SHOCK G & MONEY B of DIGITAL UNDERGROUND Xplosive Magazine Interviews UNCUT - READ!!
Sup yall, I meant to post this sooner but it got lost in the shuffle of me gettin busy and gettin put in a folder and what not, but if you read Shock G and Money B's interviews in the Xplosive Magazine with the Oakland City 2 City, you need to know that they were a LOT LONGER than what got printed, and there is a lot of good info that fans would love to know, how DU got started, everything about 2Pac, etc.... so read on and enjoy.
SHOCK G INTERVIEW:
Digital Underground is one of the most well known and respected groups in Hiphop history. They are known for their signature comedic and freaky sex filled rhymes, always on a futuristic tip. They are also responsible for bringing Tupac Shakur to the mainstream forefront as a very young entertainer. Digital’s debut “Sex Packets” was a huge platinum hit worldwide that included the classic “The Humpty Dance.” I talked in great detail with D.U. front man Shock G about everything Digital, past and present.
Shock tells me that Digital Underground comes from all parts of Oakland. “Money B and Fuze were in North Oakland, me and Kenny K was in East Oakland, Schmoovy Schmoov and 2Pac had an apartment on Macarthur.” Through hearing about each other, they came together to form a group. “We heard that Fuze was one of the best DJ’s in the Bay. Fuze heard the first 12” that I did and thought that I was one of the hottest rappers in the Bay at the time, and he came with Money B. Our manager Atron, was from El Cerrito. ‘Pac was sleeping on Leila’s couch, and she said ‘this guy I went to school with manages Digital Undergound, I should give him a call concerning you.’ So Leila had Atron and I meet 2Pac, and she was just swearing by him because of the talent he had. So we wasn’t really a block, a school, or a click of homies that all went to the same school or lived in the same neighborhood that decided we wanted to be a group. We was all individually chasing it on our own. We all had our own reputations and stripes.”
The Digital Underground sound is not the typical Bay Area blueprint, it’s not the mobb / murder music, describe the D.U. sound for me. “Over. (laughs) That’s one way. The Digital Underground sound was a combination of me bringing my East Coast roots, I moved out here when I was 24. I was born in Brooklyn, grew up in Tampa, Jr. High School in Queens. Let’s see, one of Mon’s favorite rappers was $hort. Fuze’s favorite rappers was Special Ed and all these East Coast cats. So we all had our opinion of how Hiphop was supposed to go. And Schmoov, his favorite thing was P-Funk. P-Funk was my favorite thing too, but I also had rappers that I aspired towards. My favorite rappers when I came to Oakland were probably Rakim, Slick Rick, and EPMD. And then Jimmy’s favorite rapper, was Hammer, who’s from the ‘town.’ ‘Pac’s favorite rapper was Chuck D, he liked Chuck D and later on he started really liking Ren. Chuck D, Ren, then Scarface was the order of ‘Pac’s influences before he got out of Oakland. Richie Rich too. They was real tight. They was both the same age, in the streets, real rowdy. I was like seven years older than ‘Pac at the time. I had already started to like, put the gat down, pick up the things I’d rather not discuss. We started messing with exotic sh*t. You know how you just grow different as life goes on, but ‘Pac was just gettin’ into his prime ‘ra ra’ stage. It was definitely a ‘regionless’ sound, where you couldn’t pin it. You couldn’t say ‘that sounds like East Oakland, or Palo Alto, or those Vallejo cats, that’s L.A., that’s the South, that’s the East.’ It was a little bit of all of that. Everybody was fighting to get there opinion off.” Would you say it was kind of funny? “Hell yeah, ‘cause comedy in Hiphop was still a strong force back then, from Biz Markee to Flava Flav.” It worked for you, you got a name off the humor. “It wasn’t just the humor, what worked for us I believe was the music was ‘jazzy and thick,’ so there was a lot of people that felt like Digital Underground was the first Hiphop they could listen to, so that created some of our audience. It was three elements. The music was a little different. It was more musical than most rap records at the time. That became a trend later. Up until then it was either drum machines or loops. Humpty was damn near like the mind set of Benny Hill, Rodney Dangerfield, Morris Day, Bootsy Collins, just like humoristic funk brought to Hiphop. A lot of people were trying to be funny back then. Then the third element with Digital Underground was the sex. Especially when me and Money B would get together. I would say ¼ of the element that helped distinguish Digital Underground was the ‘techness,’ of it. ‘Cause the word ‘digital’ in the title made us feel we should lean toward modern. If it didn’t lean on the sex, humor, or the music, then it had that ‘techness.’ Even the way Digital Underground was written on the album covers, was trying to show that African American Brothers are in touch with technology. A fifth thing that we didn’t speak on was that there was hats getting changed and characters being played by people in the group. We was specifically trying to not go with the grain.”
In 1989 D.U. signed with Tommy Boy Records to release it’s debut full length album, “Sex Packets.” “Somebody sent or gave one of our 12” singles to Tommy Boy, and told them there was a group out here called Digital Underground, you might be interested. ‘Cause Tommy Boy puts out ‘different sh*t.’ They had De La, Queen Latifa, Stetsasonic. They heard the single, then we sent them a tape that had ‘Doowutchyalike’ on it, so that’s how that got started.”
“The Humpty Dance” was a huge hit off of that first album, around that time you guys were the biggest thing out here next to Hammer and $hort. “Na I wouldn’t say that. I know what you mean. We had what we had. We didn’t have the street like $hort did, $hort had Oakland sewed up even before ‘Pac did. We didn’t have the pop scene in Vegas like Hammer. We didn’t have the award shows and record sales and Grammys like Hammer did. But what we did have, we had the spaced out freaky party parliamentesque Hiphop that reached that ‘different Hiphop listener,’ usually people that didn’t only listen to Hiphop. We had a few of the odd balls and the misfits all over the world.” “Freaks Of The Industry” was also a big song, which did and still does get a lot of airplay, why was that never made into a single? “I don’t even know. I think we did a treatment for it, but Tommy Boy Records at the time felt like ‘any video to this is gonna be so nasty it probably wouldn’t get play.’ They was trippin’ ‘cause it said ‘take it out and put it in her butt.’ When that came out in ’90, you couldn’t say half of the sh*t that was being said in that song, so they said it was pointless to make a video, who’s gone play it? But in hindsight it was a beautiful thing because that’s what didn’t date that song.” It’s funny, to this day, not to down any other D.U. songs, but you don’t hear any others, but you still hear “Freaks Of The Industry” on the radio now. “Those other songs got that over play ‘cause they were singles, but ‘Freaks Of The Industry’ slowly rose by word of mouth. It was more on the radio in the mid ‘90’s to the late ‘90’s. Somebody told me that somebody from KMEL told Fuze that in 2000 ‘Freaks Of The Industry’ was the most requested record in the history of KMEL. Like ever, since the station started. In 2002, I was livin’ in Sac, and 102.5 had the top party jams of all time countdown, and ‘Freaks Of The Industry’ came in #2. Who knows now, the last couple years after 9/11 the climate has changed. Even now it’s hard for me to perform them songs ‘cause they’re so silly. They don’t relate to what’s going on in the world now. A lot of stuff that flew in the late ‘80’s and early ‘90’s wouldn’t fly now.”
Break this down for me, you still have a lot of people confused to this day, is Shock G and Humpty Hump the same person? “There’s three people, sometimes four, I should say five. Honestly, Greg Jacobs is usually the one who does the voice in the studio, however there’s a cat named Kent Racker who’s Greg Jacob’s brother who occasionally will do Humpty on stage visually. Sometimes Shock G will play both Humpty and Shock G in the video and we’ll do a split screen. Then sometimes Mike Webster used to be a stand in too, he’s an artist from East Oakland. He was Humpty a couple times on the cover of ‘BAM Magazine, and in a few of our publicity shots.’ There’s a cat named Devin, people teased him for looking like Humpty regularly. So we used to let him do it, ‘cause he had a little bit of a ‘Jew nose,’ and Humpty’s got the Black ‘Jew nose,’ which was something they just happened to have in a store up on Telegraph. Man, the first time we put that nose on, while we were shopping for the video, n**gas looked in the mirror and we had to sneak up to the mirror ‘cause it was so funny. It was so funny I just knew it would make other people laugh. And sure enough people were like ‘who is this nut, who is this crazy muthaf**ka on t.v?’ If this was television I wouldn’t speak on it that thoroughly, but I felt like y’all deserve some truth. Humpty is about five different people. But you know who’s holdin’ that voice down in the studio.”
Sup yall, I meant to post this sooner but it got lost in the shuffle of me gettin busy and gettin put in a folder and what not, but if you read Shock G and Money B's interviews in the Xplosive Magazine with the Oakland City 2 City, you need to know that they were a LOT LONGER than what got printed, and there is a lot of good info that fans would love to know, how DU got started, everything about 2Pac, etc.... so read on and enjoy.
SHOCK G INTERVIEW:
Digital Underground is one of the most well known and respected groups in Hiphop history. They are known for their signature comedic and freaky sex filled rhymes, always on a futuristic tip. They are also responsible for bringing Tupac Shakur to the mainstream forefront as a very young entertainer. Digital’s debut “Sex Packets” was a huge platinum hit worldwide that included the classic “The Humpty Dance.” I talked in great detail with D.U. front man Shock G about everything Digital, past and present.
Shock tells me that Digital Underground comes from all parts of Oakland. “Money B and Fuze were in North Oakland, me and Kenny K was in East Oakland, Schmoovy Schmoov and 2Pac had an apartment on Macarthur.” Through hearing about each other, they came together to form a group. “We heard that Fuze was one of the best DJ’s in the Bay. Fuze heard the first 12” that I did and thought that I was one of the hottest rappers in the Bay at the time, and he came with Money B. Our manager Atron, was from El Cerrito. ‘Pac was sleeping on Leila’s couch, and she said ‘this guy I went to school with manages Digital Undergound, I should give him a call concerning you.’ So Leila had Atron and I meet 2Pac, and she was just swearing by him because of the talent he had. So we wasn’t really a block, a school, or a click of homies that all went to the same school or lived in the same neighborhood that decided we wanted to be a group. We was all individually chasing it on our own. We all had our own reputations and stripes.”
The Digital Underground sound is not the typical Bay Area blueprint, it’s not the mobb / murder music, describe the D.U. sound for me. “Over. (laughs) That’s one way. The Digital Underground sound was a combination of me bringing my East Coast roots, I moved out here when I was 24. I was born in Brooklyn, grew up in Tampa, Jr. High School in Queens. Let’s see, one of Mon’s favorite rappers was $hort. Fuze’s favorite rappers was Special Ed and all these East Coast cats. So we all had our opinion of how Hiphop was supposed to go. And Schmoov, his favorite thing was P-Funk. P-Funk was my favorite thing too, but I also had rappers that I aspired towards. My favorite rappers when I came to Oakland were probably Rakim, Slick Rick, and EPMD. And then Jimmy’s favorite rapper, was Hammer, who’s from the ‘town.’ ‘Pac’s favorite rapper was Chuck D, he liked Chuck D and later on he started really liking Ren. Chuck D, Ren, then Scarface was the order of ‘Pac’s influences before he got out of Oakland. Richie Rich too. They was real tight. They was both the same age, in the streets, real rowdy. I was like seven years older than ‘Pac at the time. I had already started to like, put the gat down, pick up the things I’d rather not discuss. We started messing with exotic sh*t. You know how you just grow different as life goes on, but ‘Pac was just gettin’ into his prime ‘ra ra’ stage. It was definitely a ‘regionless’ sound, where you couldn’t pin it. You couldn’t say ‘that sounds like East Oakland, or Palo Alto, or those Vallejo cats, that’s L.A., that’s the South, that’s the East.’ It was a little bit of all of that. Everybody was fighting to get there opinion off.” Would you say it was kind of funny? “Hell yeah, ‘cause comedy in Hiphop was still a strong force back then, from Biz Markee to Flava Flav.” It worked for you, you got a name off the humor. “It wasn’t just the humor, what worked for us I believe was the music was ‘jazzy and thick,’ so there was a lot of people that felt like Digital Underground was the first Hiphop they could listen to, so that created some of our audience. It was three elements. The music was a little different. It was more musical than most rap records at the time. That became a trend later. Up until then it was either drum machines or loops. Humpty was damn near like the mind set of Benny Hill, Rodney Dangerfield, Morris Day, Bootsy Collins, just like humoristic funk brought to Hiphop. A lot of people were trying to be funny back then. Then the third element with Digital Underground was the sex. Especially when me and Money B would get together. I would say ¼ of the element that helped distinguish Digital Underground was the ‘techness,’ of it. ‘Cause the word ‘digital’ in the title made us feel we should lean toward modern. If it didn’t lean on the sex, humor, or the music, then it had that ‘techness.’ Even the way Digital Underground was written on the album covers, was trying to show that African American Brothers are in touch with technology. A fifth thing that we didn’t speak on was that there was hats getting changed and characters being played by people in the group. We was specifically trying to not go with the grain.”
In 1989 D.U. signed with Tommy Boy Records to release it’s debut full length album, “Sex Packets.” “Somebody sent or gave one of our 12” singles to Tommy Boy, and told them there was a group out here called Digital Underground, you might be interested. ‘Cause Tommy Boy puts out ‘different sh*t.’ They had De La, Queen Latifa, Stetsasonic. They heard the single, then we sent them a tape that had ‘Doowutchyalike’ on it, so that’s how that got started.”
“The Humpty Dance” was a huge hit off of that first album, around that time you guys were the biggest thing out here next to Hammer and $hort. “Na I wouldn’t say that. I know what you mean. We had what we had. We didn’t have the street like $hort did, $hort had Oakland sewed up even before ‘Pac did. We didn’t have the pop scene in Vegas like Hammer. We didn’t have the award shows and record sales and Grammys like Hammer did. But what we did have, we had the spaced out freaky party parliamentesque Hiphop that reached that ‘different Hiphop listener,’ usually people that didn’t only listen to Hiphop. We had a few of the odd balls and the misfits all over the world.” “Freaks Of The Industry” was also a big song, which did and still does get a lot of airplay, why was that never made into a single? “I don’t even know. I think we did a treatment for it, but Tommy Boy Records at the time felt like ‘any video to this is gonna be so nasty it probably wouldn’t get play.’ They was trippin’ ‘cause it said ‘take it out and put it in her butt.’ When that came out in ’90, you couldn’t say half of the sh*t that was being said in that song, so they said it was pointless to make a video, who’s gone play it? But in hindsight it was a beautiful thing because that’s what didn’t date that song.” It’s funny, to this day, not to down any other D.U. songs, but you don’t hear any others, but you still hear “Freaks Of The Industry” on the radio now. “Those other songs got that over play ‘cause they were singles, but ‘Freaks Of The Industry’ slowly rose by word of mouth. It was more on the radio in the mid ‘90’s to the late ‘90’s. Somebody told me that somebody from KMEL told Fuze that in 2000 ‘Freaks Of The Industry’ was the most requested record in the history of KMEL. Like ever, since the station started. In 2002, I was livin’ in Sac, and 102.5 had the top party jams of all time countdown, and ‘Freaks Of The Industry’ came in #2. Who knows now, the last couple years after 9/11 the climate has changed. Even now it’s hard for me to perform them songs ‘cause they’re so silly. They don’t relate to what’s going on in the world now. A lot of stuff that flew in the late ‘80’s and early ‘90’s wouldn’t fly now.”
Break this down for me, you still have a lot of people confused to this day, is Shock G and Humpty Hump the same person? “There’s three people, sometimes four, I should say five. Honestly, Greg Jacobs is usually the one who does the voice in the studio, however there’s a cat named Kent Racker who’s Greg Jacob’s brother who occasionally will do Humpty on stage visually. Sometimes Shock G will play both Humpty and Shock G in the video and we’ll do a split screen. Then sometimes Mike Webster used to be a stand in too, he’s an artist from East Oakland. He was Humpty a couple times on the cover of ‘BAM Magazine, and in a few of our publicity shots.’ There’s a cat named Devin, people teased him for looking like Humpty regularly. So we used to let him do it, ‘cause he had a little bit of a ‘Jew nose,’ and Humpty’s got the Black ‘Jew nose,’ which was something they just happened to have in a store up on Telegraph. Man, the first time we put that nose on, while we were shopping for the video, n**gas looked in the mirror and we had to sneak up to the mirror ‘cause it was so funny. It was so funny I just knew it would make other people laugh. And sure enough people were like ‘who is this nut, who is this crazy muthaf**ka on t.v?’ If this was television I wouldn’t speak on it that thoroughly, but I felt like y’all deserve some truth. Humpty is about five different people. But you know who’s holdin’ that voice down in the studio.”
