Gregory ‘Shock G’ Jacobs, hip-hop icon, dies at 57.
Bay Area-based legend led Digital Underground band, mentored Tupac Shakur
Gregory Jacobs, who co-founded and fronted Digital Underground, helped foster Tupac Shakur’s music career and served as a lodestar for creativity within hip-hop and beyond, has died. He was 57.
Jacobs was known by many as Shock G, but perhaps more so by his “Humpty Hump” alter ego, whose prosthetic nose, stylish clothes and side-splitting humorous lyrics made Digital Underground platinum-sellers and stadium fillers for several years in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
In a social media post Thursday, band co-founder Jimi C. Dright Jr., who performed as Chopmaster J, broke the news to fans and praised Jacobs’ legacy.
“34 years ago almost to the day we had a wild idea we can be a hip hop band and take on the world through it all the dream became a reality and the reality became a nightmare for some,” he wrote.
“And now he’s awaken from the fame long live shock G Aka Humpty Hump and Rest In Peace my Brotha Greg Jacobs!!!”
Jacobs’ keen eye for talent extended well beyond Tupac’s early days as a dancer and roadie for the band during its time on the charts.
According to an article by this news organization, musician and entrepreneur Tyranny Allen talked about his time running into Jacobs at the then-Serenader bar near Lake Merritt, turning a freestyle performance into a songwriting and performing stint.
As recently as November 2019, Digital Underground joined a 40th anniversary party for Bay Area radio station KBLX alongside multiple music legends including MC Hammer, En Vogue, Luniz and Tony! Toni! Tone!
On Thursday, music figures from the Bay Area and beyond paid their respects to multiple levels of Jacobs’ legacy.
Rapper Ice Cube tweeted “nobody had a better stage show. A
true Bay Area original.”
“We lost Shock G, Piano Man and Humpty Hump all in one fell swoop,” TV writer and producer Cheo Hodari Coker, a former journalist, said in a tweet. “He was a genius. A great guy and a great interview. One of the best interviews of my life was the afternoon we spent in Emeryville 25 years ago when he went ON RECORD as being Humpty and broke it alldown.”
“MOST people in the entertainment industry are simply trying to be a version of another person that they like,” tweeted Wild949 radio host JV. “#ShockG was one of the very few artists not trying to be anyone else. He was a unicorn. Without him Bay Area music is not the international phenomenon it is today.”