Sex Packets

Baby the humpty dance is 6 and a half minutes long

Welllllllllllll...I was having a pretty good time at this party. I've always liked The Humpty Dance. It's cheeky and fun. The next track talks about verbal rape but ok, I guess that's just some macho posturing and it was 1990 and all. Rhymin' on the Funk, The New Jazz, and Underwater Rimes are fine with their "smooth flow" and "dope rhymes" such as "mobster" and "lobster." (Sincerely! Not sarcasm! The quotes are from the album!) These guys mostly seem silly and fun. And then...the last half of the record felt like I was listening to a joke where I wasn't exactly the punchline but the joke really wasn't meant for my ears (and maybe as a woman, I was punchline-adjacent). I won't say I was offended by all the sex talk --- I'm a feminist killjoy, not a prude --- but I didn't enjoy it and wanted to leave the party. I'll just take The Humpty Dance and go.

Kinda fun, but so incredibly dated. Not really for me. Also I wasn't expecting multiple songs about a sci-fi sexual fetish, but they may have been the highlight of the album.

Weirdly, I really like this. Conceptually, I feel like I would hate a rap concept album about a futuristic sex drug, but the variety and prowess of the rhymes feel futuristic even thirty years later. The production is really clean which is pretty anachronistic in terms of what was popular at the time. There are some duds in the middle of the album, but I like the rest of it enough to give this album a 5. Additionally, the comedic tongue-in-cheekness of the album and the idea of sex packets is very funny and adds to the futuristic tone and themes in the album. The skits aren't overbearing and are used pretty sparingly which is great for its replay-ability. I highly recommend this to anyone who likes hip-hop and conceptual albums. Highlights: 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 9, 11, and 13.

This is one of the better 90’s hip hop records on this list, a relief given it lasts 65 minutes. The rhythms seem faster, funkier than most contemporaries here, while the raps are pleasantly old school, slow and cheerful. The content is often nonsense, but knowingly so. Sex Packets’s content is also largely about itself: rappers rapping that what they’re doing on this record is what they’re doing on this record, and that it’s better than the rest: the 90’s hip-hop curse of recursion. This background makes the mini-concept album at the end a gift, though it’s ultimately just a sci-fi variation of some of the horny stuff that came earlier.

I knew Humpty, but for the rest of this album, it was a first. It really grabbed my attention…for a while. The funky beats with the silly raps are very 90s danceable. I enjoyed the nostalgia of the sound. The bulk of the sexual themes were mostly uninteresting to me, and after a while it felt like it was too drawn out. I connected with many of the samples, and I enjoyed how DU used them…but then I just wanted to go listen to the sources of the samples.

Like an hour of listening to Fresh Prince, tiresome.

This album isn't that bad. The only problem is that it's a concept album that revolves around being horny. I guess I should've tailored my expectations with a name like Sex Packets but still. The album is mixed great, and it sounds really good; however, I wouldn't ever be able to listen to this casually due to how uncomfortable it makes me. Favorite track: Sex Packets

Awesome album, with some really good songs

There are some really fun moments on this album, and I was really grooving to them. "Humpty Dance" is, as always, a fun funky classic. I like the way they swing on "The Way We Swing" (schwing!). "Rhymin' on the Funk" and "Underwater Rimes" continued the fun and I was really getting into this album. I liked how they seemed to really be having fun with this and not taking themselves too seriously. (Did I wince several times? You bet. It's early 90s hip hop. You're gonna wince.) The rest of it, however, while always funky, didn't feel as fun. "The Danger Zone" seemed out of place. Grim. By the time it got to "Freaks of the Industry" it was a little cringy. And then came the songs about the titular ;-) sex packets that were just...strange and creepy. Anyway, it's hard to rate because I did move to this music and I liked their sound so much. I just don't wanna hear about the underage fetish sex packets anymore.

One of the most challenging listens of the project so far, and not in a constructive or positive way. This thing is dripping in enough cheese to give any person a coronary - the bars are consistently corny, creepy, or both, leading to a steady level of baseline cringe that fluctuates from unbearable to uncomfortable. The beats offer no salvation as they opt to instead beat several 1-2 second samples out to 4-7 minutes at a time, meaning the backing tracks are at best stale and at worst infuriating. There’s one track that has some sort of female moaning/vocalizing looping over and over for the entire runtime, and it’s probably the most annoying track I’ve listened to out of nearly 700 albums on this list so far. This is not some nostalgic relic worth revisiting, it’s just plain bad and should remain firmly in the 90s.

Too loooooong. I knew an hour was going to be too long from the moment I clicked on the first song. If they had cut this down, getting rid of some of the weaker songs, to a nice 37 minutes, it'd be a better album. Doesn't age particularly well, at least that's my opinion. Some of this is just stupid and dumbed down. Like the emergence of "MC Blowfish." Give me a break, please. At times it feels like these people just learned that words can rhyme, because they came up with some of the most basic and boring rhymes I can imagine. Couldn't stand it after about 30 minutes of listening.

If I dislike something I can usually understand why other people might like, or why it could be considered a significant album. This though, I have no idea why it's on the list. It's so sleazy, with lyrics about masturbatory fantasies and the degradation of women. Really horrible. Despite there being abums from the 50s on the list, this feels far more out of date than anything I've heard so far. It feels grimy and sticky, so nasty.

Unapologetically arrogant and objectifies women and men in a sexual storyline carried throughout the album. I fucking loved it.

One of my favorite rap albums of all time. Uniquely entertaining with a funny flow. Also responsible for helping to launch the career of Tupac. RIP Tupac and Shock G

Great album!

Classic

Such a good album! My favourite so far. Every tune was great and the influence it had on all the hip hop I love is clear. Loved it!

closer to a 1 than a 3 - every song is overlong and the flows and rhymes are instantly dated and mega corny in that 1990 fresh prince way - but i kind of admire the intersection between its brazen stupidity and its sex-positivity

Parts of this are charming and I do like some of the beats, but so much of it is corny and inane that I can’t say I enjoyed it all that much. Also these guys seriously needed editors—did Doowutchyalike really have to be 9 minutes long? Best song: Underwater Rimes

A good example of how clownish and directionless hip hop could be in the early 90's. Pervy and dull in equal measure, and so goddam long..

Ayoooo who up listening to Sex Packets in 2022?

A lot of these early 90s hip-hop albums feel like they're here under obligation to give rap more representation, rather than because of the quality. This is one of them. There is absolutely no reason this should be over an hour long, it gets repetitive by the second song. In fact, you could half the runtime on all of these songs and have a superior album. Title track is genuinely good though, only positive thing about the album.

THis was soooo good. Basically all the songs were great. I love funny hip hop. I love Tupac. I love Gutfest '89. My favourite song was proibably 'Doowutchalike' because it's 8 minutes long

its been a bit since i've been generated an album i fell in love with more, i've been given stuff i already like and shit but this is just such a fucking good album its so fucking funny

One of the best New Jack Swing albums made. A classic!

In the late 1980s, Hip-Hop started absorbing more of the history of Black/American Pop Music outside of samples, and started to look to other song stylings, if you will, to inform the rhymes and the flow. Jazz vocal styles started to creep in, which was cool, to hear other approaches to riding a beat, or indeed, float over the beat. And, thank the Gods of the ever ringing Note, MCs and DJs remembered Mr. George and the glorious cosmology Afronauts, Mad Scientists, and in the Jimi Hendrix sci-fi tradition, tales of Atlantis (or Atlanta) the underwater glory of Parliament/Funkadelic, the elemental (periodic abbreviation PF) body-mind groove emanations from beyond space and time. The East Coast De La and Tribe get accolades for their PF inspired wry kaleidoscopic tracks of 70s Gen X pop culture obsessions, which is no doubt why that shit is like oxygen to me. Later, the West Coast would polish down the wry and polish to chrome the chill factor samples over fat fucking basslines and beats. PF are perfect for this; they made records for people to take drugs to—an invaluable public service. Couple this will street tales and calls to party, and Dr. Dre becomes a producer on par with George Martin (no argument here—Let Me Ride is a forever song of the summer song), Ice Cube and Snoop Dog become national treasures (incrementally, we baby step to better/ the ever devouring hegemony smells money: the track makes me forget all that shit). This becomes the style most associated with PF. Not associated with the West Coast style are the northern California groups, all of whom are apparently "alternative hip-hop", a term less useful than "alternative", but hey, all critics want to coin a genre term, right? You can say fairly "alternative" bands like REM were more exciting and interesting than the Outfield, and that seems sensible, though no accounting for taste. "Alternative Hip-Hop" as opposed "mainstream hip-hop", where Run-DMC, the Beastie Boys and LL Cool J et al sold squillions of records making great fucking records? "Alternative" assumes a pure superiority over such things, flinging "authentic" and "sell-out" shitballs at such artists. Except only fuck heads would assert that these artists were garbage. Like total morons: the white college radio dickheads who cliched their way through "underground superiority" pronouncements and "sell-out" horseshit. Incidentally, these people all love "that one DK song" but really creamed their Morrissey approved Levis about the Stone Roses, but I feel like I'm drifting a bit... From a Bay Area known for Thrash and Punk Rock, the weirdos of Digital Underground scored one stone cold classic: "The Humpty Dance", a song so ubiquitous, your pasty Me-Maw knows the groove (If your pasty Me-Maw busts out "I once got busy in a Burger King bathroom", you should probably smoke a joint with her and talk that out). If you grew up in the Safe as Milk burbs, that is likely the end of it. The problem with the lightning in a bottle super-pop song is that everything thing else necessarily gets overlooked, cindered crispy by the exploding sublime pop ecstasy. The foreverness of "The Humpty Dance" as cultural totem obscures the album it came from, which is a terrible thing, because the rest is an absolutely fabulous alloy of PF samples a la De La Tribe, some bop lyrical phrasing and boogie beats weaving a sci-fi tale about a psychotropic pill that induces the sensory overload of fucking without actual fucking. Not masturbation. You take it, and the drug does all the rest: "Safest Sex there is" they proclaim. And for the AIDs terrified and stygmata afflicted Eighties, what could be better. St. George of Clinton doth say "The bigger the headache, the bigger the pillin'". We needed huge pills after the devastation of Reagan. The songs are all thematically related, highlighting different good times (music festivals, chilling with your pals, being butt naked, swimming pools, wanting to go home and get fucked up by yourself) orbiting the prospect of getting laid, which will change all previous plans for a lot of people. However, with in this sci-fi tales, the parallels to the war on drugs emerge, street crime and the life of a hustler, pop in and out of the rainbow pan-racial vision of booties shaking and boys boogying. This light approach to dystopian themes may have let folks sleep on this classic, but not me: I like gorgeous pop songs of utter despair, so give me party vibes and serious ideas, the sounds of the Underground. Shock G had to know he and his conspirators created a rare thing indeed—an utterly dancable, funky fun high-concept album that is never ponderous and contains no in·ter·sti·tial filler. This shit does not let up. It is a feature length universe of PF weirdness, bop phrasing, and sci-fi sexcapades. They should have made a movie. The poster would have had "Sex Packets" in the Star Wars font. Shock G's Nose lit up like a light saber. The tagline would be "Peace and Humptiness to You All". Get some humptiness, y'all.

Groovy and funky.

Cool

This album was super fun. Full of funny bits and didn’t take itself too seriously. It was made even better by the clean vocals any groovy beats backing every song. I definitely plan to revisit this album.

Bros from the Digital Underground be needing a cold shower, and got me wishing the Packet Man was real.

High school classic. This and public enemy were some of the best music for my teen years. 5/5

Weirdo hip-hop at its best

The central plot was quite strange, but I still had a great time.

Hilarious, great beats, a snapshot of 1990.

Concept of this album seemed stupid, but album is fire. Much better than expected. Great album!

cool

LEGENDARY SHIT RIGHT HERE. 5 stars.

After over 30 albums listened to, this is my first 5. This album does everything right, from good beats and flows to humor on every track. A very enjoyable listen, and one I am likely to return to.

I love this. It's a concept album from start to finish, and just drenched in comedy. The digital underground take all the bluster and swagger of big time performers, and turn it on its side. Freaks of the Industry doesn't get a E for its lyrics. That's a feat by itself. All this nerdy sex and swagger culminates not in actual sex, but in an eponymous Sex Packet. Just like the real thing. For sale. And you don't have to work at bedding the target of your interest. Dystopian sci fi rap genius. I loved it.

The concept album and the George Clinton samples drag a bit, but I will always love this album and the follow-up "Sons of the P" album for being unabashedly sexy, goofy and funny. 4.5 stars rounded up.

Amazing debut album. Genius lyrics. Funny. Funky. Just awesome.

I went in expecting a 3, halfway through was entertained enough to make it a four, and by the end I'm somehow considering giving it a five. The concept of the album was funny and entertaining with the peak being packet man near the end but it was backed up by fucking great beats and production that makes it relistenable. The "main theme" beat on the sex packet song and reprise is super sexy and catchy r&b while other songs like the way we swing and doowutchyalike are just straightforwardly good hip hop tracks. I'm also really glad that there's more outwardly comedic albums on this list (still hoping for weird al). Looking into the wiki more and this launched Tupac's career??? I guess I see where he got the inspiration for Temptations lol.

honestly…i saw the run time and i thought oh great…here we go…… but wow i loved every minute of this. funky ass instrumentals with some jazz sprinkled in to support a raunchy yet original concept about sex. as soon as the first track started i knew i was going to love it and i did. gotta give it a five, can’t find a flaw.

I must say I love the amount of Golden Age Hip-Hop coming up lately on my project. It went from a genre I was sort of unsure about, to a genre I'm really starting to enjoy. It just has a fun quality that later gangsta rap sort of lacked. This has things I'd generally dislike - it's another "horny" album, this one goes a step further by being a concept album with a very sexual storyline, but it gets a pass because it doesn't take itself seriously at all. In fact it's consistently funny. It's a product of its time, sure. I don't think an album joking about sex for 65 minutes would go down so much today. But what makes it stand the test of time is how listenable it is. The beats are great and the flows are smooth. I do think the first half was better than the second, but it was still great. A real bouncy party of an album. Favourite: The Humpty Dance

What is a sex packet? Where can I get one? I didn't listen to the album but I am intrigued by the title so five stars.

Digital Underground's Sex Packets is a wildly hilarious album that will have you laughing, dancing, and feeling a bit naughty. The album's storyline about a government-created drug that provides a unique sexual experience is sheer brilliance. But it's the tracks like "Sex Packets" and "Freaks of the Industry" that really showcase the band's funky beats and irreverent humor. "Sex Packets" is like a funky, psychedelic trip through a futuristic sex club, while "Freaks of the Industry" is a raunchy yet hilarious tale of sexual conquest that's impossible not to dance to. The album never takes itself too seriously, which is what makes it so much fun. It's like a funky party that never stops, and you're invited. So if you're looking for an album that will make you laugh, dance, and maybe even blush a little, then Digital Underground's Sex Packets is the perfect choice. It's a classic that's still as fresh and fun as the day it was released.

This was genuinely so much fun to listen to. Some of the lyrics are just mad and I love how unserious it is. 10/10 story telling too.

A worthy debut from Digital Underground. If you didn't quite like this one, the true essential entry from them is Sons of the P. RIP Shock G

This is quite a cool sound, very summery especially to bring out at a party.

Incredibly fun(ny) shockingly good album. You can't tell me that the rhyme scheme/flow of Packet Man didn't influence Hamilton though

Gloriously weird in conception, totally hilarious (a component often lacking in the genre) and super detailed in execution. Love what got pulled off here.

Loved it until we got to the packets. Which makes me feel like I missed the point.

Look, it's really hard to follow The Humpty Dance. It's also really hard to listen to this album while at work without becoming very paranoid that my earbuds leak sound. I really enjoyed the instrumentation and funk sound on this and I guess I have a lot of openness to really stupid cheesy horndog song material. 3.5

I liked this. The only song I was familiar with was The Humpty Dance which was on a mix tape my cousin made and I thought it was so cool then. I still think it's so cool now. The album was definitely goofy in some parts. But I loved a lot of the songs on the first listen.

ahhh Humpty 😍😍

god amigo hipi yop yop yop

I like the way these guys schwing

Very old school, unique style but I got a bit tired of those simple 80s raps. The genre has evolved over the years.

Reminds me of music from pingu

Rap with questionable lyrics _can_ be combined with cool grooves! Who would have thunked it?

Pretty good. Different, I like that.

Genuinely exciting to find more older hip-hop that I enjoy. This has a great funky early 90s feel. Not quite a 5* for me but definitely a 4*. Great vibes music wise, some of the lyrics did not age well but they are certainly of their time. I tend to try to overlook that. The last few songs lose the thread a little bit for me so that's why it's more of a 4* than a 5* for me.

Finally something I can dance to! I love it. Definitely didn't remember that this album was called sex packets lol

Part of the originals, trend setting and ground breaking.

Entertaining.

Great old school rap hip hop

Funky funny hip hop

"Sex Packets" is the debut studio album by American hip hop group Digital Underground. It is a concept album based on large pills which are in condom-size package and developed by the government to provide users a satisfied sexual experience in situations where such experiences would be counterproductive to the mission at hand. Oh, Boy! The album had positive reviews and did well commercially hitting #24 in the US and #59 in the UK. The second single "The Humpty Dance" opens the album. A funky hip hop beat. Shock G on the mic as he describes his sexual prowess despite his ugly looks. Some absolutely great rhymes in this song. "Gutfest '89" opens with a guy talking about a conference with a bunch of great bands and, of course, Digital Underground closing. The jazzy music starts with a quick hip hop beat. Large girls in cages fighting naked at Gutfest, y'all. "Freaks of the Industry" gets the bass going with a chill vibe. You can't go wrong sampling Diana Ross and Donna Summer. Well, maybe you can but they didn't. The first released song was "Doowutchyalike." It's a busy song with multiple rappers. There's horns, a groovy dance beat and scratching. For some reason, I thought of Bell Biv DeVoe. Do what you like. Be who you are. "Sex Packets" is smooth and jazzy. A nice job of sampling Prince. They describe, well, the sex packets being all over the town. This was a fun album. It is funny, has clever lyrics and carries that ridiculous concept through the album. The music is funky and jazzy at times. They make repetitive jokes about the sexual packets. There's nice use of sampling particularly Parliament and Prince. There's an overall chill vibe. This album is definitely worth going back for a listen.

I don't think the concept of this album deserves a whole hour to be fully understood to be honest. Other than that it is actually entertaining enough and it made me smile a few times with its silliness which I actually appreciate.

Aah hip hop concept albums

Crass but good sound

Much better than I anticipated. Early 90's hip hop is much better than I gave it credit for. Best Song: Underwater Rimes

Really exiting album. I don't think I have heard something like this before.

Quite funky, also quite silly, definitely more memorable than the others on here

Havde svært ved at beslutte mig for om det her var helt åndssvagt eller virkelig fedt. Endte med "virkelig fedt" fordi det gik på for mig at det minder mig ret meget om Malk de Koijn. Virkelig virkelig quotable tekster, nice beats der ikke rigtig lyder som andet hip hop på det her tidspunkt

That was a fun album. I had only ever heard the single the Humpty Dance, the rest of the album was quite enjoyable

It's so immersive, like I'm at an underground club

Cool

This was great! The songs are the real stars, pushed to the front in the production and allowed the space to dominate. The minimal use of the Hammond organ adds a little variety. It doesn't grab you by the balls and say LISTEN TO ME. The quality spoke for itself. So good I played it twice.

Wild concept, fantastic production. Some dated stuff, but very fun and cool.

Was not too impressed with this, until the line "hugging the curves and dipping like I'm supposed to do for the Underground Troupe, cause I know I'm the poop, steaming hot, stinking up the dance floor"' instant classic in my eyes.

Loved the funkiness but the vocals lacked energy

Pretty great 90s hiphop. Upbeat, funky and having a laugh.

4.0

Knowing that George Clinton and Bootsy Collins produced The Humpty Dance, explains the fun funky vibe. Hip hop was mostly gangsta rap by this point. So this was a good reprieve from the anger, a reminder that music can be enjoyable. This is a lot better than I expected. Good beats, nice samples, decent raps, chill and positive vibe. If anything, maybe the songs are a little long, but that’s nitpicking. All the P Funk bits are a welcomed delight. I will say that songs like Freaks of the Industry made adolescent boys an absolute nightmare to deal with at the time. While it’s totally fine for adults, this kind of stuff added fuel to fire for Tipper Gore’s warning label campaign. It made it easier to censor explicit political language, which was more popular. This is why we can’t have nice things. Overall, this is a pretty good album. Solid groove throughout. Nothing terribly annoying. Nice range, easy to enjoy.

RIP Shock G 🕊️🕊️🕊️

Wow, this unlocked nostalgia I haven't felt in a while.. When I think of classic hip-Hop, like the SOUND of classic Hip-Hop, I of course think of Dre's "2001" but I also think of Sex Packets sound. Like literally, I would've never been able to tell you this groups name prior to today, the sound was just engrained into my brain and that is what I have been associating with old school hip hop all my life. Rant over, but damn this was another groovy one. Sure it's dated, sure Hip-Hop as a whole is pretty bleh during this time period, but we get some really innovative sounds here, and I love the multitude of genres here. Hip-Hop to me isn't about who spits the fastest, who looks the coolest, etc. I don't think of dudes like Eminem for this very reason when I think of the classics. Hip-Hop is an art form, and this album is that. Is this something that I would bump every day? Nah, but it is a staple of Hip-Hop and I really enjoy it. The beat selection is absolutely crazy, I don't know if I want to play Mario or Tony Hawk right now. I LOVE the interludes.

SO MUCH FUN, ITS SCIFI HIP HOP LOL. aside- tupac technically got his start in this group. This is so funky and groovy and it is silly af just every song is so hot and heavy I can imagine dancing in the club to this record. Humpty Dance to start is such a bop and a classic. You go into the way we swing tells you all you need to know about the album, they take the teachings of the furious Five and become these raunchy and funny rappers. The beats are also so eclectic and well mixed and has that old school feel while also being hype af. The album takes a lul in the middle with The Danger zone and Freaks of the industry but has a strong concept to end the album. The idea of a Sex packet is a clear motif on the opioid crisis in the 80s and it just shows how easily addiction can happen but doesn't really go much deeper but it is good to have some nuance to this conversation of comparing drugs to a sex drug. I really liked this and I want more B-boy and fun hip hop like this now.

funky. lots of drugs

Liked it a lot and would give it a five but the dated lyrics took it down one for making it sometimes hard to enjoy.

normal

Groovy

the humpty dance- we already know. 7 or 8 the way we swing- 6 rhymin on the funk- 6 the new jazz one- um underwater rimes- it feels like it would play in a knuckles mission in sonic adventure 2. 7 gutfest- 8 danger zone- 6 or 7 freaks of the industry- 7 doowutchyalike- its ok but theres no reason it should be 9 minutes packet prelude- yeah sex packets- ok. 5 or 6 street scene- what packet man- 6. why was she 17 bro packet reprise- ok

It's pretty silly sometimes, but I usually have a big bias towards most old-school hip hop. So foar stahrs it is.

Foxy

Hip Hop wie er sein sollte, jazzy und funky mit coolen Versen - naja, hochstehend sind die Texte ja nicht.

Not bad, slaps

Day55 - shock g(rip) was an under appreciated writer, rapper. doowutchyalike is awesome. this is a fun album and the sound is so much better than the doo doo mumble rappers.

Such a fun and funky album.