Maggotrivia...
George Clinton, the commander-in-chief of funks most ferocious militia said it best: Funk is its own reward. Clinton and his bands have been spreading the funk for 30 years. The funk voyage started with a Motown-styled quintet called The Parliaments. This group of singers soon evolved into Parliament. When Parliament started to perform live, they hired a band of funky players, who took Funkadelic as their moniker. When asked the difference between the bands, Clinton replied "Musically, 90 percent of the time Funkadelic’s gonna be dominated by guitars, and going a little more crazy. Parliament is gonna be a little more structured, with more harmonizing, and more horns. At least, that’s what we try to do."

The battles between band members over billing, credit, money and other rock’n’roll trappings lead to a revolving door of the world’s greatest funk musicians. More than 30 members have been listed as members of the Parliament/Funkadelic Mob. After some particularly nasty legal squabbles culminating in the 1980s, Clinton gave up the names Parliament and Funkadelic in favor of the generic P-Funk All-Stars.

The P-Funk boot camp spawned many side projects with varying levels of participation by Clinton, including: The Brides of Funkenstein, Boosty Collins and his Rubber Band, Fred Wesley and the Horny Horns, Maceo & the Macks, Axiom Funk, Mutiny, Parlet, Praxis, OG Funk, Quazar, Sweat Band and Zillatron among others.

The influence of the Clinton experience is everywhere in modern soul and R&B. The P-Funk tunes are constantly being sampled and P-Funk vernacular permeates hip-hop culture. Sayings like "Chocolate City," "Free your mind and your ass will follow," "The Bomb" were popularized in P-Funk songs. P-Funk and James Brown remain the most sampled artists in hip-hop. "Atomic Dog" alone has been sampled in hundreds, if not thousands of urban music songs. In the liner notes to Clinton'’ Greatest Funkin’ Hits, Pedro Bell writes "add up all the hip-hop groups in the entire universe, subtract about 7 and there’s yo list of anybody who was sampling P-FUNK!! Am I right or wot?! Now go back to this album and dance yo ass off!!"

P-Funks greatest gift to the music world is the rap/hip-hop genre. The music stylings of Sly Stone, James Brown and P-Funk spun off a genre of music that includes the following P-Funk trademarks: adopting a funky alias, rapping lyrics instead of singing, inspired by urban life and creating new slang and vernacular.

Suffice it to say, the George Clinton and P-Funk legacy stands as tall as any in music. Few others have aspired to the heights P-Funk naturally achieved with an unending supply of creativity, dance grooves, talent and most of all attitude. After much legal deliberation, Funkadelic will get together for an album in 1999.

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GC & P-Funk on the web...
• GeorgeClinton.com
• Mother Page
• Captain of the Mothership
• New Funk Times
• One Nation Website
• The Booty Bone