1992 (Tommy Boy)
2023 (Tommy Boy, RSD Black Friday Reissue)Every Wednesday, in honor of Ed Lover Dance Day from Yo! MTV Raps, I take a break from rock and roll to write a little bit about hip hop. In the late 80s and early 90s hip hop ruled my musical life. During this often called 'Golden Era' I discovered so much incredible music. As I am slowly replacing the CDs I've had for thirty plus years with vinyl copies, I'm going to talk about some albums that had a really important impact on me during some very formative years.
The "Body-Hat" Syndrome is the third Digital Underground album and it originally came out back in 1993. I'm pretty sure I bought it back then, but it didn't survive one of my CD purges over the year. The reason I'm pretty confident I owned it is because both of the LPs I'm about to talk about are missing a track I remember vividly where DU called out a bunch of other artists that lifted or repurposed the beat of "The Humpty Dance" over the years. I didn't listen to this album for many years, but decided to revisit it a few years ago.
And like the Digital Underground records that came before it, I enjoy it - for the most part. Every DU album is too long. That's kind of the gimmick, really. A long, diverse album with some grand slams and a few misses along the way. The albums single, "The Return of the Crazy One" is the main Humpty song on the album, and for my money it's actually the best Humpty song in their entire catalog. It has such an ear worm of a beat behind it and it inevitably gets stuck in my head for days every time I listen to it. While writing this right now the album is playing in the background. I actually skipped "Return of the Crazy One" so it's not stuck in my head all day, but its piano riff is still managing to penetrate my brain.
The other thing that I like about the album is that it marks one of, if not the earliest appearance of Safari on record. He pops up with his off kilter cadence and in my opinion elevates every song he touches. I wish he had been part of the group on their first two records as well.
So, I have two versions here. The single LP version is the original pressing from 1993 that only came out in Italy. It's missing a few songs, and it's a whole lot of music crammed onto a single LP, but it was the only thing out there for 30 years. Thanks to my buddy Scott, for grabbing it for me to ship over to the US.
So naturally, within months of me finally pulling the trigger and buying a copy, a deluxe double LP version was announced for 2023's Record Store Day Black Friday. This version is infinitely superior, but it is missing the "Humpty Awards" track from the CD I mentioned earlier. Still, it has all of the real songs, sounds great and can still be found super cheap on Discogs. Worth it just to get "Crazy One" stuck in your head for a month.
Digital Underground - The "Body-Hat" Syndrome:
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