Back in 1993, the hip hop group
Digital Underground needed to release a single to promote their 4th album,
the Body-Hat Syndrome, in the hopes they could recapture the magic of their two biggest hits,
Humpty Dance and
Doowutchyalike. Frontman Greg
"Shock G" Davis (aka Humpty Hump) needed a gimmick to promote the new single,
Return of the Crazy One, so he hired
FM Productions in San Francisco (who had also designed
flying pigs for Pink Floyd concerts) to create a 12-foot high sculpture of his own head, which would allow him to emerge from a trap door in the nostrils. Fast forward almost twenty years later, until a guy with the web handle
johnny payphone finds the giant head abandoned and covered in dust in an Oakland warehouse after a homeless man attempted to
live in it for several weeks. No museums have yet expressed interest in the head, but if you have the money, and you can take good care of it, the giant Humpty Hump head
could be yours.
posted by jonp72
on Aug 24, 2012 -
47 comments
Stop Snitchin' may be the hidden link between
hip hop and the 1980s alternative rock group,
House of Freaks. According to the New York Post, journalist
Ethan Brown has accomplished
"making the Stop Snitching movement seem reasonable" in his new book
Snitch: Informants, Cooperators, and the Corruption of Justice. Brown argues that harsh
mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses have created a "cottage industry of cooperators" and
informants who fabricate evidence, because
Provision 5K1.1 of federal sentencing guidelines gives leniency in exchange for "substantial assistance to authorities." According to Brown, two of these
criminal cooperators included
Ray Dandridge and
Ricky Gray, the perpetrators of the
Richmond spree murders that ended the life of
Brian Harvey of House of Freaks, his wife, and his two children. On the other hand,
Mark Kleiman argues that the Stop Snitchin' movement has driven
homicide clearance rates so low that, in some cities, "you have a better than even chance of literally getting away with murder."
[more inside]
posted by jonp72
on Dec 11, 2007 -
61 comments
