If one considers a Holy Trinity of Funk with James Brown standing as the unquestionable (God)Father and Sly Stone as the revolutionary if troubled Son, who but George Clinton makes sense as the profane prankster Holy Ghost? The subversive ringmaster and self-proclaimed Maggot Overlord shepherded his Parliament Funkadelic disciples to create some of the most influential and heavily sampled music of the 1970s, a marriage of blazing psychedelic guitars, uncontainable soul grooves, and Clinton's mix of savage wit and Afrocentric cosmology that still electrifies dancefloors 40 years later. Though he spent much of the following decades in a crack-fueled haze that left him swindled and struggling to survive — a saga detailed in his recent memoir Brothas Be, Yo Like George, Ain't That Funkin' Kinda Hard on You? — Clinton has cleaned up and emerged clear-eyed. His new effort, Funkadelic's sprawling, three-disc release First Ya Gotta Shake the Gate, puts a modern, Auto-Tune-soaked spin on the septuagenarian funk maestro's classic lascivious sound.
Comments are closed.
