Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
America, feel free to get busy in a Burger King bathroom this weekend, because Humpty Hump would want you to. It was in his guise as the outsized, Groucho-glasses-wearing, sometimes ermine took-donning Humpty that Greg “Shock G” Jacobs found the most success, when in 1990 the hilarious woozy funk/rap hybrid “The Humpty Dance” energized dance floors, trunk-rattling city park gatherings, and suburban house parties alike in a unifying manner no hip-hop single had yet managed to do. And it endures: spin “Humpty Dance” at a wedding reception, and watch all the squares let their backbones slip.
Jacobs died yesterday, his family announced; he was 57. A cause of death was not confirmed.
As word of Shock G’s passing spread on Twitter, the influence his work had on music industry figures and fans alike became apparent. “Aw man. Thank you SHOCK G,” tweeted El-P of Run the Jewels. “Coolest, most down to earth icon/hero of mine I’ve ever had the pleasure to meet. A kind and pure musical genius.” Parliament bassist Bootsy Collins, a key influence on Shock G and his band Digital Underground, paid tribute as well. “Oh no, not Shock G (and his alter ego Humpty Hump.) He helped keep P Funk alive!”
As adept at building undeniable party movers like the early single “Doowutchyalike” as he was preserving and promoting the comic spirit that informed the earliest days of hip-hop (a New York City scene Jacobs was immersed in while living in The Bronx as a young man), Shock G had by the late 1980s gathered his influences and motivations together with the formation of Digital Underground in Oakland, California in 1988. By 1990 and the Sex Packets album, a little known MC named Tupac Shakur had joined the group, and Shock G went on to co-produce his debut full-length, 2Pacalypse Now.
With “The Humpty Dance” burning up the charts and Digital Underground’s appearances on “Arsenio” and MTV solidifying his clown prince presence with the Humpty alter ego, the cusp of 1990 was really Shock G’s oyster. Enter 1991, and the Dan Aykroyd-directed, Chevy Chase and Demi Moore-starring black comedy Nothing but Trouble, where Shock and his bandmates in Digital Underground, appearing as themselves, perform a rap number for the court in order to skate on a speeding ticket. It makes one wonder what else Humpty and the boys could’ve gotten away with during that era. Maybe it should’ve been Humpty living in that drug house in Point Break, instead of Anthony Kiedis; maybe he could’ve been Nick Nolte’s neighbor in Martin Scorsese’s Cape Fear? Point is, “The Humpty Dance” overtook the early ‘90’s like no other party song, and it remains the the greatest representation of a true hip-hop talent, gone too soon. Let’s get stupid!
