I can’t remember exactly who’s house I was at when I first heard Digital Underground. I was about nine years old watching either The Box or Yo! MTV Raps when the video to The Humpty Dance came on. The song was catchy and pretty hard to forget when the image of a Black cat named Humpty (who I later would discover is an alter ego of sorts to front man Shock G) rocking a Mr. Potato Head chocolate nose while dressed like Eugene Levy at a SCTV Polka Reunion was proudly discussing getting busy in a Burger King bathroom in between reminding everybody that his signature dance was our last chance to do the hump.
That began the three decade search to listen to Digital Underground’s Sex Packets.
Outside of a few singles that sporadically played on the radio from later albums such as the 2Pac featured Same Song and Kiss You Back, Digital Underground and their debut album was elusive to me. The closets I could get was my dad having all the original Buddy Miles, Parliament and Funkadelic albums they sampled; my older sister on her way to college at the time had the cassette to Sex Packets and would never let me borrow it so I was pretty much out of luck. Chicago radio wasn’t much help either. Outside of a brief cameo of Shock G and Money B on 2Pac’s I Get Around, WGCI-FM 107.5 and WKKC-FM 88.9 faded Digital Underground into the rearview of gangster rap, banishing the group from rotation indefinitely.
Sadly, I had never heard Sex Packets until earlier in 2024 via Spotify.
I can’t say if it’s the first, but Sex Packets is definitely the beginning of the hip-hop concept album. Heavily influenced by Funkadelic and Parliament’s conceptual approach to albums ,most notably the science fiction elements of Funkadelic’s The Clones Of Dr. Funkenstein and Parliament’s Motor Booty Affair and Trombipulation (which sample’s Junie Morrison’s led Let’s Play House on The Humpty Dance), Sex Packets is a hip-hop science fiction sex album that takes you more than one listen to figure out what the hell the story is truly about.
If I got the story right from songs like the Funkadelic influenced title track, Packet Prelude, Packet Man, Packet Reprise, and Danger Zone, Digital Underground are a purveyor and door to door salesman of some sort of futuristic sexual enhancement pill that, if the album cover is any indication, comes in a neon glowing condom wrapper guaranteed to make you have the wildest sexual romps with any member of the opposite sex if your mind is open enough to have a satisfying sexual encounter without any hang ups. Let Digital Underground tell it, it’s the safest sex ever, and depending on your budget can last ten minutes to a couple of hours.
With the Donna Summer backed sample featuring Love To Love You Baby, the group self-proclaim their status as Freaks Of The Industry that have the exclusive mainline to these sexual altering futuristic drugs and can navigate its curious users to a positive experience if they dare to do so, orchestrated fondly in Doowutchyalike. Apparently the trip also causes some schizophrenic issues, since Shock G tends to alternate in and out of his alternate ego of Humpty, especially on more of the sexual ladened songs. Half of me thinks that is his true form coming out under the influence of the Sex Packets; once you open that door to sexual nirvana you can’t really hide from yourself in that alternative reality.
The lyrical flow isn’t on battle mode, which is a welcomed surprise and works flawlessly for the science fiction fantasy element that is prevalent throughout the album. It’s a fun party album for the most part definitely in the spirit of the 1970s; there is no denying the fun and games the album teases with a song like Doowutchyalike; the head nod to putting Vanessa Williams in the song just to check it off the bucket list was chef’s kiss and the ultimate fanboy moment Digital Underground wasn’t afraid to be vulnerable about. Keep in mind in 1989 Vanessa Williams was a disgraced Miss America because of her Penthouse spread, so for them to give her a vivacious acknowledgement goes with the theme of the album perfectly.
Overall, I like the concept of where Digital Underground was going; it’s like they are a spin-off Parliament Funkadelic group that brought their predecessors into the cypher of hip-hop proper. Shock G and Humpty lead us down a road we can’t turn back from similar to George Clinton and his many album characters. The entire Packets suite might annoy some, but I found it a crucial element for Digital Underground to explain the backstory of the pills to an extent without beating us over the head about them every single song. And yes, even with keeping up with the political motif of hip-hop Sex Packets succeeds; AIDS was very much a scary thing in the 1980s and fresh for an entire generation of people coming of age indulging into their desires for the first time. If Shock G and company have done anything, they brought the fun back into sex at a time where public panic about the disease killing people had everybody freaking out.
So what do I think of this classic hip-hop album over thirty years later as an adult? It’s genius.
