We’re only a few months into our Flashback ‘90 series, and we’ve already unearthed about as many regrettable hits as we have certified classics — and chances are, you aren’t sure which column the Digital Underground’s Sex Packets belongs in. If you were around at the time, you probably loved the album’s big hit, “The Humpty Dance” — at least until MTV and the radio overplayed it, at which point you never wanted to hear it again. These days, “The Humpty Dance” might be good for a few minutes of ironic nostalgia, but I’d lay even odds that for most listeners, it’s worn out its welcome long before it reaches the six-and-a-half-minute mark. To a lot of people, the Digital Underground was a novelty act, which is easy to understand, given that their biggest hits center around the goofing of a guy wearing glasses and a fake nose.
But they weren’t a novelty act. They were sort of groundbreaking, in fact — and though their commercial prospects dwindled as the ’90s wore on, they remained a steady live draw until 2008, when leader Shock G (a.k.a. Humpty Hump, as well as a number of other equally ridiculous characters) pulled the plug.
More of a posse than a concrete musical group, the Digital Underground brought P-Funk’s freewheeling party vibe into the hip-hop era, fusing live instrumentation with samples before it was trendy and releasing a series of uptempo party tracks (starting with the classic “Doowhutchyalike”) populated by a rotating cast of contributors that notably included a young Tupac Shakur. Long before every other rap song came with a “feat.” credit attached, the D.U. invited everyone from George Clinton to Del tha Funkee Homosapien (and, uh, the Luniz) to be part of their songs. (more…)
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I’ve always owned PCs, and have never had much of an interest in home recording, so when Dave, Jason and I started recording the Popdose podcast a couple of months ago, I entered the fray as an absolute beginner — and if you listened to our first few episodes, you probably already knew this, because each of them was marred by some sort of audio glitch on my end, be it excessively low levels, annoying popping, or, in one case, my stupid accidental use of the Logitech camera microphone I have clipped to my second monitor.
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