Original subtitles

A fella stopped around the corner of 7th Avenue and 125th Street.

and he asked the fella, saying, black fella was standin' there,

He said, em

"ah, I need to go ah downtown, eh"

"I wanna go to Brooklyn."

He said, "How do I go?"

"I don't know."

He said, "What's north?"

"Which way is north?"

He said, "I don't think I know."

He said, "Which way's south?"

Can't find no streets,

Tryin' ta eat from day to day and tryin' ta find a way.

He said, "I don't know."

He said, "Which way is west?"

He said, "Man, I don't know."

He said, "What do you know?"

He said, "I'm not lost."

(laughing softly)

That was deep.

(funk music playing)

- [Questlove] What is funk music?

Musically, it's the bridge between 60s soul

and 80s hip hop.

It is an essential and underappreciated musical movement.

Funk was born in the middle of America,

and spread east and west like a fever.

Funk is discipline, funk is freaky.

Funk is spacesuits and Egyptian iconography.

It is huge Afros and crazy colors.

It is Afrofuturistic, and it's always fun.

At its core funk is the expression

of an idiosyncratic, creative and visionary community

of music makers.

(funk music continues)

My name is Ahmir Questlove Thompson.

Drummer and leader of The Roots.

And we're gonna go on a journey,

back into time throughout history

through your funky emotions, as we go finding the funk.

(funk music continues)

- Funk for me is

our life.

Funk for me is the word that was spoke

and this is what funk is.

- I'd probably say it's rhythm and blues

with uh, uh, with people that couldn't cuss but,

they wanted to, they sounded like they wanted to cuss.

- It's black rock and roll.

It's, it's, when when George said,

"we have returned to reclaim the pyramids,"

that's what that represents to me.

- Funk has a lot to do with

the booty of music.

Which is like the backbeat,

the dark keys,

the, the pulse, and the thump of , of rhythm.

- But if you have to try to tell somebody

you have to start using words

like syncopation and stuff like that

makes you dance and it doesn't do it justice.

- We know it come from the Congo, the fooky,

which means bad body odor.

So what I love about some of these Black musical terms

like jazz, they're all these curse words

or these obscenities that are derived

from other languages, applied to Black culture.

And what we do, you know funk is like Sonic chitlins.

We work out all the nastiness, and the grease,

and we take it and process it

and make something out of it.

Something bad body odor into something beautiful.

So you saw Africa writ large in funk music

as a sound collage of the best of Black identity.

- Funk is the ability to make anything yours.

- The root all of the music, comes out of New Orleans.

But because, you know we have

the serious sounds

from jazz

and early rock and roll coming out of New Orleans,

and the tradition of dance in New Orleans.

There's nowhere else to go but the funk,

especially with the second lines

and the rhythms of New Orleans.

You mix that with the jazz sound

and rhythm and blues and you have the funk.

(funk music continues)

- Being in those marching bands

from New Orleans where we grew up,

funk is such a integral part of the drum section.

We have to constantly

clah!

Blah!

Be on a beat with that funk, you know,

Clah! Gloom!

Clah! Gloom!

That's where really it started, you know that,

(stamping feet and hand slap sounds)

Just that funk rhythm.

- Mainly when people talk about funk,

they talk about a form of rhythm and blues music

that became very popular in the late 60s and early 70s.

They emphasized explosive rhythm from the drums,

from the bass, from guitar.

A lot of arranged horn lines,

and there are many sources for where the rhythms came from.

We can look at say the beginnings of funk,

you go back to say Louis Jordan

from the 1940s' to jump bands

that were the post Big Band era.

- My background is in jazz

or I should say my front ground.

I first heard the word funk

when I was listening to Horace Silver records.

Horace Silver was using the word funky like

Filthy McNasty some of his songs,

and also Cannonball Adderley, would talk about funk.

And these guys would talk about that on their records,

when they did live recordings.

So it wasn't James Brown

that I got exposed to the word funk,

it was like actually jazz.

- I mean, funky was something that we called

Horace Silver and Art Blakey,

and even some Miles stuff.

But there was funk jazz in the early 60s.

And if you go back to old issues of DownBeat,

you'll see stuff described as funky jazz.

- Well, with jazz we go back, a generation and a half.

With jazz, it become really sophisticated as well.

I mean, the jazz that was happening in the 60s,

because of just the natural development of music,

jazz had started in the 20s.

So by the time you get to the 60s, 40 years later,

jazz had become very, very complex.

And then add to that, the social aspect

with the civil rights movement.

You know what I mean?

And the hippie movement, the challenging of everything

in the 60s,

jazz had becomes something that

was really out there, you know what I mean?

And funk was a reaction to that.

- A lot of people don't know that James Brown,

is an organ player.

And one of his best friends, I mean,

a lot of his best friends were jazz musicians.

Oliver Nelson and him were like, very close.

So you get this thing.

And I've always said,

there's a wonderful mixture,

and coming together of jazz and R&B

that when you examine a lot of the early jazz,

or funk guys, you'll see that they have

a deep jazz connection.

- James Brown, soul brother number one.

Was a fan of funky jazz and would have his band

open his shows with instrumentals

that would inspire a revolution.

- Soul music was really singing music.

It was about the vocalists and supporting the vocalists.

What happened with funk

is that funk became more instrumental.

It became more about the rhythm section particularly,

and the relationship between rhythm section and horns.

And to some degree singers that didn't come secondary,

but the band became a bigger part of the show.

- Classic James Brown, of course, is the funky period,

the soulful period between

1966 and 1974.

So between that period you have,

kind of the evolution of soul.

(drum beating sounds)

And then it's sort of morphs into

the beginning of funk,

which is like you know

(beating drum set sounds)

- The voice itself becomes,

in a beautiful, rhythmic way

open to multiple and polyrhythms.

- Motown the company talkin' about we aint got no lyrics.

But when they started sampling,

what did it sample?

(making sounds)

It must be a lot of dope in that shit.

You can put a 10 on it.

You can sample them,

and then I can sample you,

and somebody can sample me

and it still work.

- On stage he would perform elongated versions

of them and the vamps were a device to set up,

really to give them a forum

to do choreography with The Famous Flames.

So it was really just a device to provide an opportunity

to do dance routines.

It wasn't really a musical thing.

But eventually that became,

that kind of, the script flipped

and all of a sudden it was like,

hey, if we do this with this vamp,

we do, that we build it up, we break it down,

and all of a sudden, you've got a new genre of music.

- Brown's band was full of razor sharp players.

Who go on to have an enduring impact on pop culture,

especially Clyde Stubblefield

aka the Funky Drummer.

- Coming from Hip Hop being an MC,

when we started digging through records,

the first thing really we were looking for was

what you call a raw naked beat.

Whoever would guess this little riff

would then kind of become

a soundtrack in the let's see,

when would have been, that would have been 19, 1989! You know,

That...

another summer sound of the Funky Drummer.

You know, I don't think when Clyde Stubblefield played that

in 1970...

I guess what, 71,

70, maybe in 69,

who woulda guessed 20 years later that would be,

he'd be the backing band for Chuck D.

- Every MC worth his grain of salt like

this is what they wanted to rhyme with.

Probably the best hip hop act that

really utilized Funky drummer to the hilt

was Public Enemy.

Who pretty much made this their rhyming bed.

- If James Brown was a saxophonist he'd be Maceo Parker.

I mean if anybody ever does a study of their DNA,

it's gotta be the same.

I mean, somewhere somebody's mama knew somebody

because their that, their musical spot,

their sense of rhythm and time

is so impeccably the same.

- As a college student I was at a crossroad,

'cause I know everybody wanna play jazz, traditionally

(singing jazz)

And, so I open this door that 35 guys,

tryin' to do the jazzy stuff

and I open the other doors about four

and they tryin' to play funky.

And I said, "you know what,

if somebody came looking for somebody

that maybe could perhaps play funky,

like me, and maybe

I'd be recognized easier if I'm in that group of four.

So I came up with a equation, I guess you call it, formula.

You know, I or we play 2% of jazz,

and 98% funky stuff.

And that's what I'm about.

- [Questlove] A labor dispute between Brown and his band

led him to recruit a young crew

who had been gigging in Cincinnati with King Records.

Led by the Collins brothers,

Catfish on guitar, and Bootsy on bass.

They become legends themselves.

- Okay.

So Bobby Byrd call, we playing at this club,

having no idea

that, we're gonna you know,

James Brown is gonna call us one day.

You know, I get on the phone with him and he says,

"Bootsie, where's you and the boys?

"What are y'all doing?"

We playing a gig.

Well, James Brown, wants y'all to come play with him.

I said, "damn!"

You know, so I went through all the excitement thing.

And then it was like,

well, we on a gig right now.

He said, "No, he want y'all to come now."

And so, sho' enough, he showed up.

And he had a limo out there.

And it's like, y'all ready to go?

And we's like, I mean, we didn't have you know what?

Nobody packed.

We had on what we had on and,

it was like, y'all gotta come on now.

First of all, he treated me like a son.

He always was,

you know, you gotta do this, you gotta do that you got, you know,

which for me at the time was really good,

because I'm a knucklehead from out in the street,

so, that didn't grow up with a father in the home.

So I needed all of that.

And I kinda knew that I needed it,

and if anybody was gon' give it to me, it had to be James Brown,

(laughing)

'Cause I wasn't goin' for it from nobody else.

So, James Brown, he was perfect.

He was the perfect father figure.

- Bootsy Collins, hard workin' as the Bible,

would verify that.

Bootsy Collins was a star when he came

and I never took that away from him.

He didn't understand the one,

but we taught him that.

Bootsy Collins, he's like a son.

- So when we were in studio,

he would always, it was like he was on stage.

He would have to show people

that he was still James Brown.

So, in the middle of a song,

he would have to break out and do the James Brown.

And, which wouldn't have nothing to do

with what we're doing.

(laughing)

I guess that was probably

the most funniest thing

that would happen in a session.

I remember James telling me about the one

and I thought that was just,

at first I thought, it's like,

why are you telling me this?

Because I just wanna play,

hey, aint nobody got no time for the one.

"Son, let me tell you,

you gotta give me the one, you give me the one,

and you play all that other stuff, just give me that one."

(making sound rhythms with his mouth)

I said, "oh, you mean like this, you mean like this."

(making rhythms with the mouth)

"Yes like that, like that.

I'm glad I thought of it right there.

Right there."

But that's where brother James was at.

I mean, you know, and he taught me that.

And when he taught me that,

it was like I used that in every thing I did.

- Now I gotta find a way to get these people.

So I gotta play something they can't play.

So it was on two and four

(indistinct)

you can't waltz to Pappa's Got a Brand New Bag.

I put on one and three

and you can't waltz backwards though.

You can't go down you gotta go up see so,

gotta stop all that waltzin' mess.

But it became the biggest thing.

It went from two and four, to one and three.

(guitar sounds)

- Bootsy and company's exit didn't stop Brown's funk flow.

He'd go one to cut funk classics like, The Big Payback.

But the Age of Aquarius was dawning.

with psychedelic drugs, funky threads,

and wah wah guitars.

Where Brown's funk had been rooted in the struggle,

Sly Stone's vision was truly utopia.

- It was a movement goin' on,

It was a whole lot,

it was a few different movements goin' on.

And it was a movement goin' on in music,

where you just comin' out of this peace and love thang.

And then we goin' into

this whole other thing.

We didn't know what it was but,

You know, I think we were kinda at the forefront of it

and a part of it.

And so it's like

bands were moving to the front of the stage.

Bands were wanting to be the stars

instead of playing behind stars.

Jimi and them had talked about it,

and he was probably

one of maybe the first that actually,

especially being black, that actually,

came to the front.

- Jimi Hendrix had come up as an R&B backup musician.

So even as a guitar god, he never forgot the lessons

of the group.

- Jimi was the coolest there is.

- Hendrix was the R&B guitar player.

So Hendrix really was steeped in rhythm and blues.

He didn't appear out of just out of nowhere.

And then people focus on him being psychedelic

and taking LSD.

And they even focus on him being a blues musician.

But he was actually a rhythm and blues musician

and he also played, in rock and roll bands.

Like he was playing with Little Richard,

he played with the Isley Brothers.

He's, I mean, he started the Band of Gypsys

with the drummer Buddy Miles,

who's already a star with The Electric Flag

and Buddy Miles is just in terms of his rhythm,

he's an incredibly funky drummer.

- When he had Buddy Miles playing drums,

he had such a heavy backbeat

behind him.

So it was, he was able to space out like.

To me, all of what Eddie Hazel and him was doing

with Funkadelic, it's kinda based on that album,

that one album, Band of Gypsys.

So, yeah, man.

That was it.

Jimi kinda took...

He kinda took all this,

that heavy back beat that Buddy Miles was doing,

and he took it to outer space.

So it's like outer space blues or blues on acid.

So to me that's the essence of what funk is really about.

- The funky new vibe of music was felt

by jazz icon Miles Davis,

who ditched his GQ suits,

plugged in his trumpet and brought in Latin percussion

to create jazz fusion.

- Thing about Miles Davis in particular was that,

and the thing that lets me know

that funk is just an extension of,

this whole Black music story, right?

Is that the funk never scared Miles.

When he found himself in an environment

where the musicians were playing funky style

instead of more of a traditional jazz style,

it wasn't like he said, "Oh man,

I don't know what to play."

It wasn't like it's a new language

I don't know how to talk in this new language.

He started plugging his trumpet into a wah wah pedal,

which is a device that usually you plug a guitar into.

So it goes Waw! Waw!

Miles plugged his trumpet into a wah wah pedal.

- We were doing, exploratory funk.

And that's really what it was.

And,

at the time,

there's a lot of people cutting it up.

But truth lasts.

On The Corner was the first time

the critics just actually, this is horrible.

I remember, I read one review the guy said,

it was Voodoo music.

Well, he was right for the wrong reason (laughing)

It was Voodoo music.

But again,

some people say you have to wait for an audience.

They talk about the music being ahead of it's time.

I never believe that.

Music is for the time that it exists.

We didn't have to wait for new audience of listeners.

We had to wait for a new creation of critics.

Because we would play night after night

and the joint is packed.

- Wow.

See, and there was no album covers in jazz

that look like this.

When Miles did this, man.

This is incredible. This blew people's minds.

This was truly a record of its time.

And it created a huge controversy in the jazz world.

Man, because, people like Miles has lost his mind.

A lot of Miles' fans

they just though he lost his mind.

- [N. George] Talk about what it did for young musicians.

- For young musicians, it justified the funk.

The fact that Miles was you know going

in this funky direction.

It justified it.

They were feeling the funk already,

and they were oh they will feeling like

they had to make a choice.

Am I going to be a serious jazz musician?

Or am I going to do this thing that's in my bones,

it's funk music.

And Miles say, "you don't have to choose".

He said, "you should try to figure out

how to combine the two."

That's what Miles was doing.

- [Questlove] The hippie spirit of the age

was transforming the values of Black folks,

just as it was white America.

And forward thinking places like the Bay area,

where the freak flag was flying high

on the wings of psychedelic drugs and free love,

a band would emerge.

That took Brown's funk,

dressed it up in garish new outfits.

Funk could be disciplined, but also hot fun.

- I'd probably say, it's rhythm in the blues

with people that couldn't cuss,

but they wanted to,

they sounded like they wanted to cuss.

And it was like they was at that edge of it.

- [N. George] So you say, you said

it felt like rhythm blues, but they wanted to cuss?

- Yeah.

But you know that (indistinct) it was kinda

like don't!

Don't!

They wanted to (indistinct)

'cause I know I did.

- [N. George] You wanted to cuss?

- No, I didn't want to but the words were,

I felt like, yeah.

I didn't wanna go to get in trouble.

But, sometimes I did though anyways.

Yeah, I've been in trouble before (laughing)

- James Brown gave birth to funk,

and then Sly raised it.

He clothed it in another way.

What Sly did was update it to contemporary sounds.

- He sort of married what was going on.

He was a true, true pop producer in a way,

but then he took the next step further,

and he was able to lock into

the element of the radicalism

of the Vietnam War,

everything that was going on in the 60s and 70s.

And he was able to sort of,

put that in words and to music

that made sense for everybody.

So it wasn't it was it.

Anyone can relate to Sly.

- You cannot believe how badass this band is.

And, but they're like this band

where you look at them, you just think

they're not even in a band together.

It's like, but together,

they are the most badass.

Just funky rockiness

killing it band you could ever see.

- Sly was a hippie west coast band,

that had funk undercurrents.

That they played,

that all that stuff was funky.

It was funk oriented,

but they also played pop very well.

But they had Larry Graham, and they had

Sly and they had his brother

and only those people played like that.

- That was chemistry of the highest order.

When we saw them we said, "Oh shit!"

- Sly's band The Family Stone.

They were a multiracial band,

men and women were in the band.

- They had women that were also performing.

Playing trumpet you hadn't you didn't see that before.

It was another freshness.

- They didn't have trad..

They had traditional harmonies but they also had

different voices coming in and out.

Almost every funk band

was affected by Sly in that way.

Sly's dress.

The fact that the way he dressed began,

rippled out everyone.

Everyone kinda looked like Sly.

Sly was the pimp superstar daddy at the time

and everyone kinda wanted to emulate him.

And they did.

- The wah wah pedal distorting the guitar sound,

those frenetic baselines,

those turbulent drum beats

that gave birth to funk modernism.

And funk modernism to me is not simply

an appreciation for how the music

had to be ramped up and had to be so multiple,

so polyrhythmic and syncopated,

but it was also about the themes.

Talking about urban existence,

talking about stuff that polite R&B music

would never touch.

- Sly's another one that

could think it.

He can write it out.

So, he was able to do

'Hot Fun in the Summertime' a real clever pop song,

but he could also turn it over

and do 'Simple Song'

and 'Thank You'.

And be funky as James, or us or anybody else

and still have slick ass puns,

or one liners.

- Holy shit (laughing)

- You mind if I look?

- No. Okay yeah.

Now this is, to me.

This is the ultimate funk unit ever.

Number one hands down.

If I were,

if we had a chart system,

my number one funk unit of all time,

this is them.

With Gregory Cole and Larry Brown.

This unit was just ridiculous.

- This is definitely the record of all time.

And yeah.

This was the one and let's see.

Yeah 'Stand', 'Don't call me Nigga Whitey',

'I Wanna Take you Higher',

'Somebody's Watching You', 'Sing a Simple Song',

'Everyday People', 'Sex Machine',

'You Can Make it if You Try', that alone.

This record alone he didn't have to do anything else, ever.

And this record would've stood up

to everyone else who's ever made music.

So genius record.

- The blueprint man.

Sly.

The blueprint.

I look at this album and I see

why I'm sitting here.

- [N. George] What was the like your goal

when you started it?

- Make people just get along.

That's kinda basically it.

I thought maybe I had like,

the white people and black people,

girls, guys all on stage

and we playing, we were having a good time.

The audience would just have to get in that.

There is just no way to get around it.

That's what I thought.

And I thought I was right.

Yeah.

I'm looking for albinos now.

I mean that's the only, really legitimate

minority group going on.

- [Questlove] Though he wasn't an albino bassist,

Larry Graham made a unique place for himself

in human history, just by using his thumb.

- Larry Graham was Sly's bass player

when Sly first hit it.

Larry, he was a guitar player,

so he really didn't pay attention to like

traditional bass technique.

And he had a gospel trio with his mom.

His mom played the organ, right?

And he's playing guitar,

and mom was playing the bass with foot pedals.

Pedals broke, so he bought a bass

just temporarily until the pedals got fixed.

So, he playing the base,

then the drummer didn't show up.

- He didn't even start slapping with his thumb.

He actually just started well like,

you now just like (playing guitar)

just hitting, just hitting it.

And then the slap, the slap came out of that.

And then you know, you can,

you have to do the the thumb and the forefinger

to get that octave thing happening.

And then, that started into the pluck.

The pull off in the pluck and all that.

- Larry Graham is one of most significant bass players

of all time.

Because Graham invented, Dong tat! Dong tat!

Using his thumb to pop

the thump, the strings and started plucking them.

And it gave a much more percussive, aggressive sound.

- When we heard it in the 'hood,

all the bass players were like,

okay, what is that?

We didn't know if it was a bass or guitar or clavinet.

What is that?

My boys said, "hey man can you play like that?"

I said, "yeah I can play like that."

And I ran home, I was like, okay, let's see.

(playing the guitar)

I didn't leave the house man,

till I had like a reasonable facsimile (laughing)

- After massive pop success,

Sly made a faithful turn away from optimism

towards a dark, murkier side that like Brown,

stripped funk, down to its essence.

This is the, for those who do not know,

this is the record cover of Sly and the Family Stone.

'There's a Riot Going On',

which was an incredibly influential record.

I mean, he had albums proceeding this, like 'Stand',

that had, 'Dance to the Music' that had

bigger hits maybe in terms of singles.

But this is really where I think you saw

an artist that may be you thought of

was like a funk artists or artists,

singles oriented funk artists

that made one of the most amazing albums

and most important albums of all time.

- In my opinion, 'There's a Riot Going On'

was sort of like a reality show

or an accident that you couldn't turn away from.

As genius as it was,

it's also very painful to absorb.

Because, I mean, you're listening to a man's life

come apart at the seams.

Like how does someone come from (beating drums)

Like that reeks of, you can do it!

You're, it's encouraging.

They were the utopian poster children

of all that was beautiful in the civil rights era.

How do you go from it to,

I mean, 'Just Like a Baby's' like

one of the most painful songs to ever listen to.

It's the sound of...

It's just very depressing.

- [N. George] What led you to make

that particular kind of record?

-'Cause there were a lot of riots going on.

That's probably it.

There were a lot of riots going on.

All kinds of riots too.

There were

racial riots

and then there were economical riots

and then, just riots.

Riot, riots (laughing)

... wrong riots.

- [N. George] You made the record a lot.

Unlike earlier you made it almost by yourself,

pretty much.

- Yeah, I had to.

'Cause at the time,

people had other things to do a lot of times

and I'd just be stuck.

I'd live in the studio.

So when a part come up,

I had to figure that I just do it myself,

but I put their names it.

- [N. George] Why'd you put the names on it?

- Well, because I never

like if you of to a movie and you find out,

the guy's the director, the producer,

the star and I don't like that.

It's greedy.

So I just put everybody's name on it anyways.

- You know the Beatles is full of them.

So, they like

un-godly, Motown had a whole bunch of them.

But they're all like one artist.

Motown is like an artist with a whole bunch

of different writers, producers.

Sly!

Did that shit by himself.

- And in the solitude of a camper.

He had a studio set up in a camper,

and he would go out there and lay this stuff down.

- [Questlove] Sly reinvented the sound of music

on 'Family Affair'.

By his innovative use of early drum machines.

- Sounded right to me.

And then I'd break one,

so I'd have to have about four of them different sessions.

And then you're not supposed to push the button,

but one, one button at a time.

And I would have button three or four

and I break rhythm machines, every time I go to sessions.

And just to get 'em right to get the right sound.

- [N. George] So at that particular, you broke

like three or four drum machines making that record?

- Oh, yeah.

At least.

- [N.George] Talk about I mean,

people have always speculated about

what the lyric is about.

Is that about man himself,

is about a particular family.

- It's kind

yeah, it can be that and then is just

an idea that I thought everybody could relate to.

And that's kind of basically it.

- Fast forward, I get a chance to meet him.

And I say, what is 'Family Affair' about?

He said Tumes, "it's about me."

He said the lyrics.

One child grows up to be, somebody who just loves to learn.

And another child grows up to be somebody

you just want to burn.

Mom loves the both of them.

You see it's in the blood.

Both both kids are good to mom,

'cause blood's thicker than mud.

It's a family affair.

His mother only called him a Syl, Sylvester.

Sly, they weren't competition, internally.

'Cause he was one of those kids came up

in the Holy Roman church.

And when he went that way, his mother and father hated him.

So he was always in conflict.

And years later, I find a lot of people

who came out with brothers and sisters

who come out of the gospel thing,

that had that internal conflict.

- Well, there were two girls

in the house.

And, they were

active.

They would argue and then they would not argue

and so I left and I went upstairs in the studio.

That probably had a lot to do with it.

- [N. George] Okay, so there's two arguing...

- There's two, they were sisters.

- [N. George] Ah.

- One turned into my wife.

- [N. George] Okay.

- And then she was.

You know what I did on the night of my honey moon?

The very night,

went to studio.

- [N. George] On your honeymoon night?

- Yeah.

- [N. George] She probably wasn't too happy about that.

- Nah, didn't seem like it.

(both giggling)

- [Questlove] While incredible creativity

was coming from San Francisco

and unheralded new home for funk was growing

in America's Heartland.

In the 80s, a studio band called Lipps Incorporated

from Minneapolis had a hit called 'Funky Town'.

Was a cute record, but it wasn't accurate.

Minneapolis would make its own contribution,

but the true funky town was in another part of the Midwest.

- There was a time where,

it seemed like Ohio was coming up

with a new funk band every other week.

- [Questlove] Dayton, Ohio was just down the road

from Cincinnati, where King Records was located.

James Brown recorded.

And Bootsy Collins learned his trade.

But from the late 70s into the early 80s,

a city with a population of 300,000

was truly funky town.

Producing the Ohio players.

Slave.

Lakeside.

Heatwave.

Zapp.

Roger.

Platypus.

Sun.

As well as innovative musicians

like Junie Morrison and Steve Arrington,

which raises the question why Dayton, Ohio?

(drum beat sound)

- Dayton, Ohio has the highest per capita number of bands

and musicians connected to the funk explosion

of the latter 1970s.

A city that has inordinate number of bands

that had record deals on major labels.

But even those bands are also,

supplemented by the number of bands in that town,

that actually never really got record deals.

I associate funk and the funk band

as emblematic of a period in which,

relatively high wage working class jobs.

Just before the ravages of de-industrialization

deplete so many of these towns.

The funk band is really the product of that

because most of the parents of these band members,

worked at Delco.

They worked at factories

and they had enough disposable income,

to purchase instruments, to afford lessons,

private lessons sometimes for their children.

- The whole scene developed in like the basement.

It was a very, centralized scene

where the families between the car companies

and NCR and Inland Steel,

bypassing Air Force Base were making nice change.

They all lived in houses, weren't really apartment building,

so they all had tricked up basements.

And they basically keep the kids off the street

would buy them whatever they want.

And you could just go from basement to the basement

and just jam.

- So you play in a band,

like the Overnight Low Show Band,

which was a very popular local band

that constituted members

that would go on to play in other groups.

You were as popular as the best athlete for the school.

You had a following.

The talent shows and competitions at these schools,

rivaled major sports events as far as

the attendance and also the seriousness

with which the competition

was put together.

- [Questlove] The breakthrough for Dayton

was a band known for its driving riffs

and erotic LP covers.

- When I first heard

'Skin Tight'.

I remember the girl that I picked up the night

that I heard the song 'Skin Tight'

and she was wearing skin tight jeans.

And the lyrics go, "You're a bad bad Misses

in those skin type britches running folks into ditches,

they about to bust their stitches", damn!

- After the Ohio Players hit,

everybody even got more serious.

Because not only did the Ohio Players have hit records,

they were totally unique.

Nobody sounded like those guys.

And it just kept getting deeper

and deeper and deeper.

- We generally wrote about things

that were happening on the road.

And at that period of time, people were streaking.

In fact, on the 'Skin Tight' album

we have a song called 'Streakin' Cheek to Cheek'.

And that's because people in these college campuses

where we were playing

a lot of the time,

were running across these college campuses,

butt naked.

And the streaking thing was out.

So 'Skin Tight' was the whole idea,

based around that concept,

of what was going on in the world.

The cover itself was so suggestive,

was erotic was sexual, was challenging

to a narrow conception of what the black body was worth

and what it was about.

And this is a very curvy woman of color,

so that the very cover of the album signified

what's inside.

- First, they were really shocking.

I thought they were very shocking.

I was like, wow, they put a naked lady on the cover.

Meanwhile, of course, I was a young girl at this point,

and but I thought they were so stunning

and they were so beautifully done

and tastefully done.

This was a great thing about conceptualist.

This was the thing I think about

people in funk music and combining stuff with fashion.

It was, they were great conceptualists.

- I'm in Ohio players album covers.

Let me, can we just...

That's a moment in and of itself.

- Our concept was the band.

If we could put on our album,

a beautiful black woman,

we would have every man

alive looking at it.

And if they would look at it and they would buy it,

then possibly they would put it on and listen to it.

The honey concept was just unbelievable.

When we walked into the studio,

and saw this girl laying on this plexiglass

and then pouring the honey over her, it's like,

"What are y'all getting ready to do?"

It's like, one of the biggest

and most anticipated things

with us doing an album, is to finish it,

to see how the album cover was gonna look.

It was like, okay, let's finish this album cover

called honey, and see where we're going from here.

- [N. George] The girl was really covered in honey?

- Really covered in honey.

And after a couple hours of shooting,

shots and likewise,

you've probably heard the story.

She got stuck to the plexiglass.

- [N. George] She really got stuck to the plexiglass?

- She really got stuck to the Plexiglass

and we had to pour warm water over her

and pry her off that plexiglass.

(interviewer laughing hysterically)

- [N. George] That's not an urban legend?

- It's not urban legend.

That's the truth.

- [Questlove] Steve Arrington, a member of Slave

and later Hall of Fame would be a funk leader,

as both drummer and vocalist.

- I think, melodically

we took things in a new place,

as we drew from the funk of George,

and guitar nastiness

of Sly.

We sort of blended it and added some

melodic perspective of maybe

a Stevie and more jazz perspectives.

I never was known as a singer in Dayton only a drummer.

I sang with this lounge band The Murphy's

and 'Tie a Yellow Ribbon', you know,

doing all the on my way to Vegas tunes.

You know what I'm saying?

Came back to Dayton and I remember

Slave then moved to Jersey.

And then we went into the studio

for 'Just a Touch of Love' album.

We had did the track

and the guy who was gonna sing on it,

wasn't in the studio for a while.

And so we all took a turn at the mic and I was like,

man, we feeling that. It's kind of strange.

- Steve Arrington,

as talented and powerful as he is,

he's also a brilliant experimentalist.

He's someone that can do things vocally,

that are unacceptable.

He can actually sing a song, make it sound good

and even be outside of the notes in the chord.

But he'll skim over those notes,

go outside and come back.

Some of the kinds of things

that some of the great jazz singers were noted for doing.

He brings that to funk.

And it really comes to, I think,

a kind of national spotlight

with the song 'Just a Touch of Love'.

- We made a serious stamp on the world

of innovation in a small town to say,

to be innovative and unique

is powerful with just some guys

who started in a garage doing talent shows.

It just comes from cats man who just didn't give a flip.

And just say, we're gonna do it our way

if it goes voo!

Voo!

And you hear the fret noise so you hear the fret noise

or (indistinct) goes Owww!

Awww!

Oh, girl.

So what? It is what it is.

And I'm going eiya!

Eiya!

Eiya!

Everybody just did their own thing.

- [Questlove] Zapp, led by guitarist Roger Troutman,

led funk forward by embracing technology.

- The technological experimental savvy

of Roger, is also part of the reason why

the group actually ends up surviving

this transition from the 70s to the 80s.

So Roger was doing things experimentally with

playing his guitar through

playing his guitar through a Leslie speaker cabinet

a Leslie speaker cabinet

to get a kind of

different sound out of his guitar.

He was doing those things early on.

And he was somebody that learned the technologies

that as the studio became more the space

for creative genius

and less the live performance stage.

He was able to make that transition.

- Guys have always been interested in like,

what's gonna make the

what kind of things are available to go

and bring novelty to the sound.

So there's always been

this interest in incorporating technology.

- There's a technology that's also connected

to the development of funk music.

Two things I would say number one,

the wah wah pedal

had a deep impact.

The other thing is clavinet.

Clavinet is a keyboard

that actually pluck strings that was made by Hohner.

And then clavinet

the D6 clavinet and the clavinet,

God, Stevie Wonder.

- I took 'More Bounce to the Ounce'

And the first time we ever, we didn't sample it,

we just cut it and taped it together,

off another song he had on the album called 'Funky Bounce'.

That lil beat on More Bounce.

I took that off.

No sampling was around yet.

And I just taped them together, taped 'em together,

till I got 30 seconds of that.

Then I called Roger back in,

and told him to play Wes Montgomery,

of James Brown and we sing 'More Bounce to the Ounce'

But then I had him sing, the talk box on the MOOG

and on the guitar, so you get three point harmony on it.

So it don't sound like a talk box.

- [Questlove] Dayton definitely made its mark on funk.

But the hard streets of Detroit

would be a home base for funk's most influential music mob.

(playing the guitar)

In the early 60s, a barber

who specialized in processing hair,

was also trying to make it as a songwriter.

He wrote songs for Motown in Detroit during the week,

and did hair in New Jersey on the weekends.

His name was George Clinton.

- I wrote songs from Mondays and worked to Friday,

starting in about 63.

- [N. George] And you'd come back to New Jersey

on the weekend?

- On the weekend, I'd worked at the barber shop.

(interviewer laughing hysterically)

- You wrote songs Monday to Friday and did hair.

- And come back and do hair.

And then we got a hit record, 'I Wanna Testify'.

'Testify' came out at the same time,

'Flower Power' came out.

So we got out there and got turned comletely out.

And then we went to Boston

We was at Cambridge, we was over at Harvard with the kids,

they would get 64 dollars to test acid.

We didn't know what the hell they was doing.

We though they were trying to get with the girls.

- [N. George] So you started dropping acid?

- So next thing we know, we was out there,

and all these little kids are laughing at us.

But we was having fun with the young kids

and next thing you know, we was old ass hippies.

- [Questlove] The old school process specialist's

got an Afro.

But his hairstyle was as much punk as funk.

- I couldn't stay still.

I cut holes in my Afro.

I had moons and stars and dicks

and everything designed into them.

Long before people started cutting those designs in there.

I was doing the shit way back there.

You know, they were still wearing suits

and I was wearing diapers and sheets

and nothing.

The music was changing slowly

slowly.

The records started changing

slowly

and it went on that way until Bootsy came into the group.

- Going up to the house first of all,

is kinda like, you know,

you get this

(spooky humming)

you know, The Addams Family kind of thing.

Da! Da! Daa!

(snapping fingers)

Da! Da! Daa!

(snapping fingers)

So, you get that kinda vibe first

and I'm like, okay, I'm cool.

So I go up to the door,

she say, well come on in.

I go in, and the whole place is like dark.

And got the black lights going on.

and I'm looking around.

No furniture, I say Dang!

This is awfully weird,

even for me is weird.

And then I look over in the corner

and I see this sheet sitting over in the corner

with some yellow

chicken feet on.

And she said, "yeah that's George over there."

I'm like, yeah, I figured.

I figured that had to be George.

So I go over, and he said, "sit down."

And I sit down beside him.

We start talking immediately.

And so,

I was telling him about the band

and he says, yeah, I know about The J.B.'S.

He says, yeah.

And he was telling me how bad we were in this,

that and the other and that

he wanted to hook up, we need to hook up.

- Something I did with him was okay,

help me write some tracks for Parliament.

And I help you put your group together.

The Rubber Band.

He said, "Can we could use that name?"

That's your name, Rubber Band.

And we did stretch it out

in New york walking down the street.

Stretching out and runnin' loose,

in a rubber...

The whole song we had that walking down the street.

Came back to Detroit and recorded it.

That was the thing.

Getting him was the new sound.

Then he got Maceo and Fred.

So, Parliament all of a sudden had

what we call P-Funk now.

- [Questlove] This funk Dynamic Duo

would write many of the eras defining jams

on a boat off of Miami.

In the infamous Bermuda Triangle.

- Bootsy he now went

all the way to Bimini.

That's the 'Motor Booty' album,

talking about number one Bimini Road.

Well, I took him through that and you go

all the way around Bermuda Triangle

and all those weird places.

- When we first start going fishing,

I thought we were just going fishing for fish.

Which we caught a lot of fish (laughing)

But I started realizing that we were fishing

from the universe.

We had the studio going 27 hours a day.

And it was like,

I made sure

that's when I had to make decisions about,

okay, are you gonna stay up and act a fool all night,

or are you gonna act a fool until four o'clock?

Get maybe two or three hours of sleep

and then beat everybody over to the studio?

- I've slept for a few nights in the studio yeah.

We like I said,

it was a party for seven days.

And we wouldn't we'd...

Say like 'Knee Deep'.

The song 'Knee Deep' took us a week to record.

So, we stayed in the studio for those seven days.

No one would leave maybe to go get

something to eat but, everybody would take shifts.

Next.

Next.

And yeah, you'd be stepping over people

Folk, people didn't take baths,

nobody washed up, and talking 'bout,

funk.

Yeah, it was pretty funky up in there.

- A bath?

Come on and soak in that doodoo.

Like I used to tell 'em, I'd have the bass so loud

that I wanna be able

to rub my hand across the record and feel it.

You know what I'm saying.

I want the funk so strong up in the air,

when you pick up the record you say, Whoo!

They were funky in the studio when they made that.

- Now, it was crazy.

You had to step over mugs, this that and the other.

But I kinda clocked in early.

But that don't mean everybody clocked in.

And, I just when George gave me that opportunity

something just clicked.

It was like, okay, you gotta stop acting a fool.

It didn't mean I had to stop acting a fool,

it just meant you gotta,

balance this fool,

because the fool was still me.

And to this day, it's gonna always be there.

But I had to find a balance

to do what I felt I needed to do.

- We'd all be in the studio,

and someone like myself and Lynn,

maybe in the corner singing.

♪ I got a string on my thing ♪

Right?

And then Georgia say, I hear that sang that say it again,

and we would say,

♪ when I'll pull my string ♪

right?

And then he said go put it down.

It would happen just like that.

Or someone over on the side like Boogie

might be just hitting a melody.

(making tune with mouth)

That simple, and then he would say put it down.

So he was the funk referee

like a magnet in the middle of this

and all these energies and music and everything

will be flowing to him.

Like he would be kind of, hooking up to you, right

and one at a time, we would all go

and put those parts together.

And George would just,

all those parts that are flowing

the creative energies that were in that room.

I don't know how he managed

to remember it all at one time and then retain it.

- [N. George] What do you think

P-Funk and George's contribution was to?

What did he bring to the to the music that was new?

- Funk.

So George brought funk.

Straight funk.

He's just funky.

Normally he can't help it.

- And what's really deep is,

he didn't know where the one was at.

And that was funny too.

And so,

I kinda had to show him where the one was.

I got it, I told him, I got this from James Brown.

And he was so deep.

It was like, give it here.

He didn't care where it came from,

it's like, give up the funk.

- Bootsy had been to James Brown school.

So he knew what it mean to be one, two,

three, four.

One, two,

three, four.

One, he knew the essence of that,

but once he realized that,

the one was what it is on James' record,

we just tried to, we got stupid with it.

We want the funk, give up the funk. Awww

We exaggerated it and clowned it

from then on.

And Bootsy had that image brother.

- [N. George] Right.

- They had the same essence that they had on James.

That lock.

You can go to work by the timing

you don't need no metronome with Catfish.

- Well, the whole Mothership Connection theory

was basically that Black people

were the first aliens.

And it tied into George's whole alien culture,

theories and mindset that he was way into.

So he basically took the whole Easter Island

and all these various things

that Stonehenge like who made the pyramids.

Who knows who built these things, okay?

And he tied it into, I know who built 'em,

Black people who were the original aliens

and came from outer space.

And bla, bla, bla.

So he created this whole thing.

- They take all this kind of fresh 60s, 70s

hard look at ancient artifacts

and questioning the origin of mankind

and put it to an incredibly funky beat.

Because these are essentially kind

of Black nationalist ideas.

The idea of the Egyptians being,

a highly advanced civilization,

perhaps with extraterrestrial ties.

I mean, that's a very bold notion.

And at the same time,

Black folks are reclaiming Africa

and all that

goes into what becomes P-Funk.

At the same time, P-Funk is clever because,

it's a way to celebrate blackness

without saying the word black.

- A lot of what happened with funk was high concept.

Certainly the ultimate was the mothership connection.

The whole idea of a new consciousness

that we arrived at through music

was a big part of

was a big kind of organizing principle

that showed up again and again.

- In my case you asked me what made me

go that deep into it with Digital Underground,

I didn't think about it.

I just am a product of it.

I'm a clone of Dr. Funkenstein.

That's in me.

You know I'm saying.

That's in me just as much as check one, two, one, two.

So, I can't help it, that's just how I think.

One nation under a groove, free your mind and your ass will follow

I was branded by that.

- Of all the great records that P-Funk had created,

none of them had a bigger impact on the next generation,

than 'Flashlight'.

- 'Flashlight'. When that, come on that was a game changer.

The second that would come on.

- [N. George] Tell me what was it about 'Flashlight'

that was unique?

- 'Flashlight' was just like,

to this day, I still don't know what I'm hearing.

And, I'm a musician.

I don't know what I'm hearing.

I don't know what's vocals.

I don't know what's synth.

I don't know what's bass being played through neutron.

I don't know what's happening on that track.

And it says a lot.

There's a magic.

There's some magic shit on there, that's incredible.

- Bernie was very familiar with the harpsichord

he took classical music.

So he's got a perfect ear,

so that he learned very quick

how to play

and adjust enough while he's playing.

'Cause you know, the thing, the Moog ain't got

no notes of its own.

You got to make them.

Blend this a little bit of decay,

a little bit of (indistinct)

You gotta shape the notes.

- Bootsy had this track.

But he didn't want it.

He gave it.

He said, "George you take it."

That's what George says.

(both laughing)

So, we listen to it.

And everything else is me on that record,

except for the vocals.

- You did all the instruments. - Yes.

Except for the guitar and drums,

and saxophone solo and vocals.

And then doing the baseline

his two other (indistinct)

moog, synth.

That's three moogs, and the strings.

Some strings, string ensemble

So the strings, the three synthesizers

and the rest is vocals.

- When you put it on loud

and you're in the high school dance

and someone's had a 16 year old.

Your ass just starts to move.

- And for the first time they played Flashlight

on the radio.

And again that electrified feeling I got

when I saw 'The Clones of Dr. Funkenstein' album,

I held the radio knob for five minutes

until 'Flashlight' was over.

And then I fell back like this.

And my life again was forever changed.

How could you make a record that funky?

- When Flashlight was out,

there was parties where Flashlight would get played

every other record

or every three records all night.

That was a hot record.

I've only experienced like three

or four records in my lifetime

that was that hot.

- [Questlove] The success of the P-Funk mob,

was part of a wave of funk bands

that would have major hits,

be musically adventurous,

and have dynamic stage shows.

Kool and the Gang out of New Jersey,

B.T. Express and Brass Construction out of Brooklyn.

The Bar-Kays out of Memphis.

Brothers Johnson and War out of Los Angeles.

Tons of bands that started in one city, and moved to others.

Maze, featuring Frankie Beverly

moved from Philadelphia to the Bay Area.

Cameo relocated from New York to Atlanta.

Two of the biggest bands of the era

made Los Angeles their base of operations.

The Commodores coming fromTuskegee,

and Earth, Wind and Fire from Chicago.

Earth, Wind and Fire brought funk as close to elegance,

as it could come.

- I talk about this all the time.

You kind of have like the guys who,

you are either a Rolling Stones guy or Beatles guy.

And even though you love the Rolling Stones,

you kinda lean toward the Beatles.

So, it's kinda same thing with Earth, Wind and Fire

and Parliament Funkadelic.

Either your on Earth, Wind and Fire guy

or you're a Funkadelic.

And I love Earth, Wind and Fire.

I love Earth, Wind and Fire.

But I'm definitely a Funkadelic.

But Earth, Wind and Fire to me,

just the whole Afro Cuban thing and you know Afrocentric.

And just to me the mysticism.

I used to sit and like stare at

'All in All' like for hours,

just looking at the pyramids and all that stuff.

And my fascination with it to this day

can be stemmed back to looking at those

album covers back in the day.

- Earth, Wind and Fire was Bill Cosby.

P-Funk was Richard Pryor.

Both comedic geniuses.

But, that was the difference.

Earth, Wind and, they would both talking about cosmology,

but in a different way.

- There was a whole thing with Earth, Wind and Fire.

They we're focused on Egypt.

There was a whole Egyptology and pyramid power,

the past and the future, being collapsed.

That was a big part of it.

- It's about the belief that we owe our debt

to other people, and that the world

has to be brought together in a multiracial fashion.

The irony is, out of funk music

emerges a kind of synthetic

collagist approach, where things are brought together.

Think about Earth, Wind and Fire's 'It's All About Love'.

We into astrology and mysticism

and we're a religion you dig.

So, that was actually prophetic.

And that was pretty radical and cutting edge

because you're speaking to these deeply christianized

Black people, whose modernist worldviews

are being challenged by this Afrofuturism,

which is projecting our blackness into space.

- [Questlove] A leader and changing the look of funk,

was a vocal trio from my hometown of Philadelphia,

who went from the Bluebells to Labelle.

- They were like, way before Gaga, Lady Gaga.

They were to me, they were the originals

of avant garde ladies that just didn't give a flip

plus Patty could sing like beyond

and Nona and those guys were innovators.

This was before Grace Jones.

They told women it's cool to be yourself

and to be to be provocative

and to be

outside the box.

- We started wearing

space influence clothing by Larry LeGaspi.

And for that particular night,

we wanted to, I guess it's called early branding.

We did the show at the Metropolitan Opera House called

and we said wear something silver.

And we had nuns and silver,

people painted their horses silver

and had silver drawn carriages.

Salvador Dali came, I mean it was really a big night.

- One of the key figures in funk style

is a gay Filipino man named Larry LeGaspi,

who was a stylist for,

initially he developed Labelle's look

extraterrestrial looking sci-fi women singers.

That was then adopted

and it went on with George Clinton's outfits

and P-Funk's outfits got more elaborate,

LeGaspi did that.

He also went on, he worked also

with Kiss on the rock side.

But this idea, it's interesting this thing about funk

that it embraced freakiness, the outsiderness.

So you have a gay Filipino man

who's unheralded in a sense,

but who is an essential part

of creating the look of funk in the 70s.

- They opened the door for that whole inclusion.

Sexual orientation, none of that mattered.

It was really, Labelle had 'em all coming together

in a way than any other group

that I remembered up to that point.

So you had the disco thing going on,

but when they came along, it did this.

Whosh!

So you'd go to their concerts there would be gays,

straights, doesn't matter.

And that opened the door for that, to me, Labelle.

(upbeat music)

- The sampling of funk beats by hip hop artists

created a new dynamic across musical generations.

- But sooner or later, somebody comes and are prr!

Prr Prr!

Prr prr!

and takes it back to back to square one

with the simplicity.

It always gon do that.

And when it comes, people gon' say

"what's that, it's getting on the nerves."

"What is that?"

"What is that?"

It's the new shit.

James Brown, P-Funk did all the songs that had that raw,

unprocessed 'cause you have a lot of room left,

so you can process it yourself.

- Funkadelic had a song called 'Good Old Funky Music'.

It's just a simple stripped down beat

but the way they recorded it,

it sounded monster to us.

We heard that and it was like, oh my god.

We could not believe our headphones.

We couldn't believe the speakers.

It literally could shake the room

and then I think

you know, then hip hop artists, like ourselves,

had the idea of like getting a hold of those things

and then, okay, turn the bass way up,

or doubling up a

kick drum, or chopping it up to make it

even move or make it even crunch

even harder.

- Hip Hop is gonna be deeply influenced by funk,

because they have similar preoccupations

with repetition and circularity and vamping

and taking a break beat and moving on.

- As art 'Funky Drummer' is the most important

hip hop break, in hip hop's stratosphere.

But I feel as though

the actual heart of hip hop

lies within 'Impeach The President',

by a group called the Honeydrippers.

'Impeach The President' is, I mean,

that is Black music's

'We Will Rock You'.

Like just that that instantaneous,

I know that drum break.

- Part of the funk,

especially back then when I first came out,

it was really about

it's connection through hip hop.

You know what I'm saying?

So, kind of like in that lineage

is how we were reaching it.

And so, by the time I did 'Voodoo',

whereas it's,

we're kinda like

not leaning as heavy on to the head nod thing,

weed smokin' head nod hip hop thing,

but getting more elemental.

- I credit sampling anyway,

I know there's going to be a great deal of controversy,

but I'm gonna credit sampling is,

sampling took that essence,

took that that rawness of the funk

and then put that back on the radio,

where it had been missing.

- I would definitely credit this to hip hop

and the West Coast.

The G Funk type thing because those cats

religiously are fucking with the funk.

They're not fucking around.

Every time I go to Cali,

that's all I hear in the streets.

And, Snoop and Dre and all those groups out there.

I mean, that's all they do.

they sample Roger,

they sample Cameo,

sample all the old P-Funk stuff.

- Everything was up for grabs.

Jimmy Castor Bunch, J.B.'s' whatever.

It was kind of like then, after 1989,

you could never sample another James Brown record again.

Because you'd heard it.

You've heard so many things that were just

mined and used for so many hip hop tracks

at a certain point, you know.

So, you had to get it on the ground floor.

- Me being sampled most not just by hip hop,

rap everything.

Is all across the board.

I thank God that they chose me

and four, fives years have gone by and they still

using me for everything on major

most of the major endorsements.

I feel great about the whole thing.

- Y'all think James Brown has a hot catalog,

listen to this P-Funk stuff.

And it was really, like you say,

I was more

continuing what they were doing.

I just felt like digital underground

was the hip hop version extension of Funkadelic.

- Rap and hip hop have blown up,

and they're all coming to George.

So I said, "George, now what do you think about all this?"

He says, "remember that album The Clones

of Dr. Funkenstein?"

I said, "Yeah."

He said, "these are the clones.

All of them.

They're all the clones of Dr. Frankenstein."

- The sampling of funk beats by hip hop artists

created a new dynamic across musical generations.

- I was in Andre Harell's office.

And Puffy came in and said, " 'Tumes, man.

I didn't know you were here."

He said, "look, I have this artist.

I want you to meet."

He said, "'Cause I wanna do a sample of"

'Juicy Fruit'

So he came in and it was Biggie.

So we met brilliant, man.

Really, really nice young man.

I mean, I really dug Biggie man.

And then he thanked me

for giving clearance

'cause they were having trouble getting the records cleared.

And that was the bridge into the next generation.

- They would just buy the gear

and start figuring it out.

They started figuring out how to make music.

They would start sampling and say,

well, I'll take 'Good Time', since that already works.

I'll take that put in my little sampler

and make a little groove out of 'Good Times'.

And I was like,

and all of a sudden, my whole

perspective on it changed because I realized that,

they wish that they could have had the knowledge.

- People who make records, like

DJs who make records, they have to buy vinyl,

buy records, and find little snippets that they like

and edit.

I don't have to buy nothing.

I bought this in 1977.

You know what I mean?

(laughing)

And I could do it.

But you know what, hey,

they stopped teaching people how to play instruments.

What do you expect?

People are going to start being creative

just 'cause you take away their tools.

- And they go in and they dig.

And I've heard people say to me like,

Yo, man,

I came to you through that Jay Z record dude

and I heard the original 'Weak in the Knees'

and I started getting into your career.

So, that's really been cool.

I dig where things have gone.

I understand the side of it that,

I guess when you looked at it also

you could look at it from this direction

and that is well but,

the people who made the music,

our career was done.

- [N. George] You've been sampled a lot.

- Yeah.

- [N. George] Do you feel like the artists,

are you getting paid for the...

- Sometimes they don't but I'm thankful.

They keep me alive (laughing)

- [N. George] You don't have any beef with sampling?

- No. I don't care.

- [N. George] Well, are there any...

- I may sample all of them?

I may do that, yeah.

Sample everybody that's sampled me.

I may even sample what they sampled.

(giggling)

and call it a sample.

(upbeat music playing)

- Everything in the 80s became, you know,

with technology.

Everyone wanted to have this very expensive sound.

This big, lush, tons of reverb everything.

Big snare drum sound, everything,

perfect for the radio.

It was all about getting on the radio.

Funk music involves jamming,

and it really involves like

being in a rehearsal studio with a bunch of guys

a guitar player, bass player, drummer,

brass section, whatever,

that there's not,

I don't know how much...

That just isn't around.

It's also expensive to do that.

Rehearsing and getting

a real drummer in there with a bass player.

Is easy to just program it.

So that's kind of killed it off.

- I really think that the technology,

in a way killed the funk band,

which is something,

I really believe that once

a lot of those bands started using drum machines

and replacing the drummers,

I think they lost, a lot of them lost their way.

I mean, some of them like Cameo, I mean,

they made a sound out of it.

But some of the others didn't make a sound.

What we were tryin' to do with 'Planet Rock',

it was go in a different direction,

which was something we wanted

to take the European thing of Kraftwerk

and bring it to the Bronx.

So basically, it wouldn't have worked with a drummer

'cause that wasn't what the sound was.

We wanted something very precise, very clean.

They weren't really interested in anything

but the funky beat, the break.

And that's why when we went to do Kraftwerk,

when we went to do 'Planet Rock',

and we used the Kraftwerk beat,

it was very specific that they wanted that beat

repeated over and over.

And a drummer really couldn't get that.

I don't think that, that it's very difficult.

- You know, all the drummers,

they were calling me,

Oh my god, aren't you scared?

We're not gonna have a gig.

I'm like, no.

We just incorporate the drum machine

and we play find that space,

and then find where we can incorporate technology

with what we do.

Live with, drum machines, you gotta figure it out.

So I think it got to a point where,

some people couldn't afford to bring out these bands

and after a while, if they weren't selling records,

it got to a point where you had to,

put five acts on one show, in order to sell the tickets.

So, the economy changed, a lot had to do with it.

(live band playing)

- [Questlove] Emerged out the frozen north

from a place that seemed to frigid, for funk.

But Prince would not only have massive hits

but founded a movement out of Minneapolis.

Between his proteges like The Time and Sheila E.

Disciples like producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis,

and imitators from other cities,

like Detroit's Ready For the World.

Prince's sound dominated the 80s

and continues to reign.

- Sly and the Family Stone, George Clinton

Parliament Funkadelic.

All they were doing was taking Black music

and adding all these hippie

elements to it or at that time psychedelic.

So Prince and The Time they were kind of,

they were doing the same thing.

Except, the elements that they were bringing in were

new wave, new romantic, that whole thing

that was going on in Europe and all that

Adam Ant type of shit

and they were bringing that into,

rhythm and blues and funk or what have you.

So, it's kinda same the thing.

- He's a musician who plays funk.

And plays it very well.

Brother was brought up in Minneapolis

at a time when the minority population of that city

was insignificant in numbers.

- Real clever.

So, I mean, he didn't copy

and never used the same chords.

He got a real good.

He can do a 'Purple Rain' and went ahead and did

♪ Purple Rain Purple Rain ♪

It's country western as hell.

But you don't relate it to that,

because you put a nice Jimi Hendrix

pretty tone over it,

on the guitar, which is really slick.

- He had to kill funk.

And by him saying, we are a new dangerous sound,

and that new dangerous sound was Chuck Berry.

Their new dangerous sound was new wave

which was going back to early rock and roll.

But, he was not scared,

to make it dance music.

- Prince loved James Brown there is no question about.

He loves Santana.

And for all I know, he loves Led Zeppelin.

- Well, the thing is,

is he created his own sound,

just like James and Sly

and everyone else created their own sound.

That sound was,

if all he knew was to play, 'cuase he produced

and wrote and played everything himself.

Well, so supposedly he doesn't play horn.

So, if he played keyboards,

he's gonna have horn sound, he did everything himself.

So that's why the sound sounded like that.

He didn't kill the horns,

he wanted to play everything himself.

So obviously, when I'm gonna get a horn patch

and this is what I would play if I had horns.

And then when he could afford to have horn players,

but then he brought in horn players.

He's a great making a point lines incredible funky.

He experimented.

He used different sounds, some records,

he didn't use any bass at all.

That was unheard of.

So he's like, there's no limit.

- One of things about the way Prince recorded

is that he had a unique sound to his drums.

He used the drum machine

but he also used live drums.

And he also used keyboards in a very

kind of a way, that hadn't been used before.

He's a real arranger though.

He was a real I mean, he's a real,

not just as composer but the way

he arranged his music was very unique.

- Prince's funk is all about,

deep snares, and if he does,

does use a crack snare.

He turns the snare off.

So his thing is things more about

(playing drum)

You know what I mean.

Like it's more, it's a driving funk.

- I always put it this way.

What I recognized when I was first around Prince

and we come to rehearsals and sound checks and so on,

was that whenever he wanted to jam

and just have fun, inevitably

he would call the James Brown tune.

He might play 'Body Heat' for an hour and a half,

or 'It's Too Funky in Here'.

Those were two of his favorites

that he would just jam on

and he'd played guitar for 10 minutes.

Then he'd sit down and go over to Bobby Z

and get him up and he played the drums,

and this jam would just go on forever

to the point where the crew

and everybody was like looking at their watches

like alright already let's go.

We wanna go home eat dinner,

and rehearsal would go and on and on and on

and he was having a blast.

- Yo.

The one figurehead that totally embraced

the chitlins era of James Brown,

the part that no one would ever touch.

Rappers have taken all these Funky Drummer

and give it up a turn loose breaks

and the payback and all these classic

prime James breaks.

But there's someone that actually took

the James stuff that no one wanted to touch

and made it into their own.

And that person was Prince.

- Morris Day and The Time

were very much his funk alter ego.

Certainly Prince trademarked a brand of funk

that was fresh, sonically fresh.

- The only thing that is on the one in '777 9311'

is the hand clap.

Everything else is all over the one.

Like it's almost as if the silence of the one

is the funk.

And the fact that

that song

was a top 10 hit

and digestible,

easily digestible.

It's baffling to me.

- He seems to have a formula

that doesn't waver too much.

It is a little trickstery that reminds me of...

- [N. George] Can we ask about one more person?

- Sure.

- [N. George] Rick James.

- Yep.

Rick.

I hated that he did what he did.

And that's what I think about him.

I hated that he beat up the girl and that's what goes in my mind.

I hate that he did that.

He was calling me every night to come over there.

To come over that hotel.

I tell you what he say one time

I didn't like this either.

He said, "Man hurry up and write a song so I can know what to do"

But I didn't want him to think that.

- Rick was a star.

He enjoyed being a star.

He had a star quality about him.

He did some wild funk, he was very musical.

Like that 'You and I' joint.

That's a bad track but Rick could do it all man.

His persona, perhaps

it did overshadow before it was all over with.

But, you can't deny the great music.

That 'Street Life' album.

- [N. George] 'Street Songs'

- 'Street Songs'

(sighs heavily)

- [N. George] That's (indistinct)

- Yeah man.

- [N. George] It's a masterpiece.

The whole thing was him and Prince.

Because, he accused Prince of

conceptually took this and then the girls.

And it is interesting the rivalry they had,

because they were compatible talents.

And Rick in his own way

was one of the few people who could mess with Prince

in terms of the range of stuff that he could do

- And what if they had done something together?

I mean, a Prince-Rick record

or Rick-Prince record however you wanna say it.

Whoo!

- [Questlove] For many younger black musicians,

Prince was the bridge between funk's traditions

and the new technology savvy sound.

Indie funkster, Dam Funk studied records

like '1999',

to create what he calls, modern funk.

That's what I'm tryin' to take modern Funk

I call it modern funk because we continue to...

I wanna try to bring beautiful music,

along with the street beat on the bottom.

The progression of funk was dying.

We had a lot of tribute bands.

I'm not mad at the tribute bands.

They're very talented, you know what I'm saying.

But I'm not a retro artist.

I'm not up there going back to 1969.

- I think again, he's pushing the boundaries.

He's basically one of these people that

was very highly influenced by funk music

and wants to do it in the 21st century.

And this is his interpretation

of what funk music is in the 21st century.

Or what it has evolved into being.

- [Questlove] Dam's love of funk

led him to create a long running party

called Funkmosphere.

It serves L.A.'s vibrant underground scene.

Steve Arrington was so inspired by Dam,

that he collaborated with him on his first new tracks

in over 20 years.

- L.A. sort of feels like the way Dayton felt

in the 70s, with people not being afraid

to try to do different things.

And that's why I've connected with that scene

to try and open up and say,

hey, I wanna be a part of this,

sort of like a second movement.

- The future of funk.

I think Dam's really kinda trailblazing like,

'cause there's not that many other people who are

in his path right now.

There's a group in Japan

who I call the Japanese Dam Funk,

and there's a guy in France

who I call the French Dam Funk.

I think people are starting to pop up

that sound like it.

And it's like kind of a recognizable sound.

Like, Oh, that sounds like Dam.

I'm hopeful.

Pretty confident that it's

that there's gonna be an artist that really

reaches the kids.

- D'Angelo to me, is

one of the most

awe inspiring torchbearers of funk

that I've ever known.

We're brothers in funk.

And I'll say that making the Voodoo record

was like one of the most enlightening

educational experiences I've ever had.

I mean, that changed the way

that I thought about recording,

that changed the way

that I thought about engineering.

- When D sits down at a piano,

it's nobody but D.

And yeah, there's James Brown in it,

there's Prince in it,

there's Sly in it, there's George in it.

Because how can there not be

if you've listened to this music growing up.

But I don't think anybody else

has so comfortably merged

the classic elements of R&B and funk,

with the hip hop influence the way D has,

and that's why it's fresh and contemporary.

- I think funk is dead in its own way.

It's not what it used to be,

but it's it has morphed into something

that's different in the 20th century.

Absolutely. It's totally different.

And it's okay.

- [Questlove] From Brazil.

The country that gave the world Samba and Bossa Nova.

The gritty favelas that surround the big cities

have generated their own brand of funk, baile funk.

From West Africa funkalicious grooves

called Afro Beat, have been inspired

by several generations of the Kuti clan,

beginning with his legendary Father Fella

and continuing with his son Seun.

Not only as 21st century funk global,

but is deeply ingrained in the scene

people think of as rock centered.

Jam bands may have been inspired by the Grateful Dead,

but jam band icons Phish and Les Claypool,

are among the many that work funky rhythms

into their winding musical excursions.

It is some 60 years after James Brown made

on the one, a musical commandment.

Yet funk still continues to move feet and booties.

What is it's legacy?

- Well, I think funk is everywhere

and nowhere at the same time.

It's ubiquitous in that,

it still provides the recipe

for the musical orientation.

That is, we have not quite gone outside

of the formula that James Brown

and Sly Stone have given

around syncopation, around the one.

Those things are so deeply entrenched

not only in Black music but in American pop music,

that you can't get rid of it.

- The pillars of that dance music is funk.

Whether it's

via sampling until you something old

or is just inspired and fueled by

that concept of something gritty,

something dirty, something that's making

just the audience move and reactive in a certain way

that's kind of almost beyond a mind

or intellectual reaction to records.

It's just that whole that the spirit of putting a record

on and just having a reaction of bodies move.

That's gonna just go on and on.

- I'm one of the few people

that does believe that funk has never left.

The ripple is just spread,

throughout the earth.

Is it an America as much? No.

But you know, everything must change.

So, it doesn't mean that I'm not a believer in it.

But no, funk is is still here.

The one will never go anywhere.

- It's like funk will be the guest of honor

but it always will bring somebody with it.

So, what name should I put down

to get into the club?

Funk well, funk plus three guests.

It's always gonna be funk with some other form

riding out and I think whatever form that is,

may succeed it, but it will never eclipse it,

'cause the funk is the fundamental structure

of our existence when we fight against nastiness,

and when we celebrate ecstasy at our heights.

- [Questlove] Man's natural state is funk.

If you don't wash,

don't brush your teeth, or splash on cologne,

you will be funky.

So when we say funk,

we're not talking about simply music,

but the unfettered essence of men and women.

So funk never dies.

It is eternal.

It just smells a little different from time to time.

(funk music)