Yes, yes, I know The Humpty Dance – because who doesn’t? Even people who are sure they don’t know that or maybe don’t recognise the title do actually know that song. But I had never heard the whole album. I had heard one or two other Digital Underground tracks, but never a whole album – and this, their debut, is one of those time capsule pieces that, after time in the underground, might not actual sound so great in a fully digital world…
To be clear, I like it. Enough. It’s just something lost to time. If you’d never heard anything by Ice-T or Prince in the 1990s there would really be no need to now…you’d only do it if you were on assignment. Which is the case with me here. I could have lived happily without hearing this. But it’s not flat out terrible. I really dig Rhymin’ On The Funk – but it flashes me back to the world of Miles Davis’ Doo-Bop and Quincy Jones’ Back on the Block and even the first Buckshot LeFonque album (which arrived a bit later, but I’ve been revisiting that lately with surprisingly pleasing results).
So this is a case of move on, nothing to see/hear here. Or stay, enjoy the nostalgia. Dig into it.
But I was never invested enough in the development of rap music to afford this any sort of classic status, cult or otherwise. This is merely something else I’ve now heard. A tick for the list.