Shock G was the Donald Fagen of hip hop: a piano player, most comfortable behind his instrument, thrust into the role of a front man. His birth name was Gregory Edward Jacobs, and most of his audience knew and remembered him as Humpty Hump – a sign of how uneasy he was in his skin, with even his onstage persona hidden behind other personas. But every one of them exuded warmth and good humour. In Oakland, where Shock G made his name, he’ll be remembered not just for his genius but for being a gentle and generous force on the scene.
Oakland is not a big city; one of its nicknames is ‘the Town’. But for a long while, starting in the late 1980s, it had one of the strongest rap scenes in the country. Too Short, E-40, Del tha Funkee Homosapien, Saafir, Souls of Mischief, the Coup and Tupac Shakur were all Oakland rappers. Until Shakur came along, MC Hammer was far and away the most popular. (Elsewhere, Hammer may have been seen as a joke; in Oakland he’s a hero.) Shock G, who mentored Saafir and Shakur, among others, liked to play the role of a clown. But really he was the scene’s jack-of-all-trades.
Raised up and down the East Coast, like Shakur, he’d been there when hip hop emerged from New York’s outer boroughs. In Tampa, where his father lived, he dropped out of high school, got in and out of trouble with the law, and formed a large crew of MCs and DJs called the Master Blasters. They were popular enough to land Jacobs his own radio show on Tampa’s big R&B station.
