JumpinJack AJ

Thanx for posting. I mean, it's funny...but it's not THAT funny. :ph34r:

I don't follow this guy's movies. But all I ever hear is that he ruins them.

I think I remember a few people on the board liking her when she passed so I'm posting this here. I had no idea she was such a survivor. --------------------------------------------------------- The Final Difficult Days of Brittany Murphy Source: The Hollywood Reporter Tue Jan 11, 2011, 2:00 am EST by Alex Ben Block The following story appears in the new issue of The Hollywood Reporter on newsstands Wednesday. When the final curtain came down for Brittany Murphy on Sunday morning, Dec. 20, 2009, the drama played out in the one room in her Hollywood Hills mansion that had become her refuge: her bathroom. This tiled, peach-colored sanctuary was where she went to get away from the mounting pressures of her life: a house she hated, a city where she no longer wanted to live, a career that was imploding and the constant burden of being a caregiver. Even though she didn’t feel well herself, Brittany was there to care for her mother, Sharon Murphy, a breast cancer survivor suffering debilitating neuropathy, and her ailing husband of three years, 39-year-old Simon Monjack. For nearly a year, the England native had been having seizures and a month earlier suffered an apparent heart attack. When he had a seizure, his arms and legs flailing on the big four-poster bed, Brittany would rush to his side. Although weakened by anemia and gasping for breath from her own ailments, Brittany held his 300-pound body down, using a spoon to keep him from swallowing his tongue. Simon joked that his wife’s bathroom was “her comfort zone.” He called it the “Brittany-sized room,” reflecting her diminutive 5-foot-2 stature, and recalled how she spent hours sampling the cosmetics and perfumes that crowded every inch of counter space, critically studying her body image, sometimes singing to herself or writing bits of poetry in a journal, listening to music or paging through magazines from which she would tear out pages with clothes she just had to have. While Brittany dozed on the big bed beside him after midnight, Simon and Sharon talked about the practical aspects of their plan to move to New York. They discussed selling the big house Brittany had purchased in 2003 for $3.9 million, fully furnished, from Britney Spears, who had lived there with Justin Timberlake. Brittany always felt the tri-level Mediterranean at the top of Rising Glen Road was unlucky. She wanted to start fresh in 2010 in New York, where they could start a family, Simon would find work as a screenwriter and director and she’d star in independent films that would revive her career. That Saturday night was chilly and windy. The electric power kept going out, and the backup generator failed. They used flashlights when it went dark, afraid to light candles near the wheezing oxygen machine Simon relied on to ease his sleep apnea, bouts of asthma and frequent respiratory infections. “She absolutely hated the Rising Glen house,” Simon told me in January 2010. “Every time we would drive up Sunset, Brit would say, ‘Please, can we stay at the Beverly Hills Hotel?’ I’d say: ‘Honey, you’ve got to be realistic. We have our house, a 10,000-square-foot home. We’re going to stay in it.’” As it turned out, it was where Brittany and Simon were to die, in surprisingly similar ways, only five months apart. I first met Brittany in 1992 in L.A., when she was 14. She had become close friends with my daughter, who was also an actress and singer. Brittany and her mother became part of our extended family in those years, often sharing dinners, holidays and birthdays. At times, Brittany turned to me as a father figure, and we talked about her life and career. She lacked higher education, but behind the giggles, Brittany was a sponge who soaked up knowledge. She educated herself and had interests ranging from politics to science to the intricacies of show business. We spent many happy times sharing thoughts. I hadn’t seen a lot of Brittany after she married Simon in 2007, but when the news flashed of her unexpected death, I went with my wife and daughter to her house to try and comfort Sharon and Simon. I helped them deal with the media onslaught in those first days and, at their request, gave the eulogy at Brittany’s funeral on Christmas Eve . In those first weeks after Brittany died, as Simon lay on the bed, rarely rising or bathing, he encouraged me to write an independent book about Brittany that would tell her true story. He and Sharon gave me a series of on-the-record interviews, which are quoted throughout this article. Only later would I realize that much of what Simon told me — about his family, education, marriage and career — was exaggerated or simply fabricated. Simon wanted the book because he was convinced — before the autopsy report on Brittany came back — that she had literally died of a broken heart caused by the shoddy way she had been treated in Hollywood. He wanted to expose the studios, producers and talent reps he believed had used rumor and innuendo — about her alleged lateness, inability to remember lines, drug use and partying — to destroy her career. “I honestly think Brittany’s life has to serve a purpose,” Simon told me. “Her true fans, and young people coming off the bus, deserve to know the bubble can burst.” Simon was especially bitter at Warner Bros. because Brittany had been dropped as a voice actor on "Happy Feet 2" after stories about illegal drug use appeared on tabloid websites. He recalled Brittany crying for hours about her stalled career. She hadn’t starred in a studio movie since 2004’s "Little Black Book," and Simon believed there had been a conspiracy against her among former agents and managers. That was a major motivation to move away from Hollywood. “It wasn’t about the money,” he told me. “She wasn’t going, ‘Oh, I’m not being offered $10 million to do a movie.’ It was: ‘I’m not getting offered anything where I can really show what I can do. I can sing. I can dance. I can do all these things I was put on Earth to show the world,’ and somehow she was being blocked from doing it.” The irony, Simon insisted, was that Brittany literally could not do drugs. In her early teens, she had been diagnosed with a heart murmur, so Brittany knew illegal drugs could endanger her life. That fear, Sharon said, that made it impossible for Brittany to use cocaine or stimulants. The tabloid noise had increased over the years as Brittany got thinner and blonder in a quest for leading roles in movies, which also raised the specter of anorexia, which haunts many Hollywood actresses who feel the need to be thin. Brittany was 115 pounds when she died, a healthy weight for her height, even though she looked fragile and her limbs were reed-thin. “She had curves in all the right places,” Simon said. “She was just miniaturized. She ate whatever she wanted when she wanted.” Still, Brittany had self-image issues. “The thing she was very conscious of was her height,” said Martha Coolidge, who directed Brittany in the 2009 Lifetime movie "Tribute." “She felt she was short, so one reason she controlled her weight was the thinner you are, the taller you look. She was knowledgeable about her body and what would exaggerate her height.” In the meantime, Brittany had learned to live with physical pain: Ever since a car accident shortly after Clueless came out in 1995, she had coped with a recurring ache in her jaw. Sick or well, she struggled to keep going and keep working. She was the family breadwinner. But after becoming a name-above-the-title star in such movies as "Just Married" and "Little Black Book," things weren’t going well with her once-promising career. In the months leading up to her death, she had seen the end of her lucrative, long-running voice role as Luanne on "King of the Hill" and, in addition to losing roles in "Happy Feet 2" and 2008’s " Tinker Bell ," had been dropped from "The Expendables." “The nature of this town is exploitive,” Simon told me. “Brittany would be alive today if she was a housewife in Edison, N.J.” — where she grew up — “or a successful person in another business.” But showbiz had been her dream since she was a small child pointing to a TV screen and telling Sharon she wanted to be on television some day. It was wonderful that Brittany never lost her childlike innocence and sense of wonder, or that infectious giggle. But what worked for her as an actress made for a troubled life: She never learned to drive or balance her own checkbook. She looked to her mother, business managers and finally Simon to care for her. It was the need for a father — her biological father was rarely part of her life — mentor, teacher and anchor that led her to Simon. Brittany had an unusually close relationship with her mother. Sharon told me they “grew up” together. I was able to witness firsthand their unique bond. They referred to each other as “soulmates.” Ever since Brittany came to Hollywood at 13, with her mother following shortly thereafter, Sharon had dedicated herself to her daughter. In turn, Brittany had put her career on hold twice when Sharon had bouts of breast cancer shortly after the making of "Clueless" and again in 2003, when Brittany camped out in her mom’s hospital room and I was among the many friends she recruited to donate blood on Sharon’s behalf. Sharon “worked hard being a single mother,” her sister Deborah “Debba” Murphy told me shortly after Brittany died. “I don’t think she forced Britty into the showbiz stuff. Britty wanted to do it.” JoAnne Colonna, Brittany’s agent or manager for a decade, recalled meeting her when she was 16 and being struck by her energy, talent and how close she was to her mother. “They were adorable together,” she said. “They finished each other’s sentences. Both were bright and bubbly, and that relationship never changed.” Growing up in Edison, Brittany said her first words at six months, according to Aunt Debba, but didn’t walk until she was nearly 15 months. Sharon described her as an outgoing child who loved to dance and sing. She got her showbiz start in school and local theater, starring in the musical "Really Rosie" at age 9. After that performance, Sharon recalled, Brittany told a local TV station: “I’m going to get an agent and do commercials and work in New York. Then I’m going to move to Los Angeles, be in movies in Hollywood and then come back and do Broadway. Then I’ll probably have a huge musical career. I am going to change the world.” And she did almost all of it. She starred on TV series; in addition to " King of the Hill ," she did guest roles ranging from "Frasier" to "Nash Bridges." She was in more than two dozen movies, from her breakout role in "Clueless" to the romantic comedy " Love and Other Disasters". She even returned to Broadway in the 1997 revival of Arthur Miller ’s "A View From the Bridge." New York Times critic Vincent Canby called Brittany’s Broadway debut “exceptional.” Even when her movies got mixed notices, Brittany often stood out, as in "8 Mile," the 2002 screen debut of rapper Eminem. “It will be a shame if she becomes a star via this embarrassing siren turn,” critic David Edelstein wrote for "Slate." “That said, she has it. When she turned those huge black-rimmed eyes on Rabbit, she made me think of Morris Day’s line to Apollonia in Purple Rain: ‘Your lips would make a lollipop too happy.’ ” Roger Ebert didn’t like "Just Married" but saw in Brittany “a rare and particular quality.” But Washington Post critic Ann Hornaday just didn’t get her, saying that after "8 Mile" she should understand “her true calling is that of a bad girl, with or without a heart of gold.” But, in fact, Brittany was more than any one thing. She could disappear into a role, as she did in " Girl , Interrupted" and "Don’t Say a Word;" the latter I believe should have earned her an Oscar nomination. Said Penny Marshall, who directed her in "Riding in Cars With Boys:" “Her timing was impeccable. She could be funny. She could be dramatic. She was a terrific actress.” Time critic Richard Corliss noted shortly after her passing that Brittany was a “gifted actress” who “didn’t win the acclaim she dreamed of and might have deserved.” He was right that her work has been underappreciated, just as there is no doubt a part of her tragedy is that the potential she showed for greatness was snuffed out so early. The bug that would play a major role in Brittany’s passing — Staphylococcus aureus — was imported from Puerto Rico, where Brittany had gone six weeks before her death to star in "The Caller," a low-budget thriller that was the latest in a series of ever-lower-budget movies she had done during the previous three years, mostly for the payday. Brittany had arrived in San Juan with Simon, her mother and her Maltese puppy, Clara. Press reports later said she was fired after the first day and that Simon had been drunk on the set, but the movie’s producers, prodded by Simon’s lawyer, called it a mutual parting. Simon told me that Brittany had been unhappy when she realized the thriller she had signed to star in had morphed into a horror flick. “She said, ‘There’s too much Santeria in it,’ ” Simon recalled. “And it was spooky. She told me, ‘I’ve been offered lots of horror movies, and I’ve never done them. And I’m not going to start now.’” She parted company after one day of shooting when the producers insisted on banning Simon from the set. Still, they stayed eight more days vacationing in San Juan, so, as Simon said, it wouldn’t “be a wasted trip.” But Simon and Sharon caught colds — Staphylococcus — while there. On the flight home to LAX on Nov. 28, 2009, Simon had what he described as a “mild heart attack.” Simon said Brittany administered CPR on the plane, even though Brittany was quoted as calling it an asthma attack. News reports of Simon’s medical problems and Brittany being replaced on "Caller" became the latest in a barrage of negative press about the couple. He had entered Brittany’s life at a very vulnerable time. She had risen so quickly and fallen so far in such a short time that even fans had to wonder what was happening. Most of her final films headed straight to video. It was a sad chapter in what had been a career filled with promise. “She was incredibly talented,” Chris Snyder, who worked for Brittany’s first Hollywood agent, Iris Burton, told me. “There were very few people who could do what she could do in comedy. She had a Lucille Ball kind of humor. She was a force of nature in comedy, but she could also do drama, which is very rare.” Said David Latt, who directed Brittany in one of her last productions, the cable TV movie "MegaFault," “I compared her to a really great old-movie star.” Gary Fleder, who directed "Don’t Say a Word," said: “What people don’t appreciate is that she was fearless. Whatever eccentricity or vanity existed in her life, in her work as an actor there was none. She was willing to go for it, to be raw, to be ugly and to expose herself emotionally.” A year later, Brittany’s talent and career achievements have been pushed to the background by the tabloid sensationalism that led up to her death and the many questions she left behind. What’s true is that over the years, her use of prescription drugs steadily increased as she coped with pain from the auto accident, took medication for seizures after an incident during the production of "8 Mile" and coped with other health issues. That all added to her problems shortly after the return from Puerto Rico, when she caught Simon and Sharon’s bug. She took the antibiotic Biaxin, migraine pills, cough medicine and an over-the-counter nasal spray. The day she died, she had also taken an anti-depression drug (fluoxetine, aka Prozac), an anti-seizure drug (Klonopin), an anti-inflammatory (methylprednisolone) and a beta blocker that Simon gave her, as well as Vicoprofen to ease pain from her period. But Brittany kept getting sicker, and her laryngitis during her final 10 days was the worst of her life. She was also weakened by her period — the second in a month — which was causing anemia that cut her red-blood count to a quarter of normal. On her final night, Brittany was gasping for breath, her lips turning blue from a lack of oxygen as her lungs filled with fluid. Despite her problems, Brittany had not seen a doctor for six weeks, though she consulted by phone a few times and had talked to a pharmacist. Late Friday afternoon of her final weekend, she made a doctor appointment for Monday. She never got there. Being sick had become something Brittany just accepted. There was no sense of urgency to see a doctor because she and Simon practiced their own form of “holistic” medicine — meaning they picked and chose among medicines and doctors. They were always afraid the paparazzi would find out if they were seen as sick and that it would hurt their job prospects in Hollywood. That was one reason Brittany didn’t go to an emergency room that night, and it was an excuse for Simon not to call for help when he had seizures or another of his heart problems. It was also why Brittany used false names to hide her identity at the pharmacy. One druggist, Eddie Bubar of Eddie’s Drugs in West Los Angeles, became alarmed by the frequency and amounts of their drug purchases and suspected they were “doctor shopping” — getting drugs from multiple sources. He confronted Simon in August 2009 and told them to take their business elsewhere. Bubar said he feared they were being overmedicated, though he never imagined it would have such dire consequences. Simon and Sharon, he said, got drugs under their own names. But Brittany preferred an alias: Lola Manilow, which Bubar was aware of. The paranoia Brittany had about the public and industry learning of her medical problems played into Simon’s conspiracy theories about people being out to get her. He stoked that paranoia and used it to gain control over Brittany in a surprisingly short time. Brittany didn’t date until she was 21, then had several long relationships: She had one with Ashton Kutcher for six months after they met on "Just Married" in 2002, was engaged to Hollywood talent manager Jeff Kwatinetz for four months in 2004 and was engaged to a production assistant she met on "Little Black Book" in 2005. Then came her whirlwind romance with Simon, ignited when she phoned him from Tokyo in early 2007 while making The Ramen Girl to say how much she liked his script for The White Hotel, based on the D.M. Thomas novel. They agreed to meet when she returned to L.A. for what turned out to be a dinner at Hotel Bel-Air that went into the wee hours. The following week, he followed her to New York, where she was doing publicity for a movie. From then on, Simon never slept a night away from her, except for nine days he was incarcerated by U.S. Immigration Services for an expired visa. Shortly after that incarceration, on May 5, 2007, they were married by a rabbi at Brittany’s home on Rising Glen Road. Nearly all of the handful of guests were Brittany’s employees or vendors. Simon’s best man was her chauffeur. Brittany saw the stocky Englishman with the sexy accent and deep voice as he portrayed himself: a wealthy, educated, cultured filmmaker. He had been born in the affluent London suburb of Hillingdon and grew up in Bourne End, Buckinghamshire. His father, William, had worked in the City, London’s financial district, until he got a brain tumor at 29. He died six years later when Simon was 15, an event his mother, Linda Monjack, says left her son devastated. After that, she says, her son began to exaggerate and at times seemed unable to separate fact from fiction. “His intelligence was off the scale, but he was also a child in many ways,” his mother told me. “His father’s death completely destroyed him.” Simon went to film school at NYU and found some success as a photographer and music video director but faltered in his debut as a filmmaker, Two Days, Nine Lives, financed by his family. A BBC reviewer described it as “a continuous volley of dead conversations.” It was never released, and his family lost the investment, which he promised his mother he would repay but never did. While there was some inherited family money, his mother says Simon ran through it long before he met Brittany. He still told her he was heir to a fortune and was able to impress her with his knowledge of art and knack for languages and music. His mother says he had a photographic memory. He also had no problem spinning tales to get his way with women on both sides of the Atlantic, leaving a trail of broken hearts, unpaid bills and angry fiancees. A woman he met in London in 1999 later described Simon as “very manipulative” and said he lied to her about his wealth and properties. He “usually cons good, honest, trustworthy people,” she wrote in a letter to the FBI, meant as a warning to others — which I accessed through the Freedom of Information Act — “simply because they cannot comprehend that a person can be so deceptive to that extent; it’s almost unbelievable. I believe he is sick and lies continuously, defrauding people, hurting people including his own family. He himself has admitted this to me.” Richard Golub, a New York attorney and best-selling author who got involved with Simon writing a script for what became Factory Girl, says he wasn’t very good as a screenwriter but could spin self-aggrandizing stories. Finally fed up, Golub investigated Simon and confronted him. “I said, ‘I really don’t want to be in business with someone who is flim-flamming people,’ ” Golub told me. “ ‘You’ve left a trail of people behind that are going to sue you because you took their trust funds or inheritance or conned them into investing in projects you never delivered.’ ” Later that night, Simon called Golub. “He said, ‘Look, you really have my number,’ ” Golub said. “ ‘I’ve led this really [expletive]-up life, and I really have conned and cheated a lot of people. But I’m turning over a new leaf.’ ” Several times, Brittany was confronted with evidence of Simon’s checkered past but refused to believe it or chose to ignore it. She was in love and fiercely loyal. After the late George Hickenlooper, director of Factory Girl, went public with criticism of Simon for claiming he produced that film (he really got his credit in a legal settlement), there was a late-night call from Brittany, with whom he had been friends. Hickenlooper said in an interview days before his death in October that Brittany pleaded with him to remove a scathing overview of Simon’s “frivolous lawsuit” he had posted on IMDb. “ ‘If you ruin my husband, you are going to ruin me,’ ” Hickenlooper recalled Brittany saying. “I just said, ‘Look, you’ve got to clear your head on this, honey.’ I just knew she was so fragile that anyone who lovingly gave her the time of day and could put up with her eccentricities she would be attached to immediately.” Despite the evidence, Brittany believed Simon would provide financial security, help revive her career and allow her to fulfill her dream of being a mother. In their first year, they did find a creative flowering together. He shot hundreds of photos of Brittany and would play piano at night while she lay beneath the baby grand listening. Brittany had been completely taken with Simon. What she didn’t know when they met was that Simon was nearly broke and in a legal battle with a producer on White Hotel, Susan Stewart Potter, who hired him to direct, then discovered he was trying to cut her out. He eventually paid Stewart a legal settlement of more than $300,000. When Simon moved into Brittany’s house, he didn’t mention he was leaving his last fiancee with thousands in unpaid rent on an L.A. apartment or that he had written numerous bad checks. Shortly after they married, Brittany paid $10,000 to a casting director who had sued Simon over a bounced check. I first met Simon shortly after their marriage, when Brittany brought him to our house in Encino for Father’s Day 2007. Simon led the conversation, played piano and went outside to smoke a cigar, which Brittany hurried to light. Simon told us they had to take extreme security precautions because they were under surveillance by helicopters and their phone was bugged. He said he had hired a private eye who gave Simon names of family and friends who cheated, stole from them or sold information to the tabloids. It turned out to be one of the few times we saw them in the next two years. Simon, as many of Brittany’s family members and friends came to believe, had created a web of paranoia around Brittany and used it to separate her from anyone who might have challenged his dominance. Simon even told terrible tales about his mother, apparently to keep her from telling Brittany and Sharon the truth about him. Linda Monjack says she met her daughter-in-law only once, at dinner in New York in 2007. But Simon communicated with his mother by phone and e-mail nearly every day. Simon’s health, meanwhile, took a sudden turn for the worse in the second year of their marriage after he fell off a ladder during a photo shoot in Los Angeles. That apparently started his seizures, which he also told me were tied to brain tumors. His mother told me his use of prescription medications after the marriage was a surprise to her because before that, he had been adamant about not using drugs. She also believes her son developed Munchausen’s syndrome, where a person fakes illness to get attention. She was skeptical about the cause of his seizures and believes her son could somehow make it appear that his heart stopped. Simon, though, claimed he had various heart problems and needed open-heart surgery. But his autopsy showed a healthy, slightly enlarged heart, and his doctor in Burbank told authorities that Simon had taken an EKG exam shortly before his death and that his heart was fine. At about 3 a.m. on Brittany’s final morning, power returned to the Hollywood Hills after a 45-minute blackout. Brittany woke and made her way to the little balcony off the cluttered bedroom. At his wife’s request, Simon phoned upstairs to Sharon and said Brittany needed her. Sharon came down carrying Clara, named after Brittany’s favorite old-time star, Clara Bow, another one-time Hollywood “It” girl. What Sharon saw frightened her. “She was lying on the patio trying to catch her breath,” Sharon recalled. “I said ‘Baby, get up.’ She said: ‘Mommy, I can’t catch my breath. Help me. Help me.’ ” Simon recalled, “She said to her mom: ‘I’m dying. I’m going to die. Mommy, I love you.’ ” Sharon and Simon were sympathetic, but Brittany frequently complained about ailments, so they didn’t take it seriously. “She was always so dramatic,” Sharon said. “I’ve replayed that so many times. She asked if she could use the oxygen, but Simon said her heart could stop with oxygen, and anyway he then had another seizure, a long, horrific seizure.” Sharon then made her daughter hot tea with ginger and lemon. “Her lips were parched, like she was dehydrated,” Sharon said. “So I made her drink that.” Brittany returned to her peach bathroom around 7:30 a.m., followed minutes later by Sharon. “She said, ‘Mommy, I really don’t feel well,’ ” Sharon told me. As Brittany collapsed around 8 a.m., Sharon pulled her daughter to her and screamed for Simon, who said to call 911 while he moved Brittany into a cold shower. Sharon, on instructions from the 911 operator, talked Simon through resuscitation efforts until the paramedics arrived. In a statement, Sharon tells Entertainment Tonight : "As I am dealing daily with the heart-wrenching loss of my entire family, I am shocked by Mr. Block's statements. This is very disturbing that someone that was supposed to be mine and Brittany's friend, and someone who works for The Hollywood Reporter, would make statements that are 100-percent untrue. For anyone to even fathom that I would just sit and watch my only beloved daughter die and not get help instantly is beyond my way of thinking and despicable." Brittany was rushed to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, with Sharon and Simon following by car. Simon remembered being directed to a children’s waiting room with little green chairs. Around 10 a.m., a physician said they couldn’t save her. “I said, ‘What about medical science?’ ” Simon recalled. “ ‘Isn’t there anything that can keep her alive? Do anything!’ But then they told us she hadn’t made it.” Simon at first refused an autopsy because he didn’t want her beautiful body violated, he said, and felt it went against his orthodox Jewish tradition. But the L.A. coroner insisted, eventually finding that she died of pneumonia, anemia and a toxic cocktail of prescription drugs: a perfect storm of ailments and overmedication. “She had been sick at least two weeks,” assistant L.A. Coroner Ed Winter said. “Had they taken her to a doctor or hospital, it would have been treatable.” On May 23, five months after his wife, Simon died in the same bedroom at age 40, curiously from similar causes: acute pneumonia and severe anemia. He too had been taking a lot of prescription drugs, but the coroner ruled that out as a direct cause of death. Even so, Simon’s drug use and doctor shopping, along with that of Corey Haim and others, is under investigation by a multi-agency task force led by the California Attorney General’s Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement. It is looking into celebrity abuse of prescription meds, doctor shopping and the use of aliases. It is impossible to know if Brittany might still be alive had Simon not come along. However, it seems obvious that he brought out her worst traits and contributed to an atmosphere that was ultimately deadly to her. Rex Beaber, a L.A. clinical psychologist and attorney, didn’t know Simon but says after hearing his story that his behavior was consistent with a sociopathic personality disorder. He called what happened to Brittany “an age-old story you see commonly with people who meet narcissistic personalities and people who are sociopathic. They have a kind of blood instinct for the weakness of people around them.” In his way, Simon did love her, but that was part of his sickness. He was mentally ill and couldn’t help preying on her at a time when she was highly susceptible to his oily charm, false promises and outright lies. Still, even knowing the truth about Simon, I can understand from my own hours talking with him how seductive he could be. He would look you in the eye and tell his tall tales with such sincerity, and he always had an excuse for anything bad said about him. And for his myriad faults, Simon was transformed in his final days with Brittany. “I don’t think I can be damaged any more than I have been,” Simon told me. “When ‘freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose,’ as my wife would quote Janis Joplin, I’ve lost the only thing that really mattered to me. I lived and breathed my wife. She was the light of my life.” Now the light has gone dark for both of them.

This song makes me miss R-N-B...or at least when R-N-B singers sang R-N-B music. IMX - Beatiful (You Are) (Self-titled) (2001)

I talked to the guy who created this and he gave me a link 2 a TON of mash-ups he's done. This mix is on there as well as 2 other. One of them is FP and 2Pac and another has FP with Weezer...lol. The Nirvana one is clearly the best. U'll see a looooong list that has mixes with other artists like 2pac, Mariah, Rihanna, Black Eyed Peas, Ne-Yo, Biggie, Timbaland, Pink, etc... Enjoy! http://www.mediafire.com/mixessss

Vanilla Ice Reveals Why He Broke Up With Madonna By PopEater Staff Posted Jan 11th 2011 05:15AM Vanilla Ice and MadonnaRapper Vanilla Ice revealed in an interview that he dated Madonna in 1991. It was "exciting" to be in a relationship with an older woman, and she was a "great lover," he told 'News of the World,' according to Digital Spy. He was 24 years old, and Madonna was 33 at the time they were dating. Ice, whose real name is Robert Van Winkle, ended it when Madonna published her 1992 coffee-table book 'Sex,' which featured intimate photographs of the couple and images of her with other men. "I broke up with her after she printed that book because I was hurt to be an unwitting part of this slutty package," the 'Ice Ice Baby' rapper said. "It was disgusting and cheap. We were in a relationship yet it looked like she was screwing all these other people." He goes on to say, "I thought she was taking pictures and running round naked because she was like that. Then when the book came out I was so embarrassed and ashamed. It was a porno. She threw me in like I was a product off a shelf and I didn't appreciate it. That was it and I ended it. She said she didn't have sex with these men but it looked like she was." Ice is currently participating in the UK reality competition 'Dancing on Ice'.

That says something. I'm not sure what "that" is since the the genre of music that has also gone to the hell the hardest regarding the so-called artists that are popular and the awful forgettable music that gets spins for a 1 month to a year before we never hear it again.

THIS IS ILL!!!!! I LOVE THIS!!! This reminds me of the metal remixes of Onyx's "Slam"...expect those were real. The video fits the vibe of the mix too. I gotta share this on Facebook!

I don't know if anyone saw the new Marky Mark movie The Fighter. I thought it was pretty good. This article is an interview with Big Ace (emcee, actor, former Marky Mark + The Funky Bunch member) regarding the movie and him and Mark coming up. I forgot the source, he just linked this to his Facebook page. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Interview with one of Mark Wahlberg’s real life entourage and actor in “The Fighter” Anthony H. Thomas 2010 November 25 tags: Ace, Anthony H. Thomas, Ashley Ace, Big Ace, boxing, Entourage, Mark Wahlberg, Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch, The Fighter, The Funk Effects by ifelicious ANTHONY THOMAS ONLINE * Twitter- BIGACEmusic * Myspace- myspace.com/bigacemusic * OurFilmSpace.com- Anthony Thomas If you watch the movie trailer for “The Fighter,” you’ll catch a glimpse of Anthony H. Thomas (aka “Ace” or aka “Big Ace” or, back in the days of Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch, aka “Ashley Ace”) as the boxer wearing yellow shorts named Hernandez who is matched against “Irish” Micky Ward played by Mark Wahlberg. “I’m the guy that he fights before he gets the title fight,” explains Thomas. He’s also been training Wahlberg for the role of Micky in the boxing gym Wahlberg had built in his backyard about five years ago in an act of “if I build it, the movies will happen.” After several boxing related films fell through over the years and starring cast members came and went, Wahlberg battled in overtime to get “The Fighter” completed, always keeping his friends at his side in what is his real life entourage. “The Fighter” opens on December 10, 2010 in theaters nationwide. Thomas has also written an unofficial theme song with the same title as the movie. “THE FIGHTER” TRAILER Official movie website- www.thefightermovie.com I had the opportunity to talk to Anthony Thomas last week about “The Fighter,” his nearly lifelong friendship with Mark Wahlberg, and his career accomplishments. After our conversation, I realized that while Thomas has benefited from Wahlberg’s fame, he has not simply ridden Wahlberg’s coattails; rather, he has quite a career resume in his own right and has been grateful for the opportunities he’s landed on his own and through Wahlberg. The interview is presented below. THE FIGHTER film still from "The Fighter" with Anthony Thomas and Mark Wahlberg Ifelicious: Where are you from? Anthony: I was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts. Ifelicious: Have you heard the buzz back in the Boston area about this film coming out? Has it been screened there? Anthony: We actually haven’t [had a movie screening out there], but it’s a great buzz. Everyone’s waiting for the movie to come out, and the performances in the movie, they’re phenomenal. Christian Bale does a great performance, and Melissa Leo is awesome in it and Amy Adams. The whole cast is unbelievable. Ifelicious: When did you start training with Mark for ‘The Fighter?’ Anthony: Officially, I started training him in March of last year. When I came in, he had just finished training with Micky and Dicky. They had flown to LA. Ifelicious: Really? The actual brothers from Lowell in which ‘The Fighter’ is based? Anthony: Ya, Mark was really really involved in this film. He did everything to make sure he prepared for this role. He did a great job. Ifelicious: Have you met Micky and Dicky as well? Anthony: Ya, they’re great guys…The whole family is amazing. They come from a family of fighters…and they’re very close. Dicky actually trained me for the film. When we were in the gym and we were training and rehearsing, I was the only one that didn’t have a trainer, and he was like ‘Wait a minute…’ I was amazed by how fast he showed me these little bit of skills that helped me out so much in the ring. I’m so thankful…Bo [also] trained me a little bit. Bo Cleary was Mark’s trainer throughout the film also, and he gave me a lot of pointers. Ifelicious: Where did you train? Anthony: We trained in Mark’s backyard. He built a boxing ring in his backyard. When the first boxing movie came up, he built a ring,…He had all the fighters for the movie training there. It gave us a chance to all get to know each other because we were all just right there…and we picked up on a lot of things, too, because all the fighters had different backgrounds. Some of them were kickboxing champs some of them were actual boxing contenders. Ifelicious: How did you land the role of Hernandez? Anthony: I was actually just training with Mark, and David Russell [saw] us working out, and I felt very passionate about the film because I trained with [Mark] for so long, and I took a couple of beatings from him, so I was like ‘I think I deserve to be in this movie.’ Ifelicious: What was it like working with Mark on set? Anthony: It was great. Mark is exciting to work with because he’s so on it…I learned a lot in the ring actually filming the scene with him about throwing shots…Sometimes, being his friend, I don’t actually think about all the technical things that he knows that he can help us with. I learned a lot from him that day. I was really amazed. I took a lot of punches. Anthony H. Thomas as Hernandez in "The Fighter" Ifelicious: Do you come from a boxing background? Anthony: I was a martial artist when I was growing up. I trained a lot of martial artists and gymnasts. Ifelicious: I know you also write music. Was any of your music used in the movie itself or on the soundtrack to be released? Anthony: Well, my song is actually an unofficial song for the soundtrack. I submitted it for the movie, but I was told it was a time piece and they were looking for music during that time. Ifelicious: Oh ok, because this is supposed to take place in the 80s, right? Anthony: Ya…[the] song is called ‘The Fighter’ because I have to fight basically all my life to keep my dream alive. You know, because sometimes people around us can discourage us. You know how people think you’re just dreaming about what you want to do, and they don’t know how passionate you are and how much time you put into it, and where I come from, being in motion pictures is like a dream. I’ve been told, ‘Stop keeping your head in the clouds,’ but I always knew that that was my life so I just stuck with it, and my song is to inspire people to believe in yourself no matter if people believe in your dream or not because if you can believe in it, you can make it happen. Ifelicious: That’s a great inspirational song. When will I be able to hear it? Anthony: I’m actually working on the music video and it’s going to be released shortly after the film is released. Ifelicious: Will you use some of the scenes from ‘The Fighter’ in the video? Anthony: I don’t think so, but I’m actually going to LA over the weekend to film a scene with Mark for the video. Ifelicious: Ok, so he’s going to get involved with that, too. Anthony: Yes. Ifelicious: Wow, he’s a good guy to you. Anthony: He’s like my little brother, you know? We’ve been friends for years. When I was in my break dance crew [The Funk Effects], back in the day, Mark was actually the star of our group. He would come out and the whole crowd would go crazy because he was so little and he knew all the steps and he had his own following. People loved him. Anytime Mark stepped on the stage, the whole crowd just went bananas. THE FUNK EFFECTS We then went on talking about how Thomas got started. His early claim to fame was as the leader/choreographer for his dance crew The Funk Effects. “My dance crew was like local legends in Boston. We opened up for all the artists that came to Boston. We started out just being in talent shows and we won every talent show so we started getting requests to be guest stars at a lot of events. That’s how it began,” shared Thomas. I had a fun 80s break dancing flashback when he said, “I would not only enter the talent competition, but a lot of the groups would come to my house with linoleum and ask me to teach them some moves before the show. So I’m showing them moves for the show and I gotta compete against them also, so it was crazy, but I had a lot of fun.” NEW EDITION, NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK, MARKY MARK AND THE FUNKY BUNCH One of the Boston talent shows he won even landed him a spot on New Edition, an opportunity he turned down. “I didn’t really feel like I was part of a boy band, and I didn’t feel like I was boy band material. It’s one of the regrets that I have. I wish I stuck in there with those guys because they were good friends of mine, but because I had my own group at the time, too, I felt like I was more a part of a hip hop group than a boy band, ” explained Thomas. He did, however, do choreography with New Edition and later New Kids on the Block (NKOTB) thanks to Donnie Wahlberg (Marks’ brother) and Maurice Starr. While Thomas continued doing dance choreography for dozens of groups and artists, he got together with Mark Wahlberg to form a group of their own called Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch. “I worked alongside David Vaughan to help them to better their stage presence, and throughout the course of working with them we established great friendships, and we always promised each other whoever made it first we’d help each other out. So once they (NKOTB) had taken off, he (Donnie) came back and told me about Mark’s project and asked me to choreograph the group. So I got my old band together, this band that I used to work with, this group called Best Kept Secret, and I formed a group, The Funky Bunch, with Scott Ross (Scottie Gee), and Hector Barros (Hector the Booty Inspector), and Terry Yancey (DJ T)- he was sort of already in the group as the DJ and we just started clicking and everything worked really well.” ENTOURAGE From there, Thomas moved out to LA with Wahlberg in a story similar to Wahlberg’s hit HBO series “Entourage,” an idea that Thomas said came from him and the show’s executive producer Eric Weinstein: “The story actually came about with me and Eric. We were actually sitting around one day thinking it would be great if we wrote a show about us, the real entourage and our experiences because it was just incredible some of the things that we went through and the people we came in contact with was mind blowing, and it ended up becoming a show. When I met those guys (the cast of ‘Entourage’), I was like, ‘Wow, you guys are actually doing a show about us. This is amazing.’” When Wahlberg was asked the same question by Lara Logan on the CBS “60 Minutes” episode that aired on Sunday, November 21, 2010, he started out by saying, “It depends on who you ask.” (check out 60 Minutes clips “How Mark Wahlberg Reinvented Himself” http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7076433n and “Mark Wahlberg’s Real-Life Entourage” http://bit.ly/bpBhus) FILM CAREER Thomas has also landed several acting roles besides “The Fighter.” Many of them are also films that included Wahlberg in the cast such as “Planet of the Apes,” “Invincible,” and “I Heart Huckabees.” He’s also had roles on his own such as the indie flick “Runaways.” Writing screenplays is also one of Thomas’s talents. When I asked which of his talents prevails, he responded, “I’m very passionate about motion pictures and music and writing so I feel like directing would give me a chance to merge everything together.” For more about Anthony H. Thomas go to myspace.com/BigAceMusic or twitter.com/BIGACEmusic.

QUEEN LATIFAH - Go Ahead All Hail The Queen (2002) This is how it's done, Icky Minaj.

That's totally random and cool at the same time. TONI BRAXTON + TREY SONGZ - Yesterday Pulse (2009)

I hope they use the last season an excuse to have some BONUS FEATURES!!!

Shock-G - Keep It Beautiful + Cherry Flava'd Email http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZp7ofuqe3k Shock-G - 2Pac interview....this is why i call him the kind of story telling...lol

Shock-G - Cinnamon Waves http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1Qys4XSskI Shock-G, Humpty Hump, Ray Luv - We Some Hustlas http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1Qys4XSskI

2Pac + Shock-G - F*** The World The Luniz, Shock-G, Humpty Hump, Richie Rich, E-40, Spice-1 - I Got 5 On It (Remix)

2Pac + Shock-G - Trapped 2Pac (Produced by Shock-G) - So Many Tears

2Pac + Digital Underground - I Get Around Digital Underground - Whinde Me Up http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHM0guvpxss

Digital Underground - No Nose Job Digital Underground - Oregano Flow (This beat is crazy. It's always been one of my favs...I didn't know 2Pac passed up on this until I read this article)

Digital Underground - Return of The Crazy One Digital Underground - Same Song (This is the song that introduced 2Pac to the mainstream)

Digital Undergroung - Doowhatchalike Digital Underground - Kiss You Back http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-4oLNHcC3k

Shock-G is the brains behind the legendary Digital Underground. He's an emcee, producer, musician, and a Hip-Hop genius. For years he played himself as well as Humpty Hump and nobody knew they were the same person. I put "The Humpty Dance" video in here so you'll instantly know who I'm talking about. Then I also put one of my favorite interview moments from him in here. Digital Underground - The Humpty Dance (1990) Shock-G interview from 2Pac documentary "Thug Angel"

Quincy Jones Reworks Classics With Help of Hip-Hop Community After a stellar, 60-plus year career in music, Quincy Jones just released 'Q: Soul Bossa Nostra,' a collection of his past material that has been given a contemporary makeover from acts including John Legend, Talib Kweli and Akon. The artist, composer, producer, arranger and conductor was born on the Southside of Chicago and has taken his show around the globe, creating music that runs the gamut of genres; from Michael Jackson and Frank Sinatra to Ray Charles and Dizzie Gillespie. Putting a modern take on some of his classic tunes like 'Strawberry 23,' 'The Secret Garden,' and 'Soul Bossa Nova,' came at the behest of one of his followers. "Timbaland talked to me about six years ago in South Beach and said, 'Here's what we'd like to do ... ' which was open it up to the whole hip-hop community," said Jones. "So piece by piece people picked their songs and so forth. Most of the time everybody knew exactly what they wanted to do." Jones serves as an executive producer on 'Soul Bossa Nostra,' with names like Q-Tip, Scott Storch and Jermaine Dupri handling the production duties. Besides the aforementioned producers, the hip-hop influence is well represented on the album with contributions from Ludacris, T.I. and Three 6 Mafia. While some of Jones' peers and followers were quick to dismiss the hip-hop genre, Jones embraced the culture and music from its start. "Because it's all part of our evolution," said Jones of why he readily accepted hip-hop. "People don't realize, just take jazz ... In New Orleans, first there was Buddy Bolden, then there was King Oliver and he copied Buddy Bolden so he became King Oliver and got his own style, Louis Armstrong copied him and got his own style, Roy Eldridge copied him and got his own style, then Dizzy Gillepsie copied him. That's the way it works, evolution." The insight Jones gives when answering his questions is only obvious considering he has taken home 27 Grammys -- and has a record 79 nominations for the award -- amidst a countless myriad of other honors (honorary doctorates, best selling author, etc.). Throughout the accolades and years, Jones was lead by a specific musical element. "Melody is the voice of God," he begins, "That's the power in music ... melody, always will be."

Ha ha...I just call it as I see it. :laugh:

DIGITAL UNDERGROUND - Oregano Flow Future Rhythm (1996)

Digital Underground has always been one of my favorite groups. They are insanely different, silly, conscious, creative, and level headed. Shock-G is a freakin' genious and an amazing story teller. Here's a a long article of him covering D.U.'s and 2Pac's catalog. ------------------------------------------------------------- Gregory “Shock G” Jacobs is having a moment. During the interview, the musical mastermind behind the Oakland-based rap-funk outfit Digital Underground literally breaks down in tears. “I’m sorry,” he says with a quiver in his voice. “But I just get so emotional thinking about the past. I’m so happy that people are finally paying attention to my work.” By all accounts, Shock G should be a broken man. This decade has seen the gifted producer and musician battle drug addiction and money woes. Yet, the New York-born musical visionary, who first found platinum success with Digital Underground’s genre-challenging 1990 classic debut Sex Packets, has risen above it all. He is again clean, focused and musing over the origin of his Humpty Hump alias—a genius concoction that propelled D.U.’s massive crossover hit “The Humpty Dance.” Shock G is still a fan and student of music who gets audibly excited when he speaks of working with his hero Parliament Funkadelic bandleader George Clinton. When the subject turns to his late friend and brother-in-spirit 2Pac, he talks with pride of producing some of the larger-than-life icon’s most seminal work. There is even an infectious optimism expressed when he discusses his own recording future. Indeed, Shock G is more than a survivor. He is triumphant. And he is alive to tell the tale.—Keith Murphy "Your Life's A Cartoon"--Digital Underground (1988) “I’m from New York, but I grew up in Tampa Bay, Florida. The difference is New York moved with the times. As a city, it embraced disco more than the south did. By the time hip-hop started becoming popular, they abandoned that old funk sound. Meanwhile in Tampa, the top records every year on the radio were always Parliament Funkadelic. They loved other funk bands too, but especially P-Funk. New York pretty much went all the way up to ‘Flash Light’ and that was it. Stuff like ‘Aqua Boogie’ and ‘(Not Just) Knee Deep’ and even ‘Atomic Dog’ were not as huge in New York as [Chic’s] ‘Good Times.’ P-Funk was everything to us. All it took for me was someone telling me, ‘Did you know ‘Flash Light’ and ‘One Nation Under A Groove’ were made by the same group?’ By 1980, I started really getting into P-Funk. I was 16. At the same time, I had already lived in New York when hip-hop was starting. I left NYC in ’78, so I was in that younger crowd of hip-hop fans. I was there for the DJ’s in the park at the jams, so when I moved to Florida we kept that hip-hop connection going. I had my own crew in Tampa Bay…an MC from Brooklyn, and another cat from New York. We would send my cousins the tapes of what we were doing and they would send us tapes back like, ‘You missed Fantastic 5 MC’s vs. Grandmaster Flash and Busy B was hosting!’ I had one foot in hip-hop being a DJ and the other foot in P-Funk. I was a self-taught musician on piano, but a lot of older cats and blues dudes would give a me a tip here and there. At around 23, I started to do less MCing and more playing. I learned from copying records for my bands. Playing instruments was something you didn’t see in hip-hop. And on top of that, I was a huge Prince fan. I loved that he did it all in the studio by himself. When we first started Digital Underground, we were trying to be like what Public Enemy would later become. But P.E. was way better than us [laughs]. Me and my partner Kenny K were Stokely Carmichael fanatics. I used to be that cat that walked around in berets. We just wanted to do something heavy. The way we were thinking was, ‘We are going to have to bomb a courthouse one day…[laughs]’ So in hindsight, I’m glad music saved me from being that hardcore revolutionary because Funkadelic’s message was always, ‘Free your mind and your ass will follow.’ I adapted that philosophy for Digital Underground from (P-Funk band leader) George [Clinton]. Kenny and I had gone through two or three different group names and had been on Battle of the Jams together on the radio station…we had history. Jimmy (Chopmaster J) on the other hand was somebody I just met when I moved to Oakland right before Digital Underground started. He was the guy with a lot of connects. I was a salesman at a music store and in 1987 I recorded a couple of demos, just **** I wanted to do to send to my homies. I left the masters in Jimmy’s 4-track cassette. He sent those tracks behind my back to his high school buddy Darryl who was in LA working at Mocola Records. He just wanted to see what the songs would do. Their response was, ‘This is great…this is the new sound that’s on the radio…we can do something with this…we want to bring you to LA to record.’ That’s how Jimmy became a member of the group. And that was the beginning of how Digital Underground’s first single ‘Your Life’s a Cartoon.’ Funny thing is when they told me about the trip to LA I quit my job. I even made a big announcement to my family like, ‘Yeah…I have record coming out!’ But it didn’t go down. I had to go beg for my job back [laughs]. There were some other label deals that fell through. So by the time I met Antron Gregory, who was NWA’s road manager and went on to become 2Pac’s manager, I was no longer making any big announcements to my family that I had a record coming out. I was looking like an idiot. So Antron was the one who really made it happen for us; we ended up with [a deal with TNT/Macola Records]. As for the ‘Your Life’s a Cartoon’ album cover, like most of our albums I did the artwork. P-Funk might have gave me the courage to use drawings instead of photos, but the style of my drawings came much more from humorist stuff like Mad Magazine and also the Pink Panther cartoon. P-Funk’s art was much more serious. At the time of ‘Your Life’s a Cartoon’ I didn’t really have a pride thing yet going with music. It was just a fun thing to do. My whole thinking was, ‘This is bugged out…I know P-Funk fans are going to like this!’” "Doowutchyalike"--Digital Underground (1989) “We were at 18,000 copies with ‘Your Life’s a Cartoon.’ The rule at that time was if you did close to 20,000 copies independently that transferred to gold or platinum with major label promotion. So Antron is shopping us and at one point he’s like, ‘I have three companies interested in y’all. Virgin, Warners and Tommy Boy.’ And we all went, ‘Tommy Boy?!!!’ Being a New York-based hip-hop label, we thought that was an honor being a group from California. We thought they knew what the **** to do with rap records…De La Soul was there, so was Stetsasonic and Queen Latifah…they had great acts. You have to understand where a song like "Doowutchyalike” came from. I grew up in a household where my parents threw big parties. The whole neighborhood would always come over. I had everybody in the projects coming to the ‘burbs [laughs]. So when it was time to record ‘Doowutchyalike’ I just felt like the song was all about having a good time and breaking all the rules in hip-hop. You are not allowed to bite, so let’s bite on purpose. Let’s talk about stuff that no one talks about. So with the video, it was my idea to say let’s not shoot a traditional clip. Let’s film an actual party and get the shots where we are mouthing the words to the song when needed. It was a three-day party at a hotel in downtown Oakland. Between us and our friends promoting the party with flyers we ended up with over 100 people there. The scenes where everybody is knocked out in the bed, that’s really going on. By this time Digital Underground was coming together. Kenny K was our DJ when we first signed to Tommy Boy, but the label was like, ‘We like the demo, but we want to see you live.’ Unfortunately, Kenny was in Tampa dealing with some family **** when we had to do the showcase. This was happening all the time ‘til the other cats in the group were getting pissed at Kenny. That’s why he ended up out of the group. So I was like, ‘Damn, I need a DJ and Tommy Boy is giving us three days to do a show.’ Again Jimmy, who was good for hooking us up with ****, was messing with this girl who said she knew a DJ that was pretty good. It was DJ Fuze, but back then he was known as DJ Goldfinger. So Fuze showed up on the strength of liking ‘Life’s a Cartoon’ and my rhyming, which he thought was good. He showed up with a couple of crates of records and tapes and put on this whole display for us. He was totally about it…he was completely hip-hop. He had all the underground **** that you only know if you were from the East Coast. He had the original records to the break beats, not that compilation stuff. He does this showcase for us and Tommy Boy are like, ‘Hey, you guys want to open up for EPMD and Queen Latifah in Germany?’ We were like, ‘Hell yeah!’ I went to Fuze and was like, ‘Man, I have these shows to do and my boy Kenny is still out of town. Can you go out with us again?’ Fuze is like, ‘Sure, but if I leave town with you, you have to put my man Money B. on because we’re a group.’ That’s how Money joined Digital Underground. Before those two were Raw Fusion, they were known as MGM. Money B was there to do the extra vocals with me on ‘Doowutchyalike’ and he was great. Fuze put the scratches on it. Once we went on tour together that bonded us all. Here we are thinking that we are supposed to do everything live onstage…we are traveling with all our samplers, keyboards, midi cables…I’m talking about 17 cases! Everything we usually set up in the studio we set up onstage [laughs]. We didn’t know that we should have been utilizing tapes for some of the musical parts just yet. It was a grueling tour. We had DJ Fuze do the shots for ‘Doowutchyalike’ and we had another DJ there to just play music in between shots. The ‘Doowutchyalike’ video was also Humpty Hump’s first appearance. He was a slow, piece-by-piece evolution. It started with me imitating that cartoon singing Warner Bros. frog. That bit was funny to me. There was also some Bootsy, Rodney Dangerfield, Morris Day and Slick Rick thrown in. But it was mainly based on my uncle Tony Red. He really talks like Humpty. He didn’t know how to dress, but he was the coolest nigga in the world. He would walk up to girls and say the most stupid **** [laughs]. They would look at him crazy, but he would be like, [in the Humpty Hump voice], ‘There must be something wrong with y’all, man…I’m Tony Red.’ It wasn’t until the day we shot the video and we were picking up party supplies that the whole idea for Humpty’s nose came about. This store in Berkley had some bargain bin noses that were 99 cents each. One was a sharp nose, one was a pig nose and the others were some odd, brown Groucho Marx noses. I put it on and it was just so ****ing hilarious to me. That was the birth of Humpy Hump. Once ‘Doowutchyalike’ sold about 90,000 copies, Tommy Boy told us to get an album together. We signed with them for about $60 grand which was cool to us because we finished what would become Sex Packets in two weeks for about $20 grand.” Sex Packets--Digital Underground (1990) “Sex Packets didn’t feel like 100 percent hip-hop. It felt like some psychedelic, space funk. It felt like we were doing what P-Funk or Prince would be doing had they used samplers. Smooth, one of the singers in the group, he was into P-Funk and Prince just like me. He had a 30 to 40 Parliament albums just like me. We would be on some P-Funk **** together. Smooth was the cat singing the line on ‘Sex Packets’, ‘I'm just feeling what you love/And I'm givin’ til’ you need…’ He kind of sings like Curtis Mayfield, but he was a suit and tie guy working at MCI making a lot of money. Smooth would come to the studio and be down and help us out, but he didn’t really take us seriously because we were doing that rap fad he heard about. Meanwhile, in his briefcase he has an actual plan to create sex packets. The nigga was nuts [laughs]. Smooth really believed he was going to get a grant from the United States government to develop this technology to help astronauts have sex when they traveled. I thought it was a brilliant idea, but I didn’t think technology reached a point to where we could induce a dream and allow someone to see who they wanted and have sex with them. Acid and ecstasy were close, but it wasn’t quite that. As we were putting together the concept of the album I told him, ‘You know what? Sex packets would make a cold concept for a song. Let me try to flip it.’ At the time, I was living on Smooth’s couch because my girl had thrown me out. We would sit there recording **** all day and night. He came home from work one day and I had it all figured out. I told him, ’Listen to this.’ [shock G sings and plays the chords to ‘Sex Pocket’ on the keyboards during the interview]. I had the hook all the way. He added a line or two to it. About five Long Island Iced Teas later, we had the song finished melody wise. Then we started going over the Sex Packet concept to make sure people couldn’t poke holes in it. We started studying the properties of ecstasy and LSD and what all the jargon was. We created a story where there was a professor at Stanford University who designed sex packets for astronaut travel so they could be sexually satisfied. The name of it was GSRA which stood for Genetic Suppression Release Antidote. We created this story that a powerful drug leaked into the streets of San Francisco and it was called sex packets on the street. Then on top of that, we went to Kinko’s and made a serious looking pamphlet on how to use sex packets because it was dangerous and ****ing people up [laughs]. We made thousands of those pamphlets and left them on the back of buses and at hospitals. After all that, it was Tommy Boy’s idea to name the entire album after the ‘Sex Packets’ song. The label was all about numbers. They told us, ‘Statistics show that the word sex attracts the eye 10 times more in records stores.’ To them, it was just that ****, but to us we were like, ‘Yeah…that makes it a great concept album!’ That’s what made me write another song called ‘Packet Man’ to help explain the concept of sex packets to people so they wouldn’t have to read so much into it. The moment when we knew Sex Packets was a hit was after we dropped ‘The Humpty Dance.’ We experienced it when we got off the plane coming from our first tour in Europe. We left as frogs but we came back as princes. It was a two-month tour and over there they loved ‘Doowutchyalike’ but they like ‘The Humpty Dance’ too much. We had just finished the album and the final song was a remix for ‘Freaks of the Industry’ because that’s not how we originally recorded the song. It kept getting knocked down because of sample clearances. Diana Ross did not want us using the original beat for [‘Love Hangover’] because her people didn’t want to associate their client with the lyrics on ‘Freaks of the Industry.’ The second to last song we got done was ‘The Humpty Dance,’ which was sent out and leaked to radio stations, DJ’s and TV channels. At that time, we were still on tour in Europe not knowing that the song was blowing up in the States. We didn’t even think it was going to be a hit. Some people in Digital Underground was like, ‘I don’t know Shock…it’s kind of funky sounding, but is that hip-hop?’ We left October and came back in January and **** went crazy. When we got off that plane, soon as we walked through the terminal, the employees at the airport were like, ‘Oh, that’s Digital Underground,’ running up to us! New York was on ‘The Humpty Dance’ because the bass coming out of the cars were killing people on the streets. Suddenly, ‘The Humpty Dance’ was all you heard when cars went by; the bass was just crazy. It was also one of the biggest dance songs of that year. When we performed ‘The Humpty Dance’ onstage at the Coliseum on tour with Public Enemy and LL Cool J, the whole dome would stand up and rap the entire song with us for all three verses! They knew all the lyrics and everybody would do the Humpty dance. People actually thought Humpty was a real person. We even had a Humpty double, which fooled a lot [of our own peers]. That Humpty dance is so goofy [laughs]. It wasn’t even a real dance; it really came from Money B’s little brother. All I added was the wobbly, ‘throw-your-hands-up-there’s-an-earthquake’ part. When we saw people on Arsenio and other rap groups doing the Humpty dance from Scoop, Scraps and Big Daddy Kane to Tone Loc’s dancers at awards shows, we were like, ‘Wow…people are treating this like a real dance.’ I was just trying to imitate my uncle Tony Red. We ended up going platinum with Sex Packets. It was all in the life. Queen Latifah would tell me that ‘Sex Packets’ was one of her favorite songs and that she had it on her lovemaking R&B tape next to Al B Sure. That’s why I don’t take credit for it today. But back then I was thinking, ‘Wow, this is the reaction to the first album we put together in two weeks?!!! I was just joking with this ****.’ It was easy to get caught up with all the success. Monica Lynch (then President of Tommy Boy) said to me, ‘I hope you don’t go down that path of some of the other artists on the label.’ They got really big headed after blowing up. I just told her that would never happen to me. But after Sex Packets, I started to go down that same path that Monica Lynch warned me about. I was gassed into thinking that I was the sole reason for Digital Underground’s success. We just thought ‘The Humpty Dance’ was how songs go when you have a huge pop hit. Then you realize that’s not how it happens. We didn’t have many more of those. I needed to go back to being humble and following my ears.” This Is An EP Release--Digital Underground (1991) “Tommy Boy wanted another album right after the tour, but I told them I couldn’t have an album out that fast…We wasn’t Public Enemy…we didn’t have a Bomb Squad in the studio making our beats. We made all our own **** so we had to start on it when got home. Tommy Boy heard me freaking out, so they said, ‘Okay…just put an EP out to hold people over.’ It was their idea to include ‘Same Song’ on the EP as well as a couple of remixes. That’s why the EP didn’t have a concept, which to me was a sin. ‘Same Song’ was originally featured in this Dan Aykroyd movie called Nothing But Trouble. This was also 2Pac’s introduction to the public. There’s one misconception that I want to clear up. Pac was never a Digital Underground dancer. He was our roadie. And out of all the roadies we ever had, he was the best. You never lost anything on his watch. The only thing you could say about Pac was how wild he was. It was later that he started performing onstage with us. Pac would probably get us arrested in every other city because he would pop **** at the police quick [laughs]. Sometimes he would get us in unnecessary fights. He would never back down even if he were in the wrong. But if they were ****ing with us and we were innocent, which happened most of the time, we would support 2Pac 100 percent. But a lot of times he was just wrong [laughs]. Our first meeting with 2Pac was set up through Antron. He wanted me to be the ears for him and tell him whether or not he should sign Pac. From there, 2Pac became our label mate. He had presence when he rhymed. But Pac began to become restless so Antron called me in a panic and asked if we could take him on tour with us because he had a feeling that he was losing him. He just got offered a position with the Black Liberation Army at this college in Atlanta. Pac was ready to take that job and say **** it because the music was taking too long. So, Pac took Money B’s brother place on our tour with Public Enemy and Big Daddy Kane. He did some dancing onstage, but he was mainly our roadie. At first I didn’t want to disrespect him because I knew Pac was a serious MC. I didn’t want to ask him to dance or be our roadie. I thought it was beneath him, but 2Pac calls me back and he’s like, ‘Hell yeah, nigga…I’ll do that!’ He never acted like he was a member of Digital Underground. We all felt like D.U. was a humorist band and Pac’s message was very serious. But we had already been around the world with Pac on tour and he was ripping up the after parties when we passed the mic around. So we asked him to be on ‘Same Song.’ Even my mother saw that there was something special inside Pac. She walked over to me during the ‘Same Song’ video shoot and asked, ‘Gregory, who is that right there?’ She hadn’t even heard of Pac yet. I’m like, ‘Oh, that’s 2Pac.’ And she said, ‘Watch him…he has that quality. I don’t know what he sounds like. But he looks like he’s a star.’ For me, it was one step closer to that super group I envisioned in the mold of P-Funk. I figured the more MC’s you would see in Digital Underground the less the fans would figure out that I was the piano man and Humpty Hump and Shock G. At that time, if you seemed like you knew a lot about playing music you were considered less hip-hop. So I didn’t want to appear like I was Prince—like I was above it all or this God, which is how I looked at him. Some people criticized the This Is A EP Release because it had two or three songs that people had already heard and it came out in a plain white wrapper. Whatever. I tried to make it as interesting as I could.” Sons Of The P--Digital Underground (1991) “When we get to the second album, me, Marlon (D.U. member and vocalist) and Smooth were playing with the possibility that George Clinton was down to work with us! We actually heard that George said ‘The Humpty Dance’ was hot, which was just crazy to us! Originally, we asked him to appear in ‘The Humpty Hump Dance’ video, but he couldn’t fly out. I felt like P-Funk was this Beatles like group that was being slept on. George never got a Grammy…he never got mentioned…they only speak of George as a great producer and bandleader today. I’m so happy that he finally got his due. After we received the phone call that George was down, we came up with the Sons of The P concept, which wasn’t my original concept. It was Marlon who came up with it…he’s also a huge Parliament fan just like me and Smooth. I told him that I liked the name and thought it would make a dope song title. [The tradeoff was] that Marlon would be featured on the song. And he was with it. But we had to get George to certify ‘Sons of The P.’ So we sent George some of the stuff we were working on. We go to meet him in Detroit…this is our God, our guru. George walks in the studio in the middle of the summer looking like a vagrant homeless person that crawled out from under a bridge [laughs]. His fatigues looked like they had been balled up and pulled out of the laundry; his shirt was dirty. And he smelled like he had been in those clothes for two or three days. And his hair…it was coming out of his ears, his nose; his beard was lopsided…it was all over the place. He had coke boogers in his beard! The crazy part is, during that day, Digital Underground was having our little issues and problems. But when George walked in and said, ‘What’s up, man?’ you could just see the room transform. We were in the Mothership! We were all at ease. There’s something about how down to earth George is. George is the bottom cat…His vibe is so good and he brings the best out of people. He is so informative…he can talk to you about government law and space…George was even telling me about what happened with Rakim in his settlement with Eric B. and I didn’t even know they had beef! When we heard his voice on our record it was just surreal. It’s not a gimmick with George. Just how he came off on record that is how he is in person. When we were in the booth with him he just leveled the playing field. **** going to the bathroom and hitting your armpits with a towel…he made everyone feel so comfortable because how could you be anything worst them him? We would do little coke bumps in the studio with him because we thought it was cool thinking we are doing coke with George Clinton! We trying to keep up with him. When George would run out of coke he would be like, ‘I guess that’s it.’ But then while we were listening to the playback of a track we would catch George digging in his sock and on accident finding another sack of coke like, ‘Oh yeah…this is a good one here. [laughs].’ You could tell the bag wasn’t new…the texture looked like it was beat to death, like it was liquid. George never ran out of coke! But I kept my mind on what we were there to do. We didn’t have to ask George to do much on ‘Sons of The P.’ He gave us way more stuff than we needed. He would hear a song once and learn it instantly. He never had to re-do vocals. He was amazing. We did gold on Sons of the P, which wasn’t bad. But I started to calculate that Humpty formula on such songs as ‘No Nose Job,’ ‘Kiss You Back’ and on the next album with ‘The Return of The Crazy One.’ Unfortunately, it wasn’t as good. You could hear it. That’s when I realized that I didn’t know what I did on Sex Packets that made it connect with people on such a huge level. But we already started to see some things from Tommy Boy. When we picked ‘Kiss You Back’ as the first single they asked us, ‘How come Humpty isn’t on it? Can he just be on the song?’ So the compromise was that I put him on the song somehow. Then we wanted to do a video for ‘Sons of The P’ with George in it and Tommy Boy was like, ‘Well, that’s not really hip-hop.’ And I’m telling them, ‘Since when have we’ve only been hip-hop???’ It was becoming a struggle.” 2Pacalypse Now Sessions--2Pac ("Words Of Wisdom" and "Rebel Of The Underground," 1991) “We were working on 2Pac’s [debut] album a whole year before he even went on tour with us. Everybody in Digital Underground was producing songs for 2Pacalypse Now. His album took some time to put together. So after we finished it we started shopping Pac to the labels. We played it to for Tommy Boy a couple of times but they wanted to hear more music. They would tell us, ‘Well, we are looking at the charts and conscious stuff like Public Enemy and X-Clan is on the decline. Stuff that’s street and pimpish is on the upswing.’ To Tommy Boy if it was thuggish or outlaw, it was in. We were like **** it…we just kept shopping Pac to other labels. But soon as ‘Same Song’ came out he got a few calls from the labels. When I was doing those beats on 2Pacalypse Now, I was kind of [giving a nod] to Public Enemy. I was going for a really hard sound. [but as we later found out], Pac was capable of so much more.” The Body-Hat Syndrome--Digital Underground (1993) “We were being warned by everybody. Every time we would see Stetsasonic and other artists on Tommy Boy they would tell us, ‘Man, Tom (Tom Silverman, the founder of Tommy Boy) is shady…watch him.’ But we were having success, so we wasn’t listening to any of that. We were getting paid. But by the time we did Sons of The P, Tommy Boy was sending songs back to us because there wasn’t enough Humpty on the album. We kept telling them that we didn’t want to tell the same joke over and over. But Tommy Boy felt it was our bread and butter. At one point they interrupted me while I was talking and said, ‘Shock, listen…We want some funny Humpty songs or you and Money B on some sex ****…that’s what Digital Underground is and that’s what you are good at…write some songs about female body parts like Sir Mix-a-Lot.’ They were telling us to make songs like ‘Baby Got Back’ and ‘Put ‘Em On The Glass.’ That’s when we knew we had to go [laughs]. We told the label we were doing a political song with Pac ("Wussup Wit The Luv"), but they wasn’t trying to hear none of that. When we were making The Body-Hat Syndrome we felt like we were this group of all these different varieties and MC’s, faces, sounds and abilities. We felt like we were getting squeezed into just being the Humpty band. Tommy Boy made it seem like Humpty was Digital Underground’s lead rapper…they wanted all our singles to feature him. They were really starting to piss us off. We were fighting for our lives. You have a guy in your group who doubles as three people who are believed to be real. How about promoting that? Or how about the fact that we were the first rap group to go get George Clinton and work with him and the fact that we were influential in giving Dr. Dre the confidence to do the funk thing hard. Because while he loved P-Funk in his heart, Dre didn’t think it was hip-hop yet. EPMD sampled a P-Funk song or two, but they got off of it. We were the first people to say, ‘George is the next James Brown catalogue…just watch!’ We felt like all of these things were being overlooked by Tommy Boy. We knew we were more than just Humpty Hump. I liked ‘Return of The Crazy One,’ but the fact that it was the first song on The Body-Hat Syndrome and that it was the first singe—that was all Tommy Boy. What we were doing is an anti-radio, anti-commercial album on purpose. We knew we were going to be out of there as a pop group, so we sat down and thought, ‘How can we make a record that our fans would still like, but Tommy Boy would hate?’ [laughs] ‘Return of The Crazy One’ was too nasty to be a big hit. The video was in the top 10 on the Playboy Channel, but it didn’t do that well on the other video channels because they wanted us to edit it. BET told us there was too much ass and titties. When The Body-Hat Syndrome didn’t do so well, Tommy Boy released us out of our seven-album contract. But that was okay because we wanted out. It wasn’t just us. Queen Latifah wanted out so bad. She got on Motown and finally did well. Tommy Boy, bless their hearts, was always a singles label. They really didn’t develop artists. They were just trying to streamline us down to the gimmick of Humpty Hump. That was never what Digital Underground was about.” "I Get Around"--2Pac (1993) “I never knew that 2Pac wanted that Digital Underground sound. I was surprised when he told me because I always thought of Pac as more aggressive. That’s how ‘I Get Around’ came about. Meanwhile, Pac had become a star. He’s down in LA shooting Poetic Justice with Janet Jackson. He’s doing his next album (Strictly 4 My NIGGAZ) with all of these other producers. He’s recording a song with Ice Cube and Ice T (‘Last Wordz’). He was doing his thizzle. Before we recorded ‘I Get Around,’ it was a four-track beat that was going around our camp. People would just freestyle over it. Every time we would play it people would say, ‘Damn, that **** sounds good!’ Meanwhile, I was working on Saafir’s album and when he heard the song he walked up to me and said, ‘Man, I would murder this track…I know you ain’t going to give this to Pac…I know you are going to keep it for Digital Underground.’ At the time, I was also set to be the person who scored this reality show about living on the streets. One of the songs I played for them was ‘I Get Around’ and we were going to use Saafir on the song. I was excited, but after I played them the beat in the reality show people were like, ‘We don’t know…it’s kind of pretty.’ In fact, there were other people who turned that song down! So right now I’m thinking it’s not even that big of a deal. Then Pac calls and tells me to send him some tracks for [strictly 4 My NIGGAZ]. I put the beat to ‘I Get Around’ on the tape first because I thought it was the best of all the songs on there. But I didn’t think Pac would like it. I had some more rougher beats that I thought would fit him better. Later, I got a voice message from Pac saying, ‘Yes nigga…yes! I like the first beat…that’s what I’m talking about…that’s the one!’ We knew ‘I Get Around’ was going to be a hit just from the video shoot. We had done four years worth of videos by then, but everyone on the set was going crazy when they heard the song for the first time. Every musician on the set was walking up to me, ‘Dog, what did you use on this song? Is that a sample?’ I started it off by sampling Roger’s [‘Computer Love’]…that whole part where it goes, ‘You know I get around….’ That was the one to me because it had that ****ing harmony. I just looped up that sample, added the transformer, and touched a few piano chords over it. This was all before I added the drums. I always do my drums the same way. I finish everything else but the drums to see how everything moves…that’s how I figure out where to put the kick and the snare. During the ‘I Get Around’ session Pac laid down his verses first. He left a hole on the track and told Money B and me to write our verse while he was finishing up his vocals. I was drained, so I told Pac I was going to come back tomorrow and lay down my verse. But Pac was like, ‘I can’t wait…they are mastering my album tomorrow…it has to be done tonight.’ A messenger was in town to take the tape back on a plane to Interscope when we finished it, so Pac picks up a pad, walks away from me and he looks up in the air and writes some lines and looks up and writes a few more lines. I swear, less than two minutes he had my part on ‘I Get Around’ written. And it was dope! I was a little hesitant because back then you didn’t say other people’s rhymes…you wrote your own rhymes. And at the time I was engaged to this girl Melissa who I later married. So how was I going to be the freak of the industry on this one? All that sex **** I was talking on the first two or three records was because I was single. I was chasing pussy. Now I’m in love and I have a wife on the way. I’m listening to Pac’s own verse and I’m like, ‘Damn, I don’t want to disrespect Melissa.’ Pac knew that. He had already thought about Melissa for me with that line, ‘Because I’m a freak doesn’t mean we can hit the sheets…’ Pac respected my relationship. When people come up to me they always say the satin in the panties line. I had one of the best in the business writing for me. If you had to have a ghostwriter why not 2Pac? And he would always hit me off with $30 grand per track. It was lovely. I wasn’t in the bathrooms when all the sex was jumping off during the shooting of ‘I Get Around. Yeah, I did my thing at previous concerts and studio sessions. But Pac was on another level [laughs]. When we were on tour in Europe everyone would bring used condoms to the road managers’ room. Whoever had the most at the end of the tour got a pot of money. Everybody who didn’t **** for that night had to put $100 in the pot. So over the course of the tour that pot was getting big. It was $4 grand by the end of the tour. And Pac and Money B would always win it [laughs]. Tommy Boy was pissed when they heard ‘I Get Around.’ They were like, ‘Shock…how could you give that track away?’ And I’m like, ‘What do you mean? It’s coming out on Pac’s album. He’s in our group.’ We sent that song to Tommy Boy just to say, ‘See…we can do songs without Humpty.’ I was so glad that it went down like that. Pac would always act like we were doing him a favor by producing ‘I Get Around’ because he was still a new artist. Even the label thanked us. But you never know when some little thing that you do for somebody is going to turn into something big.” "I Got 5 On It"--The Luniz feat. Dru Down, E-40, Richie Rich, Shock G, and Spice 1 (1994) “The Luniz, based on us doing ‘I Get Around’ with ‘Pac, called me to produce a few songs on their album [Operation Stackola]. But one of the coolest things was appearing on [the remix to ‘I Got 5 On It’]. Truthfully, I didn’t know what to do because my confidence was very slim as an MC. I felt good as a producer…but I didn’t know what to talk about. I played out Humpty Hump, so I was looking for an identity as an artist. But my skills were still there. And the way the Luniz asked me was humbling: ‘We need you on this one Shock…We need all the Bay Area ballers, man.’ That gave me the confidence to write something. I’m in studio writing and the Luniz are in there with me and I’m bouncing ideas off of Knumskull. I knew I was going to get ripped a new asshole when it came to that speed rapping like E-40 and Spice-1 was doing [laughs]. So I was like, ‘Yo, I’m going to sound like I’m in slow motion…so let me give my **** a melody.’ That’s why I incorporated the ‘I Get Around’ line. It was a cool contrast and it fit in there and I had a lot of people saying, ‘Ah Shock…I love your part!’ But I don’t think the Luniz would have came and got me if I didn’t have that 2Pac association.” Me Against The World Sessions--2Pac ('So Many Tears,' '**** The World,' 1995) “I sent three good songs to Pac for the Me Against The World album. The first one was what turned out to be Digital Underground’s ‘Oregano Flow,’ the second was ‘So Many Tears’ and the third one was a beat I can’t remember. So Pac calls me back in Oakland and he’s like, ‘I like the first one and the fourth one.’ And I’m puzzled because I only sent three tracks. I thought he was ****ing with me. I flew up to LA to meet with Pac about the songs. I’m like, ‘There is no fourth beat…I searched and searched.’ He played the tape for me and when the third beat ran out some old, dusty **** that I had taped over and didn’t want no one to hear came on. He’s like, ‘This one, nigga!’ It was that ‘**** The World’ beat, which was really a Prince remake. We had all that Minneapolis **** in it. But we ended up not doing it because nobody felt the beat but me. But Pac loved it. The original line was: ‘Something Minneapolis said…’ Pac let us keep some of those background vocals on there. We later changed the line to ‘They try to say that I don’t care…’ ‘So Many Tears’ is another one that wasn’t made with Pac in mind. Stevie Wonder’s ‘That Girl’ was one of my favorite songs, so I knew at some point I was going to sample it. You can hear Stevie’s texture on ‘So Many Tears. I didn’t jack the bassline…I wrote my own chords. But I used that metallic texture of ‘That Girl.’ Pac was just weird and special that way. He was not a businessman out to get rich. He was trying to change the world through music. I’m spoiled when I get demos now. People telling me, ‘I’ve been shot more than Pac and been to jail…I’m a real thug…you should **** with me.’ I just tell them that’s not why we ****ed with Pac. ‘ All that later **** that later happened was just Suge Knight’s influence. That wasn’t the Pac I knew. I still tear up when I think about him.” Future Rhythm--Digital Underground (1996) “I was going through all types of weird **** during this album. I didn’t know who I was that year [laughs]. Still, it was fun because D.U. had that creative freedom of no longer being on Tommy Boy. I could experiment again and I was back to having fun recording like I was before the music industry. Digital Underground was becoming boring to me because when we were on Tommy Boy we were expected to crank out the same song. So it was fun to get from under that. But by then my wife and I were having problems. If you notice, Future Rhythm is very asexual. Like I said, this was just a weird time for me. But I loved the freedom we had.” "Love Sign Remix"--Prince feat. Nona Gaye (1998) “At the time I did [the ‘Love Sign’ remix] for Prince I had yet to meet him. That came later. But I have to tell this story. While I’m in New York working on D.U.’s Who Got The Gravy people are coming up to me going, ‘Yo, good to see you on that song with Prince.’ So I would turn around and look at whoever I was with and say, ‘I ain’t never did no song with Prince…’ Then I get to the studio and the engineer is like, ‘I like the work you did on that Crystal Ball album with Prince.’ I’m like, ‘Why does everybody keep saying that? I never did a song with Prince.’ So I went to the store and sure enough a remix for ‘Love Sign’ produced by Shock G was on there. I thought I took too much ecstasy and acid because I couldn’t remember doing that song [laughs]. How did I meet Prince and not remember that session??? I thought I was losing my mind. But you know what it was? It was a remix that Prince’s Paisley Park label hired us to do with Nona Gaye. This was in 1993 and it was a song that Prince wrote for her. We muted Prince’s lead vocal tracks and added our tracks on there and that was it. But when we sent the track back to Prince it never came out. At that time, we just thought it was the closest we would ever get to Prince like, ‘Wow, we touched the same tape that Prince touched.’ After six years, I forgot about that ****. Prince left the track exactly how we sent it to him. I missed the release party for that album, but while I was in New York we got sent an invite to go to another Prince album release party in Soho. He had Q-Tip on the turntables…everybody was in the house. They thought because I had this new Digital Underground single called ‘Wind Me Up’ that I should go to the party as Humpty. I bought a couple of girls with me and had a limo…it was a big publicity thing. I’m in the VIP area late into the party and Prince comes walking through. He’s wearing the high heels and this crazy red suit that the Joker would have on! You can tell he was in the room because everybody’s eyes were lighting up. Back then the thinking was if you wanted to talk to Prince you had to wait for him to talk to you because you might run him away, so you knew not to **** with him. I’m standing there as Humpty, so I have to talk like Humpty. I got Stevie Wonder cracking up [laughs]. And Prince walks up and he speaks to me! He asked me how I liked the album and I was like, ‘Man, I loved that song ‘Don’t Play Me’ and ‘Dream Factory’ swings hard…it’s some of the hardest **** ever made.’ He was like, ‘Yeah…that was cool how the groove fit right in there.’ I talked to Prince in the flesh!” Who Got The Gravy?--Digital Underground (1998) “Jake Records reached out to us for a deal. They told us, ‘All those other labels didn’t know what to do with you. We do.’ Afeni Shakur (2Pac’s mother) introduced me to Gary Katz [one of the founders of Jake Records]. He had produced Steely Dan and had his hand in a few rock things. Katz told me, ‘Just do your thing…I know how to bring a record in.’ He supposedly knew what he was doing and just wanted to oversee the project. We became friends. So, I’m in New York mixing Who Got The Gravy working with KRS-One, Biz Markie…even Big Pun was ****ing with us. I just remember everyone telling me, ‘Yo **** that, Shock…We are going to help you get back on!’ The way KRS showed up to the studio was so mind blowing…with so much love and support. Just like George, he gave us way more songs than we needed. We had a big budget…he didn’t ask for a lot of money, but we were going to give him $10,000 just to appear on a song. I didn’t even think KRS would show up. I didn’t think he would mess with silly ass Digital Underground. This is the mighty KRS-One. And he was like, ‘What??? I work with anything conscious. When you said ‘Yo fat girl, come here are you ticklish on ‘The Humpty Dance,’ that was telling everybody to join the party!’ I never thought of it that way, but he was right. KRS goes into the booth and proceeds to lay so many things. When it got to three songs I was like, ‘Kris…I don’t know if I can afford much more than $10 grand…’ And he goes, ‘What? Shock, I’m not here for that…I’m here to make your album tight. That’s what hip-hop is about.’ I was just baffled by that. I was so used to so many Cali cats hustling money for sessions. But I should have known. It was the same thing with Big Pun…he was more thugged out than we were. So I didn’t think he was going to come, but he was like, ‘Come on man…you were one of the first persons to give props to Puerto Ricans.’ Pun’s food showed up to the studio first [laughs]. Nothing but big plates of Spanish food. It was a trip. But to tell you the truth, I thought Who Got The Gravy would be the last D.U. album. When that one really didn’t happen the way I envisioned it I was done with it. I’m telling my manager and everybody, ‘Stop making me do Digital Underground albums.’ It was a different time in hip-hop. The music wasn’t bad. It was actually good. It was just that people wanted Jay-Z right now. And I wasn’t mad at that. So I just left it alone.” Fear of a Mixed Planet--Shock G (2004) “My mom would ask me, ‘How come you don’t own any property?…you are going to wind up like one of those broke musicians!’ After she told me that, I would give my mom money to save up for me and she would put it in a CD account for me. A few years later, Michael Concepcion, who was the dude who put together the ‘All In The Same Gang’ song and is in a wheel chair because of gang violence, called me to his house. I thought I should go because I never picked up my plaque from appearing on it. Meanwhile, my neighbor was noticing me getting high a lot in the late ‘90s and early ‘2000’s. I was doing a lot of ecstasy and acid. I had a serious problem. I was getting away from the old me. And yes, I was a bit down and out because I owed so much in back taxes. So Mike sits me down and says, ‘You are having too much fun. We want you back in the studio. We want you back doing what you do.’ I’m like, ‘Man, I’m not a gangsta…I can’t talk about the stuff that rappers are talking about today. That’s all people want to hear.’ I’m feeling like there was no place for us. Even De La Soul and Public Enemy were struggling. And those groups had way more respect than us. That’s the philosophy I gave Mike. But Mike was like, ‘Shock, everybody can’t be Snoop and Dre. The kids need to hear something else. They need it now more than ever, man.’ He looked at me like, ‘I’m not just trying to get you off of drugs. I’m telling you we need you.’ And he was saying all this from a wheelchair! He knew how that street life could affect you. He made me see things in a different way. Ever since then, I started valuing who I am and what I do. A few years later in 2002, I started forgetting that the money was coming out of my checks. So one day my mom tells me, ‘You have $70,000.’ I told her, ‘Mom, I want my money.’ She asked me if I was ready to buy a house yet and ’m like, ‘Nah…I don’t want to buy a house. I want to make an album.’ Michael gave me that spark. I didn’t have any record industry ties. But I felt confident and I had something to say again. My mom didn’t even get mad at me. She understood. If you listen to Fear Of A Mixed Planet it doesn’t sound like anything you are supposed to be talking about in ’04 if you wanted a hit record. Once my solo album existed suddenly the pressure from Digital Underground was lifted off me. When my mother heard the album, she said, ‘You sound more vibrant than I’ve heard you in years. I knew this album is what you needed.'" Cuz A D.U. Party Don't Stop!--Digital Underground (2008) “People would always tell me they missed Digital Underground. There would even be these D.U. compilations of **** that wasn’t even supposed to come out. Finally this one dude Scott Thomas calls. He is now the CEO of Jake Records. He says, ‘I read online that you are broke and that you are not having fun in the studio anymore. I think that’s crazy. If you want to do something I will invest in you.’ We ended up putting together some D.U. live material from one of our shows. The deal was if I gave him a few new songs, he would put the live songs out, which became Cuz A D.U. Party Don’t Stop. Scott really loves Digital Underground and thinks that we should have never ever stopped. We announced that it was going to be the last D.U. album.” The Greenlight EP--Digital Underground (2010) “A couple of years later, Scott Thomas calls me up and says, ‘I have to tell you something. I was buying the masters off of the guy who owned the label that released Who Got The Gravy. Man, you didn’t tell me about these outtakes!’ These were just songs that we didn’t use. He was like, ‘Man, you gotta let me put these out. People want to hear this! We can say that this is an EP…the last Digital Underground release.’ But I didn’t want people thinking we just came into the studio and did this. So I decided to let him release it with the agreement that we would place the dates on which each song was recorded on the production notes. Today, Money B is still doing his solo records. And I just got finished working in Minneapolis with Dr. Fink (Prince’s former longtime keyboardist in the Revolution band) on a Prince tribute album. I did the artwork on it, which was kind of in the vain of the 1999 album cover. We talked to Tommy Boy about releasing it. We negotiated it and they gave us money mix the last track, but they stopped because they didn’t want to pay for all the song clearances. They were scared that Prince was going to sue them [laughs]. So, it’s become this tug of war. Now we have this little label in Minneapolis called Orphan Records that just doesn’t give a ****. They are going to release it. The album features Eric Leeds, Matt Fink, who helped produce it, Lollipop, an electro artists from Minneapolis, Toni Christian, the former lead singer and guitarist from Mazarati and some other people. It should be out sometime next year. I can die happy today. I used to have nightmares that I would have a heart attack with the Humpty nose on and they were going to bury me and put Humpty Hump on my tombstone [laughs]. Because **** like that happens. Maybe that’s my legacy. But the touring is still fun. Interpreting our songs in different ways is always cool. I can pop up on a Prince album. Life doesn’t suck. But everyone who sees me on the street or when my name comes up on TMZ or VH1 thinks that my life sucks…like I’m dying [laughs]. But I’m out on tour with P-Funk. I’m producing and Djing for Murs who is letting me use the keys and drum machine to interpret his songs how I want. I finally feel like I’m out of the box. Now it’s easier for me to put that Humpty nose on.”