Let's all get together and have a few laughs

RIP Shock G / Humpty Hump

Since no one asked, let's do this. Digital Underground's The Humpty Dance...

Digital Underground were underrated as a force for absurdity in hip hop's golden age. At the centre of this was Shock G's thing for P-funk, and most think of them as a similarly fun dancefloor aimed group, but they were also immersed in Clinton's afrocentric psych-freakshow

When Shock donned Humpty's nose/glasses, he embodied the extremities of hip hop, parodying and celebrating some of it's more outrageous charcters, like Slick Rick, MC Hammer etc. The dance itself was so simple he refers to it as "like MC Hammer on crack"

The backing track instantly became a huge influence on dancefloor hiphop and RnB, especially with New Jack Swing acts, but as a backbone sample it's reach was much larger.

*turns up reverb*

MUCH

LARGER

So quickly, what maketh the Humpty beat?

Easy, 1 part Sly & The Family Stone breakdown

1 part Parliament snare sample

Add a bit of drum machine and that undulating bass synth, and you'll be grabbing 'em in the biscuits

Soon, everyone wanted a piece of the Humpty beat, and many records were more successful (The Humpty Dance made it to 80 in the UK chart in 1990).

Here's LL Cool using the beat as the backbone on his (not) come back single Mama Said Knock You Out

New Jack architect Teddy Riley found a kindred spirit in Humpty, and included the beat in "Teddy's Jam 2" from 1990

Let's not forget Teddy worked on Doug E Fresh's The Show, which introduced the world to Slick Rick, Shock G's main inspriration for Humpty

The following year the Humpty beat crossed the Atlantic when East London rave legends Shut Up & Dance sampled it for my muckas The Ragga Twins and their hip hop dancehall crossover tune Juggling. Here it is on the Peel session they recorded in May '91

Sade sampled it in '92 for the extended outro of Cherish The Day. Skip to 5 and a half mins for the Humptification (or don't because it's Sade and you have to listen to it in full, it's the law)

And George Clinton brought it full circle when he sampled the Humpty beat for Martial Law, released on Prince's Paisley Park imprint in '93

Happy St George's day!

But it kept growing. Mark Morrison jacked the beat for Return Of The Mack, Will Smith lifted the bassline on Wild Wild West, and The Spice Girls pilfered Humpty for (and I'm not expecting you to agree with me) one of the rawest UK rap tracks of the 90s

But it wasn't all pop-rap and r&b for Humpty. Sometimes the beat found it's way into seemingly incongruous genres like when Brummy metal industrialists Godflesh looped the beat for Witchhunt from their 1999 LP Us & Them

And way back in 1990, semi-industrial-dub-rave weirdos Renegade Soundwave lifted the beat for their genre-fluid remix of Manc indie boys Inspiral Carpets

But Humpty's biggest reach came in '98 when Swedish producers Rami Yacoub and Max Martin aped it for Britney Spears' debut Smash ...Baby One More Time. It's a fairly subtle, vaguely P(or G?)funk beat, until you reach the breakdown at 2:10 and... bass!

And that's how Humpty Hump's afro-situationist p-funk vicariously went to number 1 in about 20 territories at the end of the 90s.

RIP Gregory Humpty Hump Shockalock Piano Man Edwards

Quick after thought. If you weren't aware of the extent of P-funk's influence here. Shock G also did the illustrations for his records under the name Rackadelic. No doubt influenced by George Clinton's go-to artist Pedro Bell

Bye