Parliament Funkadelic: The band Prince claimed “changed the world”
Prince was always far too eclectic to be limited to one genre. He had his distinctive Minneapolis sound, sure, but how are you supposed to categorise an artist who ends up blending rock, soul, R&B, and pop all under one roof across just one side of a vinyl record? ‘The Purple One’ already had most musical bases covered, but in terms of his personal favourites, he felt the landscape change when he heard Parliament Funkadelic.
For the first half of the 1970s, rock and soul seemed like completely different entities. Artists like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones may have had a great deal of respect for artists like Marvin Gaye and Aretha Franklin, but it’s not like they were going to write the same soulful ballads when their audience wanted to hear hard rock riffs.
Once funk became a part of the equation, though, George Clinton was more than happy to do whatever he wanted when it came time to make a record. There’s no denying that the band played funk if you looked at their album covers and most of their song titles, but there was still a rock edge to most of their sound in their glory days.
Just listen to an album like Cosmic Slop to hear what I’m talking about. There are still the funk tropes that you would hear in almost every other 1970s record, but the guitar feels like it’s ripped straight out of a hard rock band, almost turning each song into a progressive track with how aggressive it can be.
For Prince, this was a turning point in his musical vocabulary, telling the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, “George Clinton was the leader of this mothership…together they built Parliament Funkadelic and changed the world. There was something futuristic about Parliament Funkadelic, and that was only fitting since they played a huge role in creating the future of music…Needless to say, [George] has been a huge influence on me and everyone I know”.
If you were to listen to more than just two seconds of Prince’s music, you could hear that kind of fire that Clinton implanted in him. Compared to other artists who would take bits and pieces of rock and soul and put them under one roof, it came so naturally to Prince because of his record collection, almost like he didn’t know what the term “genre boundaries” even meant.
When Prince wasn’t bowing down to the funk maestro, he was being challenged by his soulful mentor. Once he saw Clinton tear the roof off yet another gig in Minneapolis, Prince immediately went to the studio inspired, coming up with the single ‘Erotic City’ based on what he had seen that night.
Clinton also never stopped exploring new sounds, either. Even when he wasn’t working in his main outfit, the ‘Funkenstein’ was known for collaborating with the new school of funk masters, eventually working with Red Hot Chili Peppers to help produce and fund their sophomore album, Freaky Styley.
Above all else, Prince learned that anything that everything he ever recorded had to come from the soul if he wanted it to match what Clinton was doing. For all of the great riffs lying around in your lick library, none of them are going to mean anything until you actually believe in what you’re doing.
