George Clinton was a doo-wop singer until he discovered acid rock and protest music in the late 1960s, a combination to which he added cosmological rants and booming bass lines to create a new style of socially conscious, Afrocentric funk. His bands Parliament and Funkadelic reached black and white audiences alike in the 1970s with their psychedelic live shows and infectious, tongue-in-cheek concept albums (Mothership Connection, 1976; One Nation Under a Groove, 1978). Clinton disappeared amid drug and financial entanglements, but reemerged in 1983 as rappers and hip-hop artists began sampling his music and borrowing his aesthetics. In response, he formed the P-Funk All-Stars (a permutation of his many splinter groups) to support new albums and reissues of classic works, reinforcing the vitality of his universal—yet pointedly black—music.

Further Reading:

Marsh, David. George Clinton and P-Funk: An Oral History (For the Record). New York, Avon, 1998.

Vincent, Rickey, and George Clinton. Funk: The Music, the People, and the Rhythm of the One. New York, St. Martin's Press, 1996.