Today in Hip-Hop — August 12: Del the Funky Homosapien Turns 54

August 12, 1972 — Teren Delvon Jones drops into Oakland. Twenty years later he’s writing verses for his cousin Ice Cube’s Da Lench Mob before releasing I Wish My Brother George Was Here (October 22, 1991) under the name Del tha Funkee Homosapien — a debut so weird, so cartoon-warped, so tightly stitched to George Clinton mythology that it accidentally scripted the entire Bay Area underground playbook for the next thirty years. Today Del turns 54.

How One Oakland Kid Built the Hiero Universe

The George LP put Del on MTV via “Mistadobalina” — a single built off a Rockford Files theme flip that has no business slapping as hard as it does. Cube produced most of the record and kept it inside the G-funk lane. Del hated the sound. So he grabbed the Boogiemen — his own production circle out of East Oakland — and went cosmic on the follow-up. No Need for Alarm (1993) is where the whole Hieroglyphics constellation crystallizes: Del as ringleader, Souls of Mischief right behind him, Casual and Pep Love in the wings, the entire crew flipping the West Coast script from lowrider bounce to head-nod backpack four years before “backpack rap” was even a genre. Every Bay indie that came after — from The Grouch to Aesop’s Coast collabs to the entire Living Legends orbit — is downstream of that pivot.

Then he sends the whole thing to another galaxy. Deltron 3030 (May 23, 2000) — Del as Deltron Zero, Dan the Automator on the boards, Kid Koala on the cuts, a full sci-fi concept album set in the year 3030 where corporations run everything and rhymes are the last form of protest. It’s the record that made a generation of underground kids realize hip-hop concept albums didn’t have to be about the block. Twelve months later, “Clint Eastwood” — Del’s guest verse on Gorillaz’s debut single — hits #4 in the UK and quietly puts an Oakland underground rapper into every dorm room on earth. The reach is still absurd. Del was writing intergalactic protest raps two decades before “hip-hop opera” became a Pitchfork tag.

Wear the Debut

We made a Del – I Wish My Brother George Was Here Hoodie for exactly this — the debut that started the Hiero universe, back when Cube was still on the production credits and Del was still spelling it “Funkee.” Wear it if you were there in ’91. Wear it louder if you’re just now catching up through the Deltron door.

Also Today in Hip-Hop

• Sir Mix-a-Lot turns 63 (born August 12, 1963, Seattle) — “Baby Got Back” sat at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for five straight weeks in 1992 and single-handedly proved a Pacific Northwest rapper on his own label (Nastymix) could outsell every major on the West Coast.
• Twista drops Dark Horse (August 12, 2014) — the Chicago speed-rap king’s 9th studio LP, deep in the mixtape era but still landing on the Billboard 200. Twista’s been rapping this fast since 1992 and hasn’t slowed a syllable.
• Young Berg drops Look What You Made Me (August 12, 2008) — the Chicago rapper’s debut peaks at #20 Billboard 200 and #2 on the Top Rap Albums chart, riding the “Sexy Lady” run.
• Puff Daddy releases “It’s All About the Benjamins” as a single (August 12, 1997) — from No Way Out, the track that made shiny-suit Bad Boy Records the sound of late-’97 radio for a full calendar year.

Stay creative — The Custom Creative Team

Jon Jones