Digital Underground
Axis Nightclub, Bloomington, Ind. (April 17, 2001)
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Digital Underground
Axis Nightclub, Bloomington, Ind.
April 17, 2001 |
It was Little 500 weekend, one of the most notorious college weekends in the country, and clearly someone knew who could bring the party. Sure, it's been years since they've had a hit, but onstage, Digital Underground provided a funked-up soiree for the ages, with a stage presence bigger than Humpty Hump's trademark mammoth schnozz.
It wasn't until midnight that Shock-G, Money-B and Saafir bounded onstage armed with silly string and champagne bottles, bombarding the packed house to the opening notes of "Doowutchyalike." Shock-G, the group's leader, looked like a relative of Dre from Outkast, with his flying dreads tied up in a bandanna and a gaudy turquoise shirt and shorts hanging off his Ichabod Crane-like frame.
The crew led the crowd through a series of favorites without a moment of downtime. "Kiss You Back," "Oregano Flow" and 2Pac's "I Get Around" seemed more vibrant live than on record, and the surprisingly astute crowd hung on every word. Shock also took time out to exhibit his musical skills on the keyboards next to the DJ.
But the enthusiasm grew tenfold when Shock left the stage halfway through the set to transform into his alter-ego (and the man who made the band famous) Edward Ellington Humphrey a.k.a. Humpty Hump. Arms outstreched, Humpty absorbed the cheers of the crowd, which grew greater once the pipe-organ intro to "Same Song" hit the amps. With his trademark flair, Humpty dropped lines like "Hypothetical / political / lyrical / miracle whip / just like butter / my rhymes are legit," totally nonsensical but irresistibly fun rhymes that are the Underground's trademark. No one even seemed to care that Humpty was merely Shock-G in a different shirt and fake nose and glasses. It was a rollicking party and Humpty was the host.
The highlight, however, came late in the set when the group gave true props to the art form of rhyming. Eight MCs from the audience were invited onstage and lined up with the Underground to perform an incredibly sharp and impressive freestyle exhibition, each rapping eight bars, then passing the mic. One by one, each MC dropped an off-the-cuff verse without a stutter or stammer. Shock and Money kept looking at each other in amazement, possibly wondering how such skilled rhyme could emerge from a Southern Indiana town.
Closing the night with a double-shot of another performance of "Doowutchyalike" (with strict crowd-participation rules from Humpty) and a jazzed-up "Sex Packets," Humpty looked out at the crowd and spit the words everyone wanted to hear. "How many of y'all wanna see me do my dance?" Pure hysteria, as "The Humpty Dance" closed the evening with trademark flamboyance. Humpty rapped the final verse acapella, with the crowd recreating the songs swelling bass line in unison, ending the night on a somewhat subdued note.
But nonetheless, they had seen Humpty do his dance, they had done what they liked, and they left fulfilled. And while there were no sightings of Humpty afterwards, no one checked the bathroom of the Burger King down the street.
DAVE VRABEL |