RIP Humpty Hump
April 23, 2021 6:01 AM   Subscribe

Greg “Shock G” Jacobs, founder of 90s rap group Digital Underground, passed away aged 57 in a hotel room in Tampa, Florida. Digital Underground started in the late 80s; their sound leaned heavily on P-Funk, while their lyrics often dealt with fanciful themes, such as Sex Packets, a concept album about a drug that induces sexual hallucinations.

Shock G was perhaps better known as his Groucho Marx-esque comedic alter ego Humpty Hump. His best-known song was The Humpty Dance, whose snare-drum sound (sampled from a Parliament record) was in turn sampled by over 100 other songs, becoming a hallmark of hip-hop, new jack swing and eventually chart pop.
posted by acb (60 comments total) 17 users marked this as a favorite
 
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Peace and humptiness forever.
posted by RobinofFrocksley at 6:04 AM on April 23, 2021 [22 favorites]


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posted by SystematicAbuse at 6:15 AM on April 23, 2021


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posted by introp at 6:17 AM on April 23, 2021


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posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 6:18 AM on April 23, 2021


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Well, time for me to blast "The Humpty Dance" in his memory.
posted by Kitteh at 6:22 AM on April 23, 2021


Of this man, may it be said: he liked his beats funky, and his oatmeal lumpy.

🥒
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:25 AM on April 23, 2021 [21 favorites]


This is such a bummer.

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posted by thivaia at 6:26 AM on April 23, 2021


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posted by riruro at 6:27 AM on April 23, 2021


Humpty Dance is such a choice cut from the Golden Age of hip hop. After just listening to it for the first time in decades I couldn't believe how much of the lyrics I remembered.

57 is way too young. May there be sex packets in heaven.

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posted by gwint at 6:29 AM on April 23, 2021 [11 favorites]


DU was also the stepping stone into superstardom for Tupac Shakur
posted by NoMich at 6:30 AM on April 23, 2021 [5 favorites]


👃
posted by Faint of Butt at 6:31 AM on April 23, 2021 [12 favorites]


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posted by genehack at 6:32 AM on April 23, 2021


Aw damnit. I saw DU at a club in Santa Cruz when I was in college 20 years ago, and it's still one of the best shows I've ever been to.

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posted by dorothy hawk at 6:33 AM on April 23, 2021 [1 favorite]


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posted by jquinby at 6:33 AM on April 23, 2021


Humpty Dance is such a choice cut from the Golden Age of hip hop.

This x ∞
Even today, Humpty Dance coming on the party mix is a guaranteed smile-maker and party-lifter.

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posted by Thorzdad at 6:53 AM on April 23, 2021 [7 favorites]


👃🏿
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 6:53 AM on April 23, 2021 [11 favorites]


An incredibly talented performer and producer -- including on I Get Around, speaking of Tupac -- who also displayed astonishing commitment to a joke. He actually had professionals in the industry convinced that some of his personas were separate people, which has always cracked me up.

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posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 7:00 AM on April 23, 2021 [10 favorites]


For research I was recently googling about looking for Shock G. I found this article, which is now hard to search for with all the obits, but well worth reading: Shock G 'Fesses Up About Humpty Hump

To this day, those 60 or 70,000 people at that Summer Jam still argue about whether it was the real Humpty or not.


LOL. RIP.
posted by chavenet at 7:03 AM on April 23, 2021 [19 favorites]


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posted by The Great Big Mulp at 7:08 AM on April 23, 2021


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To this day, those 60 or 70,000 people at that Summer Jam still argue about whether it was the real Humpty or not.

Sadly I owned what I think was the cassette tape of sex packets and watched the video tons of times on Rap City or whatever B.E.T. was airing it on at the time, and yet still for years, I mean YEARS I didn't put it together that there was no Humpty Hump. I just chalked it up to a Chuck/Flav situation. Like legit Barack might have hit the national scene before I put it together.
posted by cashman at 7:25 AM on April 23, 2021 [8 favorites]


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posted by May Kasahara at 7:34 AM on April 23, 2021


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posted by cupcakeninja at 7:34 AM on April 23, 2021


growing up in rural Alberta, the vectors introducing rap and hip hop to 'the youth' were pretty limited when most everyone was deep into Iron Maiden or (name the line dance country hit of the day). A pair of Metis brothers almost single-handedly dragged us into the 'new music' with their mix-tapes, I remember the urgency of getting on the list of recipients, or borrowing from a friend to copy. This one cuts deep.
posted by elkevelvet at 7:38 AM on April 23, 2021 [7 favorites]


I wore out my cassette of Sex Packets, damn that was a good album. Reading about all of the different hats Shock G wore, just in DU, let alone the industry as a whole was a little surprising. That, and somewhere out there, there’s a couple in a Burger King bathroom, memorializing Humpty in the way he would have wanted.

If you’ll pardon me, I’m going to try to fit looptid into conversation at least once a day for the next month.
posted by Ghidorah at 7:48 AM on April 23, 2021 [4 favorites]


Rappers up in heaven, allow me to bump thee.

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posted by riverlife at 7:51 AM on April 23, 2021 [5 favorites]


?uestlove has a great tweet about how Fiona Apple and Shock G had a mutual admiration society. They met at some point and corresponded with each other.

Damn, this sucks.

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posted by droplet at 8:02 AM on April 23, 2021 [8 favorites]


RIP to the one who put the satin on your panties.

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posted by Bacon Bit at 8:13 AM on April 23, 2021 [1 favorite]


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DU swings.

Whenever I want to get into a good mood, Doowutchalike fits the bill.

No Nose Job takes the persona of Humpty Hump, and disses the external beautification of society. It's what's inside that counts.

RIP, Shock G.
posted by China Grover at 8:14 AM on April 23, 2021 [5 favorites]


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posted by TrialByMedia at 8:25 AM on April 23, 2021


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posted by Lyme Drop at 8:32 AM on April 23, 2021


Like legit Barack might have hit the national scene before I put it together.

Now that you mention it, we've never seen President Obama and Humpty Hump in the same room together, have we? Makes you think.

Behind those glasses, he could be anybody!
posted by jackbishop at 8:39 AM on April 23, 2021 [4 favorites]


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posted by vrakatar at 8:43 AM on April 23, 2021


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I vividly remember the Humpty Dance song (and music video), as my boyfriend at the time was obsessed with it.
posted by Annabelle74 at 9:11 AM on April 23, 2021


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posted by BlackLeotardFront at 9:46 AM on April 23, 2021


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posted by Joey Michaels at 10:03 AM on April 23, 2021


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posted by cmfletcher at 10:24 AM on April 23, 2021


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posted by badbobbycase at 10:25 AM on April 23, 2021


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posted by FallibleHuman at 11:08 AM on April 23, 2021


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posted by Phlegmco(tm) at 12:12 PM on April 23, 2021


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posted by lord_wolf at 12:17 PM on April 23, 2021


Aw man...

He was so so talented, but so underrated, maybe because of the Humpty Hump persona.

Check out his flow on this stanza from the criminally overlooked DU track Nuttin Nis Funky:

The definition of a funky rhyme master
Clevely put together but not necessarily sayin it faster
Ya see that style isn't hard at all
The object of the game is to have a ball y'all
And to see who can come the funkiest
Lot of MCs think it's just a speed contest
They wanna brag about the neighborhood, oh you wanna boast?
We come from different cities and we're coast to coast
posted by googly at 12:17 PM on April 23, 2021 [3 favorites]


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I was just thinking about him the other day.
posted by LobsterMitten at 12:18 PM on April 23, 2021


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posted by djseafood at 12:21 PM on April 23, 2021


shamelessly stolen from somewhere online:

Freaks of the Industry is just the most fucking filthy song . . . that is somehow not at all explicit.


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posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 12:23 PM on April 23, 2021 [1 favorite]


?uestlove has a great tweet about how Fiona Apple and Shock G had a mutual admiration society. They met at some point and corresponded with each other.

Now I have this one-act running in my head of Fiona and Shock bumping into each other in the plumbing aisle at Home Depot.
posted by Thorzdad at 12:29 PM on April 23, 2021 [1 favorite]


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posted by KillaSeal at 12:47 PM on April 23, 2021


My understanding is that he got busy in various places.

This is perhaps the best remembrance I've seen.

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posted by Sing Or Swim at 12:53 PM on April 23, 2021


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posted by hydra77 at 1:05 PM on April 23, 2021


My husband was a recording engineer before he retired and had an opportunity to work with Shock G back in the early 1990's because SG wanted to work with a vocoder and Honey Bunny's then-current studio had one. HB went on to meet and work with other members of Digital Underground after his initial work with SG.
posted by Lynsey at 1:06 PM on April 23, 2021 [8 favorites]


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posted by Leeway at 4:29 PM on April 23, 2021


I caught up to Digital Underground pretty late, and what amazed me most about the "Sex Packets" album wasn't the string of party bangers -- Humpty Hump was unavoidable for a few years in the 90s -- it was that woven between those jams was a fully realized Philip K Dickian futurism story about, basically, dependency on hallucinatory drugs, which in turn recontextualizes the numbers about parties and sex. And somehow manages to do all that without wrecking the mood. You want a rap album that's also a sci-fi concept album and is both more progressive and easier to dance to than Peter Gabriel era Genesis? Here you are. Absolute genius.
posted by ardgedee at 5:02 PM on April 23, 2021 [15 favorites]


It wasn't until I heard Humpty Dance on a large soundsystem in a too-small room that I realized its bassline is either a two-note chord, or has filter curve that gives it the same texture/harmonic beats as one. That is, either the thing, or a simulation of the thing, in either case virtually unheard of in dance or bass music.

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posted by rhizome at 5:25 PM on April 23, 2021




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posted by mikelynch at 6:26 PM on April 23, 2021


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posted by SisterHavana at 6:52 PM on April 23, 2021


I also wore out my Sex Packets cassette, and Sons of the P is a straight up classic. This sucks.
posted by 1adam12 at 7:31 PM on April 23, 2021


J.Period tweets a story about Shock G and Rakim that is very, very hip-hop. It's not a spoiler to say he ends it like this:
Hip Hop, we have an obligation to hold up our heroes in the proper light, and let them shine. Don't waste another day. Tell your heroes they are your heroes. Shout their names out loud.
posted by box at 8:41 AM on April 24, 2021 [6 favorites]


Thanks for linking that, box.
posted by praemunire at 9:30 AM on April 24, 2021


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posted by Mutant Lobsters from Riverhead at 6:14 PM on April 24, 2021


The giant Humpty Head from Digital Underground's tours has been resting in an Oakland parking garage for years. Apparently the Oakland Museum may be considering accessioning it.
posted by subocoyne at 12:59 PM on April 26, 2021 [2 favorites]


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