Happy 25th Anniversary to Digital Underground’s fourth studio album Future Rhythm, originally released June 4, 1996.
Greg “Shock G” Jacobs conceived Digital Underground as funk warriors. Inspired by George Clinton of Parliament-Funkadelic, he brought together an eclectic collection of rappers, vocalists, musicians, and producers during the late 1980s. Based in the Bay Area, the group championed the funk and made high concept long-players that honored the vision of Clinton and the crew.
The problem was, by the time the mid-1990s rolled around, the group believed things were getting stagnant. Their record label wanted them to regurgitate the same hit over and over again, and the collective felt stifled. With Future Rhythm, their fourth full-length affair, they changed their approach, and dropped one of their most imaginative albums.
Future Rhythm was Digital Underground’s first album not released by Tommy Boy Records. The crew’s relationship with Tommy Boy had grown increasing acrimonious as the years passed. Shock G later contended that the group grew frustrated with the label’s obsession with the Humpty Hump character.
“We kept telling them that we didn’t want to tell the same joke over and over,” Shock G explained in a 2010 Vibe interview. “But Tommy Boy felt it was our bread and butter. … They were really starting to piss us off. We were fighting for our lives. … They were just trying to streamline us down to the gimmick of Humpty Hump. That was never what Digital Underground was about.”
After their third album The Body-Hat Syndrome (1993) did relatively poor in terms of sales, Tommy Boy released the group from its seven-album contract. A few years later, Digital Underground released an untitled cassette independently, which served as an early version of what would become Future Rhythm, to Bay Area record stores. The 10-song version of the album featured only the words “Digital Underground featuring Luniz & Del” and “Executive Produced By: Wet Records” on the cover and spine. A high school friend mailed the tape out to me while I was away at college in Philadelphia, since it seemed unlikely that it would find its way out to the East Coast otherwise.
The song “We Got More,” featuring the Luniz, would appear on the Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood soundtrack in early 1996. Months later, Critique/BMG Records would officially release Future Rhythm. It features seven songs that had already appeared on the independent cassette, plus a few new songs, interludes, and a remix. Some of the songs from the initial version would pop up later on Digital Underground’s compilation The Lost Files (1999).
Future Rhythm definitely feels like a different type of Digital Underground album. The madcap, seat-of-the-pants, almost zany vibe built into their previous releases is largely absent. Other albums felt like extended parties, and this one…doesn’t. That’s not to say that the fun is gone, but the album reflects a different side of Shock G’s creativity. “I was going through all types of weird shit during this album,” Shock G explained to Vibe. “I didn’t know who I was that year.”
Regardless, Shock G found himself rejuvenated while putting together Future Rhythm. “[I]t was fun because D.U. had that creative freedom of no longer being on Tommy Boy,” he added. “I could experiment again and I was back to having fun recording like I was before the music industry.”
As soft musical reboots go, Future Rhythm is a successful one. Shock reimagined Digital Underground’s signature sound, moving the group in a new direction, while still retaining the sense of imagination that had defined them from the beginning.
Like many other Digital Underground projects, Future Rhythm was built around a unifying theme. In this case, many of the songs are made to represent different full-immersive combat video games. The album’s liner notes promise “Real Time Synchronized Movement Tracking” and describe the use of “New & Improved 8 Trillion Light Molecule per Milli-Inch Hologram Laser Technology.” Users are invited to play bizarre games like “High Risk Anti-Protection Combat Orgy” and “Walk the Dog Real Kool.”
Despite all the sexually charged language and images of scantily clad women (and men) in the liner notes, Shock G maintains Future Rhythm is a largely asexual album. “[B]y then my wife and I were having problems,” he told Vibe, and that effected the album’s lyrical content. But what the album lacks in sexual innuendo, it makes up for in creative content and composition.
Shock G approached production differently on Future Rhythm, stepping up his use of live instrumentation. This isn’t a new development, as Digital Underground had made use of live instrumentation since its earliest days, especially through Shock’s “Piano Man” alter ego. However, part of the group’s signature had been their widespread use of samples. Particularly from the music of Parliament-Funkadelic and other psychedelic funk sources.
Things are also “cleaner” on Future Rhythm. The beats on D.U.’s Body-Hat Syndrome were often dense and messy, with Shock heaping samples and vocals into a thick musical stew. With this project, the musical compositions generally aren’t as difficult to digest. The album extensively displays Shock G’s talent on the keyboard and his ability to devise innovative musical arrangements. As a vehicle for this type of experimentation, Shock not only utilizes the Piano Man, but also Shakeem “Krazy Horse” Bocaj, a separate personality. In the years to come, Shock would often use the Bocaj moniker for his production work.
And even if there was less sampled Parliament-Funkadelic material than usual, Future Rhythm still felt like an album inspired by Clinton’s world view. A song like “Hokis Pokis (Classic Case)” would fit in on 1970s/80s P-Funk album with little or no modification. Both Shock G and Humpty Hump contribute deranged lyrics and ad-libs to the demented keyboard and piano grooves. In terms of lyrical content, there’s a lot of Humpty describing fictional mental disorders, Shock G chants, and the rest of the crew quacking like ducks.
Future Rhythm also features more singing than had previously appeared on other Digital Underground projects. The collective were not strangers to incorporating vocalizations into their projects, as evidenced by popular singles like “Kiss You Back” and the title tracks of their first two albums. This time out, Shock showcases his crooning abilities, and enlists other talented vocalists like Erika “Shay Sulpacia” and Marsha Lurry, who display their talents on “Walk Real Kool.” Shock brings in singer/guitarist Kenya Gruv and the gravelly-voiced Tyranny on “Stylin’.” Gruv recorded the slow jam “Top of the World” for the Menace II Society soundtrack (1993), but his appearances had been limited since.
Shock mixes his singing and rapping talents on “Oregano Flow,” the album’s first single. The track is among the smoothest that Digital Underground ever recorded, with Shock hooking up a buttery beat featuring guitars, keys, and samples from Loose Ends’ 1984 single “Hangin’ on a String (Contemplating).” While rapping, Shock mixes direct Parliament-Funkadelic references, quoting “Everybody’s funking but don’t know how…”, with P-Funk inspired imagery, encouraging listeners to get “bifocals for your ears” and admonishing critics that “you can’t hear me with binoculars.” It’s one of the best singles that the group ever released, and an underappreciated song from the mid-1990s era.
Shock and D.U. attempt to envision the future on the album’s title track, both through their lyrics and the song’s groove. The track itself moves with almost mechanical precision, pulsing with strains of keys and synths and a pounding drum track as Shock G and Mac-Mone illustrate the technological advances and societal growth that the years to come will bring. Later, “Hella Bump” provides a healthy slice of vintage Bay Area bass-heavy slap. The group isn’t the first to liken selling their music to pushing weight, but the song is the album’s hardest knocking track.
And, yes, overall, there’s less Humpty Hump on Future Rhythm. On select tracks, he “duets” with Shock, and provides ad-libs, like on the aforementioned “Hokis Pokis.” The goofy-voiced personality is most prominently featured on “Food Fight,” an appropriately food-themed battle track, describing his edible arsenal at length, while also comparing his D.U. compadres to types of gourmet meals. Del the Funky Homosapien of the Hieroglyphics crew drops by to deliver a deranged verse, while barely keeping himself on the rails.
Humpty shows up again on the posse cut “Glooty-Us-Maximus,” built around a peppy keyboard and guitar groove. Despite what the title may suggest, the song doesn’t really have anything to do with sex, instead serving as an appeal for unity across all population and racial lines, because “everybody’s butt stank.” Apparently, many different emcees affiliated with D.U. wrote verses for the lengthy track, and Shock picked the six dopest for the final version. Those who made the cut include longtime member Money-B, Saafir (who prominently appeared on Body-Hat Syndrome), and Knumbskull from the Luniz.
As mentioned earlier, both Knumbskull and Luniz cohort Yukmouth appear on “We Got More.” Shock G had produced for the group’s debut Operation: Stackola (1995) and continued to create the most left-of-center tracks that the duo ever rapped over. Musically, Shock G brews up an East Asian flavor, using meandering flutes and woodwinds to make one of the finest beats on the album. Shock and both members of the Luniz come correct on the lyrical end, with Yukmouth rapping, “Studio gangstas wanna battle, well let's battle / I blasted, they plastic ass get put underground with the Fraggles.”
D.U. occasionally pushes things fully to the hilt on Future Rhythm. “Fool Get a Clue” is pretty indescribable, unlike much of what the crew ever released before. Shock G teams with the Black Spooks team-up to give a surreal, bordering on psychedelic listening experience. Shock builds the track’s foundation around a sample of Funkadelic’s “Funk Gets Stronger (Killer Millimeter Longer)” and adds in feedback, beeps, clicks, and other tones. A live saxophone also worms its way into the song, making everything seem hallucinatory. It’s the most carnal track on the album, with Shock’s endorsements of free love and public nudity. However, it’s also centered around the subject of rejecting negativity in one’s life and finding one’s own voice.
Future Rhythm ends with “Want It All,” the album’s messiest endeavor, featuring Shock and Humpty teaming with Money-B, doing a mix of singing and rapping. The song’s theme is self-explanatory, as everyone explains how they seek to have their cake and eat it too, despite suggestions of its impossibility. Horns and vocals rise and fall, woven between snatches of a sample from Fatback Band’s “Put Your Love In My Tender Care.”
Like all great artists that seek to “reinvent” themselves, Digital Underground found a way to do so while still making an album that could have only been recorded by them. Future Rhythm is as convincing a testament to the genius of the late Shock G and the rest of the members of the group as their “golden age” material. The album continued to make the group’s funk, and legend, grow even stronger.
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