Digital Underground's cartoonish funk launched Tupac Shakur as a backup dancer
Before he became one of rap's biggest names, Tupac Shakur was a dancer and hype man for an Oakland group whose leader rapped as a big-nosed alter ego called Humpty Hump. Digital Underground turned P-Funk samples, silly costumes and live instruments into platinum records, and gave Tupac his first recorded verse.
Gregory Jacobs, known as Shock G, formed the group in 1987 with a Tampa radio deejay and a Berkeley producer. The original concept was militant, a tribute to the Black Panthers, but as N.W.A and Public Enemy took over that territory, Jacobs steered toward whimsy instead. He even drew the album art himself under another alias, Rackadelic, filling the liner notes with cartoons in the spirit of Parliament-Funkadelic's sleeves.
The breakthrough came in 1990 with The Humpty Dance, a comic dance track delivered by Humpty Hump that reached No. 11 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 1 on the rap singles chart. Its drum track has turned up in more than 50 confirmed songs by other artists, and the group later released a joking tribute to everyone who had sampled it. The debut album mixed P-Funk samples, jazzy interludes and live playing, and went platinum.
Tupac made his recorded debut on Same Song, which also appeared in the film Nothing But Trouble; in the video he played an African king. The track's improvised organ made it one of the first hip-hop singles to blend live instruments smoothly with samples. George Clinton himself contributed vocals to a later title track, one of his earliest guest spots on a hip-hop record. Tupac's final appearance with the group came on an anti-racism single in 1993.
Mischief was part of the act. On a 1991 episode of Showtime at the Apollo they posed as the Unknown Rappers from Beaumont, Texas, with paper bags over their heads, drawing boos until they unmasked and launched into a hit. In 1998 they deliberately packed an album with New York guests such as Big Pun and KRS-One to mock the East versus West rivalry. Their last studio album appeared in 2008, but even after Shock G's death in 2021 the group kept touring.
Source: Digital Underground
