If ever there was an argument for death being a portal to a new plane of existence, Shock G might have it down. He died a few days ago, 57 years old. He was a co-inventor of contemporary hip hop. There are lots of actual bios of Shock, this isn’t one of them. And honestly, my brain is giving me a little stress in remembering all these details. I was going to write that I loved Shock, but we all loved him, what’s the point of stating the obvious when we’re all sitting around a puddle of spilled beer, and we’re in pain. Shock was just one of those guys that couldn’t die, because he was too smart, too sensitive, too hilarious, too gifted. But then we said that about Pac too, so what do we know?
I have to take off the veil for a minute … this is Rick Yukon, coming to you from a hotel on the back of the Walheem. I’m not sure that I’ve stopped drinking since I heard the news, it hit me like that time Stumpy Lefkowitz conked me on the noggin with a billiard stick. My head sounded like a coconut, that sound, I can still hear it. I had no idea that Shock had died, I read about it somewhere on social media, I can still hear the sound in my head … like a coconut, how could I have been so stupid? Not to give him a call from the old days? Not to appreciate him being alive back when he was alive. My head is hollow, I should have been a better person.
But we all say that, what’s the point of bringing up the obvious?
Shock G knew music as only a kind of trained musician could know music, he flexed, he competed, and when he couldn’t find competition, he invented competition. He put Humpty, Peanut and Buttafly on the stage because he couldn’t find enough people to prime the pump, to turn hip hop into more than music, but into something like a sporting event, where artists could compete and get their feedback directly. I’m going to say that Shock invented that. I don’t know if it’s true, but if it isn’t true, then I don’t know of anyone else who went to so much trouble to develop his own competition. And then Shock met Pac, and then Shock’s world changed. I don’t remember much from those days, I guess I drank a bit too much back then, and I was on the outskirts of the scene, I handled some of their technical issues. I had no idea what I was looking at back then. Shock’s work payed the bills, and that was enough. I remember the dawn of Pac over Shock’s life, I guess Shock was a bit in denial at first, that someone could be so good as Pac, that a mere human could cast a shadow over all of poetry. But it wasn’t long before Greg recognized what was happening in front of him, Hip Hop suddenly had its Albert Einstein. And then Greg was smart enough and talented enough to just stand back and let Pac do what Pac did. He produced, he played keys, but at that point, he no longer really needed Humpty or the Professor, he had found a competition that was so far beyond anything he could manage that it seemed his new life mission was to do whatever he could do for Pac, and we owe Shock for that.
Would there have been a Pac without Shock? Maybe not. What kind of complete, emotionally-resonant human does it take to not only admit that there is someone so far beyond his own abilities, but also help him up? The rest of us, we know what we do, we knock down true talent, we’re threatened by it. But Greg saw what was in front of his face, and he seemed to accept that to stand in Pac’s way would have been a crime against humanity. And here we are in 2021, Black Lives Matter, a cop was just pronounced guilty for killing someone. But Pac where there. And Pac was there because Shock was there. And Shock was there because Humpty and Peanut kept him there, and they were all there because Greg had a gift of nature. He had something in him so purely unselfish that it was like the curve of a puppy’s tail, or a beam of sunlight that pokes through the fog. Greg was there because Nature willed him to be there.
Yeah, I’m doing what I promised I wouldn’t do. I’m defining Shock in terms of Pac. They’re separate people. But they weren’t, they were as intertwined as two people could be. None of us even knew Pac. We know the guy who rained paychecks, we knew the fountainhead of that poetry, but he wouldn’t let any of us through the barricades. He seemed to open up to the women in his life, and he opened up to Greg. How do we mourn the force behind The Force of Nature? We can’t, because Pac is gone, but Shock will live forever. We learned from him how not to be selfish, how to smile when it hurts, and how to help the people you love.