter ego Humpty Hump, is the best song on the LP.
In 1998, Shock informed the media that Humpty was “like a nerd version of a pimp n***a, with a little perv attitude from Benny Hill and some Morris Day [of the R&B group Time]”.
The week of March 17, 1990, saw “The Humpty Dance” ascend to No. 1 on the Billboard Top Rap Songs list, where it remained for five weeks. On September 18, 1990, Sex Packets received platinum certification from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
Shock G died on April 22, 2021. He was 57 years old. Edward Racker, Shock’s father, told TMZ that the musician was found dead in a Tampa, Florida, hotel room. It was eventually determined by the Hillsborough County Medical Examiner in Tampa, Florida, that Shock had accidentally overdosed on fentanyl, ethanol (alcohol), and methamphetamine.
Shock G, a pioneering funk maestro, led Digital Underground, one of the hip-most hop’s musically minded rap groups. The shock was a skilled musician who could play many instruments. He wanted to make people happy. He will be missed very much.
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