George Clinton

As the creative force behind Parliament and Funkadelic, George Clinton transformed funk and the wider R&B landscape. Drawing from gospel, doo wop, and soul traditions, this singer, songwriter, bandleader, and visionary conceptualist first reached the charts as co-writer and lead singer on the Parliaments’ 1967 single “(I Wanna) Testify,” a spirited yet restrained hint of the explosive, timeless funk anthems his rotating collective would deliver throughout the next decade, many of which topped the R&B listings. After P-Funk went on hiatus, Clinton launched a solo career with the 1982 album Computer Games, which yielded the R&B number-one hit “Atomic Dog,” followed by three further Capitol releases and occasional independent projects on Epic, Paisley Park, and other labels across subsequent years. Recognized as a hip-hop pioneer, his Parliament-Funkadelic and solo tracks have been sampled countless times, while he has joined forces onstage and in the studio with artists he inspired, among them Digital Underground, Snoop Dogg, OutKast, and Kendrick Lamar. Equally central to the legendary Parliament-Funkadelic stage spectacle, Clinton maintained a relentless touring schedule until 2019, when the Recording Academy presented him with a Lifetime Achievement Award. Had a Mount Rushmore of funk existed, Clinton would have stood alongside James Brown and Sly Stone; the final landing of the P-Funk Mothership inside the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African-American History and Culture only underscores the appropriateness of that image.

Born July 22, 1941, in Kannapolis, North Carolina, Clinton developed a passion for doo wop during the early 1950s after moving to Plainfield, New Jersey. In 1955 he assembled the Parliaments, a vocal quintet that rehearsed in the back room of the barbershop where he worked straightening hair. The group issued its debut single, “Poor Willy,” on an ABC subsidiary in 1959. Although an audition at Motown proved unsuccessful, the Parliaments recorded for the smaller Detroit imprints Golden World and Revilot, and Clinton secured a staff-writing position with Motown’s Jobete publishing division. Splitting his time between Plainfield and Detroit, he ran the Silk Palace hair salon, groomed the group back home, co-wrote material such as the 1966 pop-soul obscurity “I’ll Bet You” (cut by Golden World artist Theresa Lindsey), and briefly operated the Marton label to release additional compositions. The Parliaments peaked in 1967 when the Revilot release “(I Wanna) Testify” climbed to number three on Billboard’s R&B chart and number 20 on the pop chart. Clinton was the sole Parliaments member present at the session, yet he soon reassembled the lineup and augmented it with a full band of supporting musicians for live work.

A legal battle with the bankrupt Revilot label briefly blocked further use of the Parliaments name. Clinton therefore rebranded the ensemble as Funkadelic, shifting emphasis to the instrumentalists and incorporating psychedelic rock while retaining gospel, soul, and funk foundations. He subsequently deployed the same personnel for Parliament, whose 1970–1972 recordings for Holland-Dozier-Holland’s Invictus imprint—an album and several singles—matched the intensity of Funkadelic’s concurrent Westbound output. Once Parliament moved to the commercially oriented Casablanca label in Los Angeles, the two acts diverged more clearly, with Parliament adopting a polished sound bolstered by Fred Wesley’s Horny Horns while Funkadelic advanced to Warner Bros. By the close of the 1970s, the combined Parliament and Funkadelic catalog had produced 39 charting singles, highlighted by the R&B number-one smashes “Flash Light,” “One Nation Under a Groove,” “(Not Just) Knee Deep,” and “Aqua Boogie (A Psychoalphadiscobetabioaquadoloop).” Seven albums through 1979 achieved gold or platinum status. Clinton’s extended family of artists also spawned side projects including U.S. (United Soul), Parlet, and the Brides of Funkenstein, along with numerous solo ventures, and revisited earlier Clinton songs such as “I’ll Bet You” and “(I Wanna) Testify” in more outlandish arrangements.

Legal complications stemming from Polygram’s purchase of Casablanca began to encumber Clinton. After Parliament and Funkadelic issued final albums under those names in 1980 and 1981, he signed with Capitol as a solo artist and simultaneously activated the P-Funk All-Stars. His debut solo LP, Computer Games (1982), contained the Top 20 R&B track “Loopzilla” and the chart-topping “Atomic Dog.” Three additional Capitol albums appeared between 1983 and 1986—You Shouldn’t-Nuf Bit Fish, Some of My Best Jokes Are Friends, and R&B Skeletons in the Closet—while “Nubian Nut” and “Do Fries Go with That Shake?” also reached the R&B Top 20. During the same span the P-Funk All-Stars issued independent singles and a CBS album, and Clinton produced Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Freaky Styley. Throughout the remainder of the 1980s and repeatedly in later decades, Clinton navigated ongoing royalty and copyright litigation. Some associates voiced dissatisfaction with their earnings, a situation compounded by the sheer volume of recordings scattered across multiple labels and related organizational challenges. Clinton maintained that his signature had been forged on paperwork transferring rights to more than 150 of his compositions to Bridgeport, the publishing firm run by Westbound founder Armen Boladian—an especially damaging development given the growing number of rap producers sampling Parliament and Funkadelic material.

Near the end of the decade, MCA issued the single “By Way of the Drum,” credited to Funkadelic and produced by Clinton and Jeff Lorber. A similarly titled album recorded between 1983 and 1985 remained unreleased until Hip-O Select issued it in 2007. Clinton also joined Prince’s Paisley Park roster, ultimately delivering two solo albums on the Warner Bros.-distributed imprint: The Cinderella Theory (1989) and Hey Man…Smell My Finger (1993). Following the lower-profile George Clinton & the P-Funk All-Stars release Dope Dogs and assorted independent efforts, he moved to Epic’s 550 Music for the 1996 album T.A.P.O.A.F.O.M. (“the awesome power of a fully operational mothership”). Clinton and the P-Funk All-Stars continued performing for successive generations of funk enthusiasts and appeared on early Lollapalooza bills aimed at rock audiences. In 1997 Parliament-Funkadelic entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, while Kirk Franklin’s “Stomp,” which interpolated “One Nation Under a Groove,” earned a Grammy nomination for Best Rhythm & Blues Song, marking Clinton’s first nomination in the category. Further evidence of P-Funk’s lasting influence appeared in the wide array of artists who featured Clinton on their recordings throughout the 1990s; Digital Underground, Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube, Primal Scream, 2Pac, and OutKast represent only a fraction of that list.

Legal entanglements restricted full-length Clinton projects in the 2000s and 2010s to single albums from the P-Funk All-Stars and the reactivated Parliament and Funkadelic lineups. He also issued a headline LP, George Clinton and His Gangsters of Love, in 2008. Whatever billing appeared on the releases, each project remained unmistakably P-Funk, guided by Clinton alongside veteran and emerging collaborators. He himself maintained an extensive roster of guest appearances and received a second Grammy nomination for his spoken introduction on Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly, which contended for Album of the Year. In 2019—the year Clinton stepped away from the road—he and Parliament-Funkadelic received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Recording Academy.