Thread by @murphdogg29

“I’m sorry,” he says with a quiver in his voice. "But I just get so emotional thinking about the past. I’m so happy that people are finally paying attention to my work,"- My 2010 VIBE interview with Shock G. Rest In Power to hip-hop's UNSUNG music man.
fatcapmagazine.blogspot.com/2010/12/shock-…

"By 1980, I started really getting into P-Funk. I was 16. At the same time. I had already lived in New York when Hip Hop was starting.I left NYC in ’78, so I was in that younger crowd of hip-hop fans.I was there for the DJ’s in the park at the jams."--Shock G

"When we first started D.U., we were trying to be like what Public Enemy, but P.E. was way better than us [laughs]. Me and my partner Kenny K were Stokely Carmichael fanatics. The way we were thinking was, 'We are going to have to bomb a courthouse one day [laughs]."--Shock G.

"So in hindsight, I’m glad music saved me from being
that hardcore revolutionary because Funkadelic’s message was always, ‘Free your mind and your ass will follow.’ I adapted that philosophy for Digital Underground
from (P-Funk band leader) George [Clinton]."--Shock G.

"The ‘Doowutchyalike’ video was also Humpty Hump’s first appearance. He was a slow, piece-by-piece evolution. It started with me imitating that cartoon singing Warner Bros. frog. There was also some Bootsy, Rodney Dangerfield, Morris Day and Slick Rick thrown in."-Shock G.

"This store in Berkley had some bargain bin noses that were 99 cents each. One was a sharp nose, one was a pig nose and the others were some odd, brown Groucho Marx noses. I put it on and it was just so fucking hilarious to me. That was the birth of Humpy Hump."-Shock G.

"Once ‘Doowutchyalike’ sold about 90,000 copies, Tommy Boy told us to get an album together. We signed with them for about $60 grand which was cool to us because we finished what would become Sex Packets in two weeks for about $20 grand.”-Shock G.

"I was a self-taught musician on piano...at around 23, I started to do less MCing and more playing. Playing instruments was something you didn’t see [a lot] in hip-hop. And on top of that, I was a huge Prince fan. I loved that he did it all in the studio by himself."-Shock G.

“Sex Packets didn’t feel like 100 percent hip-hop. It felt like some psychedelic, space funk. It felt like we were doing what P-Funk or Prince would be doing had they used samplers...."-Shock G.

"Smooth, one of the singers in the group, he was into P-Funk and Prince just like me. Smooth was the cat singing the line on ‘Sex Packets’, ‘I'm just feeling what you love/And I'm givin’ til’ you need…’ He was a suit and tie guy working at MCI making a lot of money."-Shock G.

"Smooth would come to the studio and be down and help us out, but he didn’t really take us seriously because we were doing that rap fad he heard about. Meanwhile, in his briefcase he has an actual plan to create sex packets. The nigga was nuts [laughs]."-Shock G.

"So Fuze showed up on the strength of liking ‘Life’s a Cartoon’ and my rhyming, which he thought was good. He does this showcase for us and Tommy Boy are like, ‘Hey, you guys want to open up for EPMD and Queen Latifah in Germany?’ We were like, ‘Hell yeah!’"-Shock G.

"That’s how Money B. joined D.U. Before those two were Raw Fusion they were known as MGM. Money B was there to do the extra vocals with me on ‘Doowutchyalike’ and he was great. Fuze put the scratches on it. Once we went on tour together that bonded us all."-Shock G.

"The moment when we knew Sex Packets was a hit was after we dropped ‘The Humpty Dance.’ We experienced it when we got off the plane coming from our first tour in Europe. We left as frogs but we came back as princes...."-Shock G.

"Didn’t even think it was going to be a hit. Some people in D.U. was like...I don't know Shock. It’s kind of funky sounding, but is that hip-hop?’ When we got off that plane the employees at the airport were like, ‘Oh, that’s Digital Underground,’ running up to US!"-Shock G.

"New York was on ‘The Humpty Dance’ because the bass coming out of the cars were killing people on the streets. Suddenly, ‘The Humpty Dance’ was all you heard when cars went by; the bass was just crazy. It was also one of the biggest dance songs of that year."--Shock G.

"When we performed ‘The Humpty Dance’ onstage at the Coliseum on tour with Public Enemy and LL Cool J, the whole dome would stand up and rap the entire song with us for all three verses! They knew all the lyrics and everybody would do the Humpty dance...."--Shock G.

"People actually thought Humpty was a real person. We even had a Humpty double, which fooled a lot [of our own peers]. That Humpty dance is so goofy [laughs]. It wasn’t even a real dance; it really came from Money B’s little brother."--Shock G.

"When we saw people on Arsenio and other rap groups doing the Humpty Dance from Scoop, Scraps and Big Daddy Kane to Tone Loc’s dancers at awards shows, we were like, ‘Wow…people are treating this like a real dance.’ I was just trying to imitate my uncle Tony Red."--Shock G.

"We ended up going platinum with Sex Packets. It was all in the life. Queen Latifah would tell me that ‘Sex Packets’ was one of her favorite songs and that she had it on her lovemaking R&B tape next to Al B Sure...."--Shock G.

"Monica Lynch (then President of Tommy Boy) said to me, ‘I hope you don’t go down that path of some of the other artists on the label.' They got really big headed after blowing up. But after Sex Packets, I started to go down that same path..."-Shock G.

"[I]was gassed into thinking that I was the sole reason for Digital Underground’s success. We just thought ‘The Humpty Dance’ was how songs go when you have a huge pop hit. Then you realize that’s not how it happens. We didn’t have many more of those..."-Shock G.

"‘Same Song’ was originally featured in this Dan Aykroyd movie called Nothing But Trouble. This was also 2Pac’s introduction to the public. There’s one misconception that I want to clear up. Pac was never a Digital Underground dancer. He was our roadie."--Shock G.

"And out of all the roadies we ever had, he was the best. You never lost anything on [2Pac's] watch. The only thing you could say about Pac was how wild he was. It was later that he started performing onstage with us...."-Shock G.

"Pac would probably get us arrested in every other city because he would pop shit at the police quick [laughs]. Sometimes he would get us in unnecessary fights. He would never back down even if he were in the wrong...."-Shock G.

"Our first meeting with 2Pac was set up through Antron. He wanted me to be the ears for him and tell him whether or not he should sign Pac. From there, 2Pac became our label mate. He had presence when he rhymed...."- Shock G.

"[Pac] did some dancing onstage, but he was mainly our roadie. At first I didn’t want to disrespect him because I knew Pac was a serious MC. I didn’t want to ask him to dance... I thought it was beneath him, but 2Pac calls me back like, ‘Hell yeah, nigga…I’ll do that!" Shock G.

"We all felt like D.U. was a humorist band and Pac’s message was very serious. But we had already been around the world with Pac on tour and he was ripping up the after parties when we passed the mic around. So we asked him to be on ‘Same Song.'’-Shock G.

"Even my mother saw there was something special inside Pac. She walked over to me during the ‘Same Song’ video shoot and asked, ‘Gregory, who is that right there?’ I’m like, ‘Oh, that’s 2Pac.’ And she said, ‘Watch him…he has that quality...he looks like he’s a star.'"-Shock G.

“When we get to the second album, me, Marlon and Smooth were playing with the possibility that George Clinton was down to work with us! We actually heard that George said ‘The Humpty Dance’ was hot, which was just crazy to us!"-Shock G.

"After we received the phone call that George was down, we came up with the Sons of The P concept, But we had to get George to certify ‘Sons of The P.’ So we sent George some of the stuff we were working on. We go to meet him in Detroit…this is our God, our guru."-Shock G.

"George walks in the studio in the middle of the summer looking like a vagrant homeless person that crawled out from under a bridge [laughs]. But when George walked in and said, ‘What’s up, man?’ you could just see the room transform. We were in the Mothership!"--Shock G.

"There’s something about how down to earth George is. George is the bottom cat…His vibe is so good and he brings the best out of people. George was even telling me about what happened with Rakim in his settlement with Eric B. and I didn’t even know they had beef! "-Shock G.

"George never ran out of coke! But I kept my mind on what we were there to do. We didn’t have to ask George to do much on ‘Sons of The P.’ He gave us way more stuff than we needed. He was amazing. We did gold on Sons of the P, which wasn’t bad...."-Shock G.

"But I started to calculate that Humpty formula on such songs as No Nose Job, Kiss You Back and on the next album with The Return of The Crazy One. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as good. You could hear it. That’s when I realized that I didn’t know what I did on Sex Packets."-Shock G.

"But we already started to see some things from Tommy Boy. When we picked ‘Kiss You Back’ as the first single they asked us, ‘How come Humpty isn’t on it? Can he just be on the song?’ So the compromise was that I put him on the song somehow."-Shock G.

"Then we wanted to do a video for ‘Sons of The P’ with George in it and Tommy Boy was like, ‘Well, that’s not really hip-hop.’ And I’m telling them, ‘Since when have we’ve only been hip-hop???’ It was becoming a struggle.”-Shock G.

“We were working on 2Pac’s [debut] album a whole year before he even went on tour with us. So after we finished it we started shopping Pac to the labels. We played it to for Tommy Boy a couple of times but they wanted to hear more music."--Shock G.

"[Tommy Boy] would tell us, ‘Well, we are looking at the charts and conscious stuff like Public Enemy and X-Clan is on the decline. Stuff that’s street and pimpish is on the upswing.’ To Tommy Boy if it was thuggish or outlaw, it was in."-Shock G.

"We were like fuck it…we just kept shopping Pac to other labels. But soon as ‘Same Song’ came out he got a few calls from the labels. When I was doing those beats on 2Pacalypse Now, I was kind of [giving a nod] to Public Enemy. I was going for a really hard sound."--Shock G.

“We were being warned by everybody. Every time we would see Stetsasonic and other artists on Tommy Boy they would tell us, ‘Man, Tom (Tom Silverman, the founder of Tommy Boy) is shady…watch him.'"-Shock G.

"We were getting paid. But by the time we did Sons of The P, Tommy Boy was sending songs back to us because there wasn’t enough Humpty on the album. We kept telling them that we didn’t want to tell the same joke over and over."-Shock G.

"But Tommy Boy felt it was our bread and butter. At one point they interrupted me while I was talking and said, ‘Shock, listen…We want some funny Humpty songs or you and Money B on some sex shit…that’s what Digital Underground is and that’s what you are good at…'"-Shock G.

"'Write some songs about female body parts like Sir Mix-a-Lot.’ They were telling us to make songs like Baby Got Back and Put ‘Em On The Glass. That’s when we knew we had to go [laughs]. We told the label we were doing a political song with Pac ("Wussup Wit The Luv")."-Shock G

"[Tommy Boy] were really starting to piss us off. We were fighting for our lives. You have a guy in your group who doubles as three people who are believed to be real. How about promoting that?"--Shock G.

"Or how about the fact that we were the first rap group to go get George Clinton and work with him and the fact that we were influential in giving Dr. Dre the confidence to do the funk thing hard? Because while he loved P-Funk in his heart, Dre didn’t think it was hip-hop yet."

"EPMD sampled a P-Funk song or two, but they got off of it. We were the first people to say, ‘George is the next James Brown catalogue…just watch!’ We felt like all of these things were being overlooked by Tommy Boy. We knew we were more than just Humpty Hump."-Shock G.

"I liked 'Return of The Crazy One'...We knew we were going to be out of there as a pop group, so we sat down and thought, How can we make a record that our fans would still like, but Tommy Boy would hate? [laughs] ‘Return of The Crazy One’ was too nasty to be a big hit." Shock G.

"The video was in the top 10 on the Playboy Channel, but it didn’t do that well on the other video channels because they wanted us to edit it. BET told us there was too much ass and titties. When The Body-Hat Syndrome didn’t do so well, Tommy Boy released us..."-Shock G.

"But that was okay because we wanted out. It wasn’t just us. Queen Latifah wanted out so bad. She got on Motown and finally did well. Tommy Boy, bless their hearts, was always a singles label. They really didn’t develop artists."--Shock G.

“I never knew that 2Pac wanted that Digital Underground sound. I was surprised when he told me because I always thought of Pac as more aggressive. That’s how ‘I Get Around’ came about."--Shock G.

"Before we recorded ‘I Get Around,’ it was a four-track beat that was going around our camp. People would just freestyle over it. Every time we would play it people would say, ‘Damn, that shit sounds good!’ Meanwhile, I was working on Saafir’s album..."--Shock G.

"When [Saafir] heard the song he walked up to me and said, ‘Man, I would murder this track…I know you ain’t going to give this to Pac…I know you are going to keep it for Digital Underground.’"--Shock G.

"At the time, I was also set to be the person who scored this reality show about living on the streets. One of the songs I played for them was ‘I Get Around’ but after I played them the beat in the reality show people were like, ‘We don’t know…it’s kind of pretty.’"-Shock G.

"In fact, there were other people who turned that song down! So right now I’m thinking it’s not even that big of a deal. Then Pac calls and tells me to send him some tracks for [Strictly 4 My NIGGAZ]."--Shock G.

"I put the beat to ‘I Get Around’ on the tape first because I thought it was the best...But I didn’t think Pac would like it. I had some more rougher beats that I thought would fit him better. Later, I got a voice message from Pac saying, ‘Yes nigga…yes!'"-Shock G.

"We knew ‘I Get Around’ was going to be a hit just from the video shoot. We had done four years worth of videos by then, but everyone on the set was going crazy when they heard the song for the first time."-Shock G.

"Every musician on the set was walking up to me, ‘Dog, what did you use on this song? Is that a sample?’ I started it off by sampling Roger’s [‘Computer Love’]…that whole part where it goes, ‘You know I get around….’"-Shock G.

"That was the one to me because ['I Get Around'] had that fucking harmony. I just looped up that sample, added the transformer, and touched a few piano chords over it.This was all before I added the drums. I always do my drums the same way."-Shock G.

"I finish everything else but the drums to see how everything moves…that’s how I figure out where to put the kick and the snare. During the ‘I Get Around’ session Pac laid down his verses first. He left a hole on the track and told Money B and me to write our verse."-Shock G.

"I was drained, so I told Pac I was going to come back tomorrow and lay down my verse. But Pac was like, ‘I can’t wait…they are mastering my album tomorrow…it has to be done tonight.’"--Shock G.

"So Pac picks up a pad, walks away from me and he looks up in the air and writes some lines and looks up and writes a few more lines. I swear, less than two minutes he had my part on ‘I Get Around’ written. And it was dope!"-Shock G.

"I was a little hesitant because back then you didn’t say other people’s rhymes…you wrote your own rhymes. And at the time I was engaged to this girl Melissa who I later married. So how was I going to be the freak of the industry on this one?"-Shock G.

"All that sex shit I was talking on the first two or three records was because I was single. I was chasing p---y. Now I’m in love and I have a wife on the way. I’m listening to Pac’s own verse and I’m like, ‘Damn, I don’t want to disrespect Melissa.’"-Shock G.

"Pac knew that. He had already thought about Melissa for me with that line, ‘Because I’m a freak doesn’t mean we can hit the sheets…’ Pac respected my relationship. When people come up to me they always say the satin in the panties line...."-Shock G.

"I had one of the best in the business writing for me. If you had to have a ghostwriter why not 2Pac? And he would always hit me off with $30 G per track. It was lovely. I wasn’t in the bathrooms when all the sex was jumping off during the shooting of ‘I Get Around.'"-Shock G.

"Pac was on another level [laughs]. When we were on tour in Europe everyone would bring used condoms to the road managers’ room. Whoever had the most at the end of the tour got a pot of money. Everybody who didn’t fuck for that night had to put $100 in the pot.-Shock G.

"So over the course of the tour that pot was getting big. It was $4 grand by the end of the tour. And Pac and Money B would always win it [laughs]. Tommy Boy was pissed when they heard ‘I Get Around.’ They were like, ‘Shock…how could you give that track away?’-Shock G.

“The Luniz, based on us doing ‘I Get Around’ with ‘Pac, called me to produce a few songs on their album [Operation Stackola]. But one of the coolest things was appearing on [the remix to ‘I Got 5 On It’]."--Shock G.

"I felt good as a producer…but I didn’t know what to talk about. I played out Humpty Hump, so I was looking for an identity as an artist. But my skills were still there. And the way the Luniz asked me was humbling."-Shock G.

"‘We need you on this one Shock…We need all the Bay Area ballers, man.’ That gave me the confidence to write something. I’m in studio writing and the Luniz are in there with me and I’m bouncing ideas off of Knumskull."-Shock G.

"I knew I was going to get ripped a new asshole when it came to that speed rapping like E-40/Spice-1 was doing [laughs]. So I was like, ‘Yo, I’m going to sound like I’m in slow motion…so let me give my shit a melody.’ That’s why I incorporated the ‘I Get Around’ line."Shock G.

“I sent three good songs to Pac for the Me Against The World album. The first one was what turned out to be Digital Underground’s ‘Oregano Flow,’ the second was ‘So Many Tears’ and the third one was a beat I can’t remember."-Shock G.

"So Pac calls me back in Oakland and he’s like, ‘I like the first one and the fourth one.’ And I’m puzzled because I only sent three tracks. I thought he was fucking with me. I flew up to LA to meet with Pac about the songs. I’m like, ‘There is no fourth beat!"-Shock G.

"…I searched and searched.’ He played the tape for me and when the third beat ran out some old, dusty shit that I had taped over and didn’t want no one to hear came on. He’s like, ‘This one, nigga!’ It was that ‘Fuck The World’ beat, which was really a Prince remake."-Shock G.

"We had all that Minneapolis shit in it. But we ended up not doing it because nobody felt the beat but me. But Pac loved it. The original line was: ‘Something Minneapolis said…’ Pac let us keep some of those background vocals on there. "-Shock G.

"We later changed the line to ‘They try to say that I don’t care…’ ‘So Many Tears’ is another one that wasn’t made with Pac in mind. Stevie Wonder’s ‘That Girl’ was one of my favorite songs, so I knew at some point I was going to sample it."-Shock G.

"You can hear Stevie’s texture on ‘So Many Tears.' I didn’t jack the bassline…I wrote my own chords. But I used that metallic texture of ‘That Girl.’ Pac was just weird and special that way. He was trying to change the world through music."-Shock G.

"People telling me, ‘I’ve been shot more than Pac and been to jail…I’m a real thug…’ I just tell them that’s not why we fucked with Pac. ‘ All that later shit that later happened was just Suge Knight’s influence. That wasn’t the Pac I knew."-Shock G.

"At the time I did [the ‘Love Sign’ remix] for Prince I had yet to meet him. That came later. But I have to tell this story. While I’m in New York working on D.U.’s Who Got The Gravy people are coming up to me going, ‘Yo, good to see you on that song with Prince.’"-Shock G.

"So I would turn around and look at whoever I was with and say, ‘I ain’t never did no song with Prince…’ Then I get to the studio and the engineer is like, ‘I like the work you did on that Crystal Ball album with Prince.’ I’m like, ‘Why does everybody keep saying that?" Shock G.

"'I never did a song with Prince.’ So I went to the store and sure enough a remix for ‘Love Sign’ produced by Shock G was on there. I thought I took too much ecstasy and acid because I couldn’t remember doing that song [laughs]."-Shock G.

"'How did I meet Prince and not remember that session???' I thought I was losing my mind. But you know what it was? It was a remix that Prince’s Paisley Park label hired us to do with Nona Gaye. This was in 1993 and it was a song that Prince wrote for her."-Shock G.

"We muted Prince’s lead vocal tracks and added our tracks on there and that was it. But when we sent the track back to Prince it never came out..we just thought it was the closest we would ever get to Prince like, ‘Wow, we touched the same tape that Prince touched.’"-Shock G.

"After six years, I forgot about that shit. Prince left the track exactly how we sent it to him. I missed the release party for that album, but while I was in New York we got sent an invite to go to another Prince album release party in Soho."-Shock G.

"[Prince] had Q Tip on the turntables; everybody was in the house. They thought because I had this new Digital Underground single called Wind Me Up that I should go to the party as Humpty. I bought a couple of girls with me and had a limo…it was a big publicity thing."-Shock G.

" I’m in the VIP area late into the party and Prince comes walking through. He’s wearing the high heels and this crazy red suit that the Joker would have on! You can tell he was in the room because everybody’s eyes were lighting up."-Shock G.

"Back then the thinking was if you wanted to talk to Prince you had to wait for him to talk to you because you might run him away, so you knew not to fuck with him. I’m standing there as Humpty, so I have to talk like Humpty."-Shock G.

"I got Stevie Wonder cracking up [laughs]. And Prince walks up and he speaks to me! He asked me how I liked the album and I was like, ‘Man, I loved that song ‘Don’t Play Me’ and ‘Dream Factory’ swings hard…it’s some of the hardest shit ever made.’"-Shock G.

"[Prince] was like, ‘Yeah…that was cool how the groove fit right in there.’ I talked to Prince in the flesh!”--Shock G.

“So, I’m in New York mixing Who Got The Gravy working with KRS-One, Biz Markie…even Big Pun was fucking with us. I just remember everyone telling me, ‘Yo fuck that, Shock…We are going to help you get back on!’ The way KRS showed up to the studio was so mind blowing..."-Shock G.

"Just like George, [KRS] gave us way more songs than we needed. We had a big budget…he didn’t ask for a lot of money... I didn’t even think KRS would show up. I didn’t think he would mess with silly ass Digital Underground. This is the mighty KRS-One. "-Shock G.

"And [KRS] was like, ‘What??? I work with anything conscious. When you said ‘Yo fat girl, come here are you ticklish on ‘The Humpty Dance,’ that was telling everybody to join the party!’ I never thought of it that way, but he was right."-Shock G.

"KRS goes into the booth and proceeds to lay so many things. When it got to three songs I was like, ‘Kris…I don’t know if I can afford much more than $10 grand…’ And he goes, ‘What? Shock, I’m not here for that…I’m here to make your album tight."-Shock G.

"That’s what hip-hop is about.’ I was just baffled by that. I was so used to so many Cali cats hustling money for sessions. But I should have known. It was the same thing with Big Pun…he was more thugged out than we were. So I didn’t think he was going to come..."-Shock G.

"But [Pun] was like, ‘Come on man…you were one of the first persons to give props to Puerto Ricans.’ Pun’s food showed up to the studio first [laughs]. Nothing but big plates of Spanish food. It was a trip."-Shock G.

"I used to have nightmares that I would have a heart attack with the Humpty nose on and they were going to bury me and put Humpty Hump on my tombstone [laughs]. Because shit like that happens. Maybe that’s my legacy."-Shock G.

"But the touring is still fun. Interpreting our songs in different ways is always cool. I can pop up on a Prince album. Life doesn’t suck. But everyone who sees me on the street or when my name comes up on TMZ or VH1 thinks that my life sucks…like I’m dying [laughs]."-Shock G.

"But I’m out on tour with P-Funk. I’m producing and Djing for Murs who is letting me use the keys and drum machine to interpret his songs how I want. I finally feel like I’m out of the box. Now it’s easier for me to put that Humpty nose on.”-Shock G...REST IN POWER.....!/End.