"The Humpty Dance" — Digital Underground

Digital Underground came out of Oakland, formed in 1987 by Gregory "Shock G" Jacobs with radio DJ Kenny-K and Chopmaster J, and built on the funk of Parliament-Funkadelic when most of rap was going hard. Their first single and video, "Doowutchyalike" in 1989, introduced a character named Humpty Hump: a buffoon in loud clothes, oversized glasses and a big prosthetic nose, played by Shock G himself. The group even gave him a biography, as Edward Ellington Humphrey III, ex-singer of Smooth Eddie and the Humpers, who took up rapping after burning his nose in a deep-fryer accident.

"The Humpty Dance" was Humpty's second outing, released in January 1990 as the second single from the debut album Sex Packets, which Tommy Boy put out that year and which went platinum. Over a one-bar drum loop from Sly and the Family Stone's "Sing a Simple Song," a Parliament handclap and a chorus sample from Parliament's "Let's Play House," Humpty bragged about his prowess despite his looks, name-checked a Burger King bathroom, and mocked the precision choreography of MC Hammer's videos with a dance that was "loose" and "easy." It reached number 11 on the Hot 100, number seven on the R&B chart and number one on Billboard's rap chart, and lost the 1990 MTV award for best rap video to "U Can't Touch This."

The drum track became a building block. It sits under Public Enemy's "Can't Truss It," LL Cool J's "Mama Said Knock You Out," TLC's "What About Your Friends" and the Spice Girls' "If U Can't Dance," among dozens of documented uses, and Digital Underground answered with a track called "The Humpty Dance Awards" thanking everyone who borrowed it. The group also launched a young dancer and hype man named Tupac Shakur. Rolling Stone placed the song at 241 on its 2021 list of the 500 greatest songs. Shock G died in April 2021 at 57; the nose and glasses remain one of hip-hop's great disguises.