Song of the Day 4/24: Digital Underground, “The Humpty Dance”

Old school rap lost an influential figure this week. Greg Jacobs, better known as Shock G, the rapper who fronted the Oakland rap collective Digital Underground, was found dead in his Tampa hotel room Thursday at age 57.

Though he went by Shock G, he also took on various alter-egos, the most famous being Humpty Hump, who took this song about his signature dance to No. 11 in Billboard Top 10 (No. 1 on the rap chart) in 1990. Jacobs would insist these alter-egos were separate people, to the point that he appeared in interviews as Humpty and used stand-ins on stage to maintain the illusion.

Jacobs was a talented musician who played drums, piano and produced records for various artists, including Tupac Shakur, who got his start as a member of DU. You can tell Jacobs was a huge fan of both George Clinton’s music and humor — most songs were built around funk samples, and Humpty always wore that nose-and-glasses get-up. The group had a good four-year run, but the party downscaled pretty sharply after 1994. Digital Underground went on what became a permanent hiatus in 2008.

Here’s what they sounded like when Jacobs was just Shock G, not Humpty.

This was their breakthrough song.