Happy 30th Anniversary to Digital Underground’s debut album Sex Packets, originally released March 26, 1990.
Throughout hip-hop history, countless rappers and crews have talked about “bringing the funk back,” but few have done it like Digital Underground. The group has been rap’s equivalent of Parliament-Funkadelic, a collective of artists who came together to create undeniably funky music.
With their debut album Sex Packets, released 30 years ago, the crew channels the spirit of George Clinton’s band of misfits, drawing inspiration from their high concept albums and eclectic casts of characters. They took the themes and feel of these records and expertly reinterpreted them into hip-hop grooves, built on a foundation of funk and soul. It’s a love letter to P-Funk that goes beyond just using the music as a sample source, capturing the essence of the Lollipop Man, Bootsy, Bernie, and the crew.
Sex Packets features tales of wet-dream inducing drugs, rapping blowfish, lengthy piano solos, tributes to old school hip-hop, a celebration of a fictional regional flesh-fair, and multiple appearances by one Edward Ellington Humphrey III a.k.a. Humpty Hump. The sprawling long-player is often wacky, frequently freaky, occasionally serious, but always funky.
Digital Underground boasts members from throughout the country, but the group’s undeniable leader and beating heart is Gregory “Shock G” Jacobs. Born in Brooklyn, Shock G bounced around the country with his family before settling in the Bay Area in 1986. A student of both funk and hip-hop music, he learned how to play piano and bass, and DJed on the side, becoming a potent one-man arsenal.
Shock G established Digital Underground after meeting Jimi “Chopmaster J” Dright. Shock had sketches for a pair of songs and recorded them on Chopmaster’s equipment. This led to Digital Underground releasing their first single on the LA-based Macola Records. The A-side, “Underwater Rimes,” was a goofy, humorous take on Parliament’s “Aqua Boogie,” complete with a verse from “MC Blowfish” (Shock G doing an aquatic Edward G. Robinson impression). Meanwhile, the B-side “Your Life’s a Cartoon” was a militant, pro-Black, “arrogant” (Shock G’s words) call-to-action.
However, Shock G soon discovered that groups like De La Soul and Public Enemy were occupying those lanes and earning a lot of success doing so. “Everything we tried, someone else did it, and usually better than us,” Shock G told Brian Coleman in Don’t Sweat the Technique. “So, we were like, ‘Fuck it, we’re going to be on some Parliament-Funkadelic shit,’ and do all kinds of different songs and wear all different types of hats.”
Tommy Boy signed Digital Underground off of the reasonable success of this first single, and Shock G put together the “group” proper after the fact. Its ranks included rapper Ron “Money B” Brooks, Dave “DJ Fuze” Elliot, and crooner Earl “Schmoovy Schmoov” Cook. Shock G was always the engine that drove the collective. He handled the album’s production, came up with the concepts, and worked to structure the tracks. He also came up with the album’s visual composition, drawing the cartoons that appeared in its liner notes and often on the covers.
Shock has said that he attempted to emulate Parliament’s unifying aesthetic and sense of fun. As he told Coleman, “You could always just feel the party that was taking place in the studio when those guys recorded albums, and that went into what we were doing as well.”
Much of Sex Packets is built around the group’s humorous sensibilities. The over-the-top sense of irreverence and fun that permeates the songs remain infectious; it’s what drew Tommy Boy Records to the group, and a large component of the album’s success.
“Doowutchyalike,” Sex Packets’ first single, did an excellent job in setting the tone for both the album and Digital Underground in general. It’s a bombastic, high-energy party song, filled with slightly ribald lyrics and madcap sensibilities. The song is very much a gumbo where Shock and company seemingly throw everything against the wall. All of it sticks.
In true Parliament-Funkadelic fashion, the album features an over eight-minute-long version of the song, complete with a premature fade out for radio purposes. The full version features the group biting rhymes from their favorite emcees, crooning lyrics to Parliament’s “Agony of Defeet,” and encouraging women to forget they have class. There’s also an extended piano solo by The Piano Man a.k.a. Shock G, where he replays famous piano samples used on popular hip-hop tracks.
“Doowutchyalike” also features the first appearance of Humpty Hump, though he was unnamed and not really fully-formed yet. Here he’s just Shock G doing a funny voice and channeling Slick Rick’s flow. Of course, Humpty Hump would become the group’s most beloved persona, with the album’s second single “The Humpty Dance” becoming their best-known song. The track was a bona fide pop smash, which was admittedly unexpected, because it’s essentially Shock G simply goofing around. Shock has said the Humpty character was inspired by Benny Hill, Groucho Marx, Morris Day, and one of his own uncles.
Still, “The Humpty Dance” itself is pure, goofy fun, as Humpty asks fat girls if they’re ticklish and brags about his proficiency in the 69 position. The song also successfully gave birth to a nominal dance, which sort of looked like a fit or a convulsion. The drums, repurposed from Sly and the Family Stone’s “Sing a Simple Song,” were sampled many, MANY times. As a whole, it’s one of the greatest songs to ever achieve crossover success.
Sex Packets is pretty high concept, and often story-heavy. The cassette-only track “Hip-Hop Doll” features Shock G finding his beautiful muse in an Atlantic City casino, her presence inspiring him to create and helping him win $10,000. Occasionally the crew engages in stylistic exhibitions, such as tracks like “The Way We Swing” and “Rhyming on the Funk.” The latter, a back-and-forth rhymefest by Shock and Money B, still feels futuristically funky.
True to Digital Underground’s Parliament-Funkadelic lineage, large portions of the album’s content have to do with sex. However, the group doesn’t fill Sex Packets with run-of-the-mill tales of sexual conquest. “Freaks of the Industry” feels borderline erotic, or even sensual. The beat is slow and slinky, with Shock G and Money B using “perv tone” to share their freaky proclivities over a sample of Donna Summer’s “Love to Love You.” Shock giving a multiple choice test on how to properly conduct his sexual encounter is particularly memorable.
“Gutfest ’89” isn’t nearly as enlightened, but it’s extremely ambitious in execution. The group invents an annual Oakland-based X-Rated circus, filled with naked women dancing in cages while the likes of The Who, Miles Davis, and EPMD perform live music. The crew go as far as to record and insert “live” news updates, featuring reporters covering the event. Over nearly nine minutes, Shock and Money B describe the open-air orgy in extreme detail, as they revel in the festivities while rapping on a sample of Johnny Pate’s “Shaft in Africa.”
Large portions of the album concern the “Sex Packets” concept itself, the brainchild of Shock G and Schmoovy Schmoov. Harkening back to a mid-1970s P-Funk album, the pair developed an idea around "G.S.R.A." (Genetic Suppression Relief Antidotes), a pill that, when taken, would give the consumer an ultra-realistic wet-dream.
The group certainly went the extra mile to sell the bit. The album’s liner notes feature an extensive dedication to “Dr. Earl Cook, Founder of the Cook Institute and inventor of the new safe-sex discovery” which is “a major breakthrough as an alternative to high-risk sex.” They went as far as to print up thousands of four-page pamphlets describing warnings against its use (stipulating that the Packets were developed by NASA at Stanford University), and clandestinely distributed them to hospitals and bathrooms of popular clubs.
Both the album’s title track and “Packet Man” tackle the concept through different approaches. “Sex Packets” is a nearly seven-and-a-half-minute soul infused jam, featuring the singing talents of Shock and Schmoov, extoling the virtues of the pill over a sample of Prince’s “She’s Always in My Hair” and vocals from Parliament’s “Motor Booty Affair.” It took a while for me to appreciate the song’s funk ballad approach, but I now recognize Shock G’s genius as a producer.
“Packet Man” is a more traditional hip-hop track, a duet between Humpty and Shock G, where Humpty plays the consumer, and Shock the illicit street dealer. Shock hustles his “bio-chemically compacted sexual affection” over a sample of Fred Wesley and the Horny Horns’ “Fourplay.” They paint a picture of a drug transaction, while creating a mini-infomercial for the apparently addictive substance.
The group tackles the actual drug epidemic proper on “Danger Zone.” Shock and homie Kenny K (R.I.P.) paint grim pictures of crack addiction, describing encounters with junkies wandering what seems like the avenues of hell. Shock uses his production skills to make a sample of Parliament’s “Flashlight” sound claustrophobic and ominous.
Two of the best songs on Sex Packets only appeared on the cassette version of the album. “A Tribute to the Early Days” is a dusty tribute to hip-hop’s mid-’80s era, with Shock G and Doc P trading old school routines over a sample of the extremely funky bassline from The Olympic Runners’ “Put the Music Where You Mouth.” Doc P’s verse about encountering a b-boy E.T. seems lifted from the best song that Newcleus never recorded.
Another cassette-only highlight is the Money B solo track “Sounds of the Underground.” It’s a noisy, rock-influenced jam, where Shock G does his best Bomb Squad interpretation behind the boards. The song is essentially a Raw Fusion track in the middle of a Digital Underground album; Money B and DJ Fuze had formed the Raw Fusion group before becoming a part of Digital Underground. They would release their own album, Live From the Styleetron (1991), a year and a half later.
Sex Packets was Digital Underground’s most successful album; it’s certified platinum and songs like “The Humpty Dance” and “Doowutchyalike” are iconic hip-hop singles. The group would continue to release creative and innovative projects, as well as serve as a talent incubator. Most know that Tupac Shakur got his start as a roadie for the group and would eventually get his time to shine on “Same Song” from the group’s subsequent This Is An EP Release (1991) project.
Digital Underground’s versatility on Sex Packets is still impressive to witness three decades later. Though most may remember Humpty Hump’s escapades in a Burger King bathroom, the imagination and funkiness that permeates this album is what gives the album its true staying power.
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