"We were serious act at first, trying to be this techno, pro-struggle-oriented civil-rights movement type of thing," says Digital Underground's main man Shock G from a hotel room in Oakland. Of course, for those who remember the first time they heard D.U., serious wasn't a word you would use to describe them. The group, consisting of rapper and producer Shock, rapper Money-B, DJ Fuse, singer Schmoovy Schmoov and drummer/producer Chopmaster J, was constantly morphing, and that was what always kept their fans guessing, laughing and shaking their asses. Party fun via musical lessons studiously gleaned from George Clinton's P-Funk mothership was most definitely what Digital Underground was known for, with rolling, juiced-up hit singles (and groundbreakingly popular MTV videos) like "Doowutchalike" and "The Humpty Dance." Ironically, Digital was very serious about the album's original main concept: Sex Packets. An idea developed by Shock's roommate Earl Cook (a.k.a. group vocalist Schmoovy Schmoov), Sex Packets were pills that would control the mental images that gave men and women wet dreams. Shock laughs: "Schmoov actually had, in his briefcase, the plans to create and get study and research going for these things. He was trying to get a grant from the government to develop them." Shock admits "we made up a lot of shit surrounding the album," including his aliases Humpty Hump, The Piano Man and MC Blowfish. "We were deliberately throwing out all the hip-hop rules, trying to break them," Shock remembers. "I always wanted Digital Underground to be this big supergroup, but we didn't have all the true characters yet. If I had a vision of a kind of guy we needed, I'd just be that guy." They brought it all in and let it all hang out. "We were like Fuck it, we're gonna be on some Funkadelic shit, and do all kinds of different songs and wear all kinds of different hats," he says. "All of us tugging in different directions made it a really rich gumbo album." Surely a great time in hip-hop, revisit the LP below...
Shock G humps his way through their funky classics below...
