Recommendations of the Editorial team
The 100 best musicians of all time: Funkadelic – Essay from Ice Cube
If you put on a party “(not just just) Knee Deep” in the eighties, it could happen that things really got going. Some DJs refused to put on the number because the fists often flew enough. The Crazy Motherfuckers who were at the party were really crazy: “Knee Deep” was the signal for them to let the sow out. At 15 minutes the song was so long and so good that you believed that the time had come – for whatever.
From George Clinton I learned that there are no limits. You just do what you feel. Of course, he had gathered the most insane musicians on these albums: Booty Collins on the bass, then Bernie Worrell, the best keyboardist I have ever heard; He got James Brown’s saxophonist Maceo Parker and whoever he could find. And knows the devil, where he got these arrangements from: Sometimes it started with squeaky computer sounds, in order to then overlook all of the straight but wonderfully instrumented passages.
My uncle Jerry was DJ and made me known as a child with all the P-Funk records: “The Clones of Dr. Funkenstein”, “Motherhip Connection” … they were crazy and psychedelic-and the Superman was always a black one. They had the best album covers that came to my fingers to this day: You could deepen in it, as you do with a video today.
Parliament and Funkadelic were 30 years ahead of their time
I still remember staring at the cover of “Motor Booty Affair”: Sir Nose d’Voidoffunk was seen, as it is attacked by this huge bird. At that time I was too young to be able to go to the concerts, but I let my older siblings tell me everything: about the gigantic stage shows and how a spectator stripped and ran naked through the whole arena. Made me ready.
In the end, nobody described George Clinton’s music better than the master himself: she was “Cosmic Slop” that she was radioadelic – funky and psychedelic. And if you get into it, feel the Connection to the mothership. Clinton was a marketing man, in the best sense of the word: he delivered what he promised. He was the Muhammad Ali of Music. In California he is still announced today. Parliament and Funkadelic were 30 years ahead of their time.