No Nose Job

Album: Sons of the P (1991)
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Songfacts®:

  • This is comedic rap song, but it takes on a serious subject: body image and the perception of dark skin. In the song, the character Humpty Hump, whose defining characteristic is his Groucho Marx-style nose, explains why he's not going to get a nose job. The reason: he's just fine the way he is, and he doesn't feel the need to conform to a conventional image.

    He points out that in the pursuit of society-mandated beauty, black women are willing to undergo plastic surgery to thin their lips, while white girls are looking to make them bigger. He calls out these augmented ladies as "Fake hair, contact wearing, liposuction carnival exhibits."

    Humpty also points out that light skin is idealized, especially on TV. His skin tone is "high yellow," but he's proud to be black: "Make sure there's no mistake, Humpty Hump is from the Motherland."
  • Humpty Hump is a character created by Digital Underground leader Shock G, who used a variety of voices and often assigned different personas to them. Humpty Hump was the breakout star of the group when his signature song, "The Humpty Dance," became a huge hit from their first album, Sex Packets. The group's label, Tommy Boy Records, wanted more Humpty on the next album, but Shock wanted to hold back on the character so it wouldn't become the focus. He did give them the Humpty-centered "No Nose Job," which was released as a single but failed to chart.
  • The Sons of the P album was produced by George Clinton, whose outfit Parliament-Funkadelic was a huge influence on the group. The squiggly, bass-heavy sound Clinton put together on this album influences much of the West Coast rap that would emerge in later years, best exemplified by Dr. Dre.
  • The video takes place in a hospital and shows the staff trying to force a nose job on Humpty. See if you can spot Tupac Shakur in the clip - he was a member of the Digital Underground crew at the time.

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