Though I only met him twice, Shock G, the Bay Area rapper who passed away last week at 57, shared a lot of insight with me, and I need to share what I can with you in hopes that you’ll look behind the Humpty nose and deeper into the music that he left behind.

Shock G was born Gregory Jacobs in Brooklyn on August 25, 1963 and passed away in his childhood city of Tampa on April 22, 2021. He moved to Oakland in the mid-’80s and spent the rest of his life making music in California, so we are claiming him.

Though best known for being the beloved frontman of Digital Underground, he should also be remembered for more than his turn in the pop music spotlight, which threw a bright light and warm glow on the best of the Bay Area in a way that hasn’t happened since. He was, and remains in spirit, an embodiment of the Funk. His personal musical icons thought so, too: George Clinton (who he collaborated with and sampled long before Dr. Dre and OutKast), Bootsy Collins (“He helped keep P-Funk alive!” he Tweeted of Shock on April 22), Stevie Wonder (who he sampled and introduced to the hip-hop world via 2Pac’s single “So Many Tears”) and Prince (who incorporated Shock’s beats into his 1998 Crystal Ball box set).

Like many Bay Area natives who were kids in 1990, Shock G and his alter ego Humpty Hump—two personalities who he took pains to appear completely separate entities, which fooled a lot of us for a long time—were friends in my head. Digital Underground performed at my very first rap concert at Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View on August 24, 1990 as a support act for Public Enemy, the mighty East Coast rap group which had just released the album Fear of a Black Planet. Shock revealed in the 2004 documentary Digital Underground Raw Uncut that they made a huge financial sacrifice by taking that tour.

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