Keep It Beautiful: Inside The Funkyverse of Shock G and The Digital Underground by Alexis Wolfe Mbassa and Gregory E. Jacobs
Many thanks to Clarkson Potter/Ten Speed Press and NetGalley
for sending me an advanced copy of the long-gestating but incredibly satisfying
collaborative, funky, and genre-blurring book Keep It Beautiful: Inside the
Funkyverse of Shock G and the Digital Underground by Alexis Wolfe Mbassa
and Gregory E. Jacobs (aka Shock G, Humpty Hump, MC Blowfish, Peanut Hakeem). I
was so excited to find this book as The Digital Underground were one of those
formative bands from my early adolescence. Sex Packets was one of the
first tapes I owned, and although I loved the singles like “The Humpty Dance”
and “Doowutchyalike”, there were so many deep cuts on that album that I would
just listen to the tape back and forth so many times. The Underground followed
that album up with several other great albums, and thanks to Wolfe Mbassa’s
effort to midwife this book through Jacobs’ somewhat whimsical and spontaneous
methods as well as his untimely death in 2021, I also learned a lot about
Jacobs’ life and musical career beyond Digital Underground. This book is a must
for fans of Digital Underground and especially for those hip-hop heads who came
of age in the golden era of the late 80s through the 90s. For those that don’t
know, Shock G was not only responsible for creating the persona of Humpty Hump,
whose hit “The Humpty Dance” was one of the most popular singles of 1990, but
was also the visionary who shaped the sound of images that were associated with
Digital Undergrounds album. Wolfe Mbassa, who initially met Shock G in the
2000s and collaborated with him on the book over the course of a decade, allowed
him to introduce himself through a biography, but also focused on the influences
on his art. Shock G didn’t only write rhymes and rap, but he also orchestrated
and produced his music, designed the album artwork, and more importantly
conceptualized the ideas behind the characters and album themes that pushed
against many of the emerging trends and stereotypes in hip-hop that took the
sound of the underground back to the house and block parties where the sound
originated. Digital Underground were fun, and although their sound and vision
were largely shaped by funk-forefathers like Parliament and Funkadelic, their albums
were always forward looking. In fact, there’s a great chapter about Sex Packets
where Shock G details the origin of the album, designing an album around the
packet man, a dealer of ecstatic pleasures, whose products were originally
intended for astronauts while floating in space. Members of DU even created
informational pamphlets to leave around Oakland about the new street drug, convincing
some that the drug was real and producing news stories and an eventually denial
issued by NASA. I loved that Jacobs was that into his music and that for every album,
he conceptualized these sci-fi street ideas for the albums. It was something
that my 13 year-old self didn’t really understand at the time, but I loved the
music and the rhymes because they were just so fun and funky.
Although I am still a big fan of The Digital
Underground, Wolfe Mbassa’s book reveals a lot about Shock G that I never
really knew about- from his early life growing up between New York and Florida,
to his mentorship and production for other artists in the 1990s, especially his
role in helping to launch the career of 2Pac and producing his breakout album 2Pacalypse
Now. I loved learning about Jacobs’s early interest in music, his attempts
to get a job as a DJ in middle school, becoming Florida’s youngest on-air DJ,
and the various schemes and adventures that helped to contribute to some of the
amazing characters and situations that populate the Underground’s classic
albums like Sex Packets.
Beyond the words, the book is filled with images, artwork,
and memorabilia from Shock G’s life and career. While Shock G tells most of the
stories, Wolfe Mbassa met up with other members of Digital Underground and
talked to other rappers who were contemporaries of Digital Underground. One of
the highlights was Chuck D’s early morning interview in which he shared his
memories of Public Enemy touring with Digital Underground, and how their sound
and approach to hip-hop was so fun and innovative for the time. There’s also a
great story about Rakim who met with a fan who gave him a portrait of him crushing
other MCs with his lyrical styles. A year later, Rakim realized that fan was Shock
G. Wolfe Mbassa honors the memory and artistry of Jacobs’s many alter egos by
letting his voice and vision flow throughout the book, stepping in occasionally
to provide context for when or where the interviews took place. This
collaborative approach creates a kind of intimate reading experience where
readers are allowed to tag along with Wolfe Mbassa as she travels to Jacobs’s
Topanga Canyon home, where she documents the painted piano, various
instruments, and canvases that inhabit the home and allow Jacobs to express his
artistry through music and visual art. Although Jacobs passed away at the too
young age of 57 in 2021, Wolfe Mbassa’s book allows us to spend some more time
with this legendary voice of hip-hop who shifted the sound and style down a funky
road, and reminded listeners to doowutchyalike. Highly recommended!
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